It was Grahams Post (TB)which brought me up to reflect about the role of Institutions in open educational ressources. He writes:
„Of course lecture notes and overhead presentations may be helpful to support learning (and certainly helpful for teachers). But, I am not sure that reading and watching course materials constitutes a learning programme in itself. Neither have many of the institutions providing OERS intended it to be. Why make free courses available online of it would compete with courses offered by an institution.“
Just to mirror my own and small experience in open available educational ressources: It is hard to find them and even harder to (e)valuate them if they are right for the own use. But to be self-critical this is a new part and value in the new literacies raising up in it’s importance. And there is a lot of future work, which cannot be done by technique: The decision on: Is it really important for me and my own direction of thinking or not. Is it an reliable source and on which criteria i can rely on them. So far I feel sometimes happy having not the standards suggesting me the quality of source. It is and has to be my decision and helps me to do a part of the researchers work beside the suggestions. Yes i agree also when Graham differce in material aiming to support teaching related to the material supporting learning. So my question related to the topic is: How would it be possible to get the ideal way supporting both: Teaching and learning? Perhaps it would depend on the style of the material or the arrangement where they have their origin. Supporting the learning of the own students could mean supporting the learning of the others too. Or turning it around: Those open educational materials should be created as a content, which alowws others fluidly to get into the topic and doing so get them on board as well inhouse as outhouse. I don’t knwo how many materials came in your mind, when I say now: For me there is a lot looking as secondary used and distributed, which is not made as OER as itself.
But this brings me to another point: Deeply I am asking myself if the institutions are the right people we are trying to get in the boat. Aren’t the People teaching and lecturing the first station on doing so? There are other interests brought by the institutions as those brought by the content creators?
Graham continues:
„Yet, at the same time, organisations such as the BBC, are publishing increasing amounts of learning (not teaching) materials aimed at a wide range of age groups and a wide ability range. YouTube contains hundreds of videos providing help in how to do almost anything. Web tutorial sites abound. And the growing power of mobile devices and if rumour is to be believed, the immanent arrival of smart tablet readers, allows integration of learning into everyday work and leisure activities. In other words, learning is moving outside teh institution at an ever increasing rate. It is these materials which will be of most profound influence on the future of our education systems.“
But what does this mean to the quality of the learning? I clearly see now a big diffrence between those professional materials and learning. It can enrich my learning, it can inspire my learning it can illustrate and model things – but on those material I am on my own. For me thats a bit tooooo short. Where is the backchannel, which allows me to get in discourse? Thats the room where the institutions should stay for. There is big room for an creative synergy of those media professional grounded materials and institutional as well personal learning. But in fact there is a rights gap – ever tried to show a movie or tv show in school? Ever tried to access german public streamed materials after 15 days? It got prohibited by law in the case of the public broadcasting agencies!
So no prediction from my side against Grahams but a deep whish for 2010: Let’s get the right partners on board to enable learning and personal development in small and realizable steps – and to realize:: Material is the one part – supporting the discourse on the learning seems to me the bigger challenge.
