#12 (WEEK 5) A look at open courseware

According to the website of the OCW Consortium, an OCW project:

• is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses.
• is available for use and adaptation under an open license.
• does not typically provide certification or access to instructors

Which is an interesting new direction for education and training to be taking. With the cost of information replication being practically zero, and the price of transmission decreasing each day, training institutions are changing the way they do buisiness - giving away their knowledge but charging for the certification.


Discovery Exercises:

• browse one or more open courseware collections (some are listed below). Is there material here that you could use in your training? Could you perhaps add to the knowledge that's out there? What would your training organisation think about going public and putting their syllabus material online? Write up your thoughts.
• Putting the shoe on the other foot, look through 100 Free Online Lectures that Will Make You a Better Teacher. Write a quick post about what you find. Which (if any) appealed. Would you feel comfortable learning this way and would it matter if there was no formal qualification or recognition of your learning?

Discovery Resources:

Some open courseware collections to browse:

• wikiversity
  
• MIT
  
• The Commonwealth of Learning
  
• iTunesU
• our own Flexible Learning Network toolbox repository
  

Curriculum Connection:

• IDEA #1: Send your trainees out on a hunt for resources they could use.
  
• IDEA #2: Have your class create some resources of their own (see Jon Beasley-Murray's story about an amazing project that brings the full extent of the communal and collaborative power of Wikipedia into the classroom )

Image: 'OpenCourseWare Consortium Conference'
www.flickr.com/photos/44952587@N00/482970721