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Overview of open courseware movement and related resources.

Oer open courseware

Lesson components

  • Fast Fact
  • Skill/Objective
  • Success Indicators
  • Introduction
  • Activity
  • Review questions
  • Resources

Fast fact

MIT first announced its Open Courseware program in 2001. The OCW provides open access to course materials for up to 1,550 MIT courses, representing 34 departments and all five MIT schools. The goal is to include materials from all MIT courses by 2008.

Skills/objectives

Learners will be able to:

  • Identify sources of open courseware for use in their own teaching disciplines.
  • Locate at lesson in an open course to modify for use in their own teaching.

Success indicators

  • Posted lesson plan that repurposes learning content from OCW for learner's own teaching.

Introduction

The OpenCourseWare movement began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2002 and has now spread to some 120 other universities worldwide. According to UC Irvine : "OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a free and open digital publication of high quality university-level educational materials, often including syllabi, lecture notes, assignments and exams. Open educational resources are based on the notion that knowledge and education are common goods that must be supported by a defined community."

While OCW initiatives typically do not provide a degree, credit, certification, or access to instructors, the materials are made available, for free, under open licenses for use and adaption by educators and learners anywhere.

Definition

According to the Open Courseware Consortium :

"An OpenCourseWare site 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."

The OpenCourseWare Finder Finder currently shows search results from:

Other universities with open courseware include:

Wikiversity is a online group of educators engaged in a collaborative learning effort using wiki software, which makes collaboration easy. Take the guided tour to discover more.

HippoCampus , a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE), provides high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students free of charge.

Activity

Experience

Reflect

Apply

  • Develop a lesson plan that repurposes learning content from OCW for your own teaching.
  • Consider adding your own course to Wikiuniversity . Use the tutorial provided.

Review questions

  • What are some of the sources of open courseware?
  • Which sources of open courseware provide learning materials that can be modified for use in the learner's own teaching?

Resources

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Source:  OpenStax, Introduction to open educational resources. OpenStax CNX. Apr 17, 2009 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10413/1.3
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