#EDEN09 workshop OER design

Workshop "New methods and Approaches to the desing and evaluation of open educational resources" by Grainne Conole, Patrick McAndrew, Julliette Culver, Andrew Bbrasher, Simon Cross, Tina Wilson from the Open University of UK.
The workshop will introduce participants to use a range of tools, methods and approaches to designing and evaluating open education resources (OERs). The session will include an overview of the OLnet initiative which is a new global network of support for researchers, users and producers of OERs. Participants will have achance to try out some of the tools that have been developed as part of the OLnet and to discuss relevance and application to their own practice.

This was a nice workshop, because it immediately gave the participants a better insight of what design is and how it can impact OER. Now, I know you think 'I know what design is...' but this workshop pushed the fact that you need to make the design as explicit as possible, to enable the learners to adjust the design (if you want to, but is nice if you want to go student-centered).

(Gainne Conole has a chemist background, glasses and curly hair)

connundrum with OER: only very limited material is re-used
bridging the gap:
redefining openness: open source, shared, collaborative
a mediating layer:

group activity
think of a resource you have created
describe its inherent design
share with the person next to you
share with the wider group

although design is a core aspect, it is very difficult to describe the design process.
So how do we go about to improve the design, to increase learner demands/needs.
sometimes design needs to be rethought while the course is running.
Additional problem, the teachers or SME that are asked to design a course by themselves... it is not there core business.

So OU UK has been looking at ways to describe design (visual representation is given).
What they do is that the design is explicitely clear for the learners as well.
Because the OER's design is explicit, you can test it and ask students to enter the design. So students are asked to give their description of a resource, this is coupled back to the other students and this results in a the overall description.
With this explicit design, the teachers are asked to get to work with an explicit design in mind.