The OER Knowledge Cloud

• Substituting open educational resources for commercial curriculum materials: Effects on student mathematics achievement in elementary schools July 9, 2020
  Open Educational Resources (OER) have the potential to replace commercial learning materials in education. An empirical examination of this potential was conducted, comparing the end-of-year mathematics test results of 12,110 elementary school students clustered within 95 schools from five school districts in the state of Washington in the United States of America. Of this group, […]
• Open textbooks: Quality and relevance for postsecondary study in the Bahamas July 9, 2020
  Open educational resources (OER), are openly licensed text, media, and other digital and analog assets that are useful for teaching, learning, and research. Recent research has shown that in courses where open textbooks are assigned, students perform as well as or better than students in similar courses with commercially licensed textbooks. Despite cost savings and […]
• Sprinting to the finish line: The benefits and challenges of book sprints in OER faculty-graduate student collaborations July 9, 2020
  This article investigates the results of a book sprint experience whose main objective was the development of instructional modules for an open textbook for the teaching of Spanish as a second language. Six graduate students at a public American university participated in the project for a week, working in pairs in the creation of activities […]
• Open educational practices advocacy: The instructional designer experience July 9, 2020
  Instructional designers are in a unique position to provide leadership and support for advancement of new technologies and practices. There is a paucity of research on current and potential roles of Instructional designers in incorporating and advocating for open educational practices at their higher education institutions. Against the background of emerging open educational practices, a […]
• The ultimate guide to copyright, fair use, and Creative Commons for educators July 6, 2020
  It has never been easier to publish online or consume digital content. This comes with many advantages and can make teaching and learning so much more targeted and impactful. Living in a digital world also brings up many questions - one issue that is very important to understand is copyright. Whether you’re an educator, student, […]
• Establishing a MOOC quality assurance framework - a case study July 6, 2020
  The rapidly growing number of learning materials and repositories makes the issue of how to find the most relevant and best quality resources to be integrated in teaching and learning offers. Thus, effective quality assessment tools are more and more needed. In the present paper, a case-study focusing on quality assurance in a Virtual Mobility […]
• Open education for a better world: A mentoring programme fostering design and reuse of Open Educational Resources for sustainable development goals July 6, 2020
  An international online mentoring programme Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) has been developed to unlock the potential of open education in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The programme provides an innovative approach to building Open Educational Resources, connecting developers of educational materials with experts volunteering as mentors. The model of the programme […]
• Instructional designers and open education practices: Negotiating the gap between intentional and operational agency July 6, 2020
  In their role as support to faculty in the course development process, Instructional Designers (IDs) can play an important part in alleviating some of the well-known barriers of open education practices (OEP): faculty time, institutional or faculty resistance to change, and institutional support for faculty (Annand & Jensen, 2017; Barker et al., 2018; Jhangiani et […]
• Toward a critical approach for OER: A case study in removing the 'Big Five' from OER creation July 6, 2020
  This paper examines the role of proprietary software in the production of open educational resources (OER). Using a single case study, the paper explores the implications of removing proprietary software from an OER project, with the aim of examining how complicated such a process is and whether removing such software meaningfully advances a critical approach […]
• Assessing the impact of "open pedagogy" on student skills mastery in first-year composition July 6, 2020
  This article presents the results of a 2016 classroom research study assessing the impact of open pedagogy on student skills mastery in English 101, a first-year undergraduate composition course at a two-year community college in North America. Ninety-two students in five sections used the same free OER course materials, but two sections were given traditional […]