SOURCES OF OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCES
Sources of OER - Africa
- Saide, through its OER Africa initiative, will support the project as a whole as well as the project in each zone, to source and evaluate Open Educational Resources and suitable materials for sharing for both the Train the Trainer course in ODL methods and individual Mathematics, Science and Technology teacher training programmes. http://www.oerafrica.org
- The majority of materials available as Open Educational Resources for teacher education are in English. However, the African Virtual University has courses in French and Portuguese as well http://oer.avu.org/.
- The TESSA programme has materials not only in English, but also in French, Kiswahili and Arabic. As Saide is a partner of the TESSA programme, advice on further sources of OER in these languages could be sources. www.tessafrica.net
- OER Initiatives in Africa – http://www.oerafrica.org/OERInitiativesinAfrica/tabid/296/Default.aspx
Sources of OER - Internationally
- Merlot Teacher Education (Multimedia education resource for learning and online teaching) http://www.merlot.org/merlot/materials.htm?category=2276&&sort.property=overallRatin
- Connexions – http://cnx.org/
- OER Commons – http://www.oercommons.org/
- Open CourseWare Consortium – http://www.ocwconsortium.org/
- Open textbook sites (eg http://oerconsortium.org/discipline-specific/)
- Open access research sites (eg OpenDOAR, http://www.opendoar.org/index.html as well as DOAJ http://www.doaj.org/)
- http://www.icde.org/?module=Articles;action=Article.publicShow;ID=613
- http://www.oerafrica.org/OERRepositoriesOWCSearch/tabid/297/Default.aspx
Evaluation of Open Educational Resources
- Learning Object Review Tool (LORI) http://elera.net/eLera/Home/Articles/LORI%201.5.pdf, which has been in development since 2006. The key criteria used in this tool are:
- Content Quality: Veracity, accuracy, balanced presentation of ideas, and appropriate level of detail
- Learning Goal Alignment: Alignment among learning goals, activities, assessments, and learner characteristics
- Feedback and Adaptation: Adaptive content or feedback driven by differential learner input or learner modeling
- Motivation: Ability to motivate and interest an identified population of learners
- Presentation Design: Design of visual and auditory information for enhanced learning and efficient mental processing
- Interaction Usability: Ease of navigation, predictability of the user interface, and quality of the interface help features
- Accessibility: Design of controls and presentation formats to accommodate disabled and mobile learners
- Reusability: Ability to use in varying learning contexts and with learners from differing backgrounds
- Standards Compliance: Adherence to international standard.