Category Archives: Week 7 Discussion

María-M7: Lots of questions. Open (how? really?) Educational (how? for whom? why?) Resources (which? when?)

Week 7 Discussion, , , ,

I first heard about Open Educational Resources a few years back, when I served as Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at the School of Humanities at The University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus.  One of my many duties as Dean in a public school in a colonial setting going through the direst, most cruel economic crisis the country (or territory, if we’re gonna be crediting things properly) was to negotiate the sheer economic need of most students with their unbelievable hunger for learning and talent for achieving almost anything they sought to do.  As I learned about the amazing opportunities OERs offered students, I also learned about the constraints and the little financial gain authors and owners of ‘property’ (objects, subjects, originals) could enjoy by means of enforcing strict copyright policies.  All of that seasoned by the fact that I earn NOTHING from any article I publish, although some journals are now asking for thousands of $$$ for me to pay or I sign off my lifetime rights to that article, and my latest book, published beautifully with Toronto UP, thousands of dollars in production, has given back to me a whopping $120 in six years and 1,000 copies sold.  UTP owns the world rights to the book, of course…

CarrionRoughSpainShot

(© UTP 2010)

Some of the most interesting (albeit not always pleasant) moments I faced as Dean at UPR had to to with my helping students learn about what they could and could not, should and should not, do with OERs.  As Michele says, copyright is a big issue in film, and since as both Professor and Dean I work primarily in Humanities, with both verbal and visual materials, that is the story of my life.  My courses on architecture, film, theater, performance art, legal history, literature, and mysticism depend heavily in my sharing substantial amounts of materials with my students, and as I work with them so they learn the value of an image or a text, I also work with them so they understand the limits of use, and their responsibility as beneficiaries of this treasure trove of materials that is the Internet.  Goes without saying that another big part of my job as an instructor is to help them discern between original and copy (in, for instance, the consultation of an archival material in digital form or at the archive, ‘in person,’ or in watching a theatrical segment filmed for strict educational purposes).   Students and faculty in Art History, Cultural Management, Creative Writing, and Fine Arts were particularly restless, as new copyright laws were being brewed to charge for usage of images in their research and teaching.

OERs are critical for virtually every single educational setting today, and it is a complex, vital issue for all faculty members to learn to bring to their students a model to on the one hand enjoy these benefits, and on the other, to respect the limits of their use of those resources.  A standard I ask them to observe is to give credit to every text/image/video they cite in their readings, writings, communications, comments, reviews, performance projects, or research papers (whether historical, theoretical, or critical, kinds of evidence they are expected to learn to tell apart in every one of my seminars), and to know that if they EVER use that text of their own (no matter how small, unimportant-looking), if it has a ‘citable’ reference, they must give credit to the author, producer, or owner of that copyright.  Platforms such as Blackboard/Canvas have been good in helping me keep lots of these materials within a reasonable frame of educational operation, but I must learn to move to another stage, one in which I must be the one setting the example for students in my classes by giving credit to any and all images, texts, etc.  A good part of the job is done, but I have hundreds of images I must credit as I move my materials to Canvas.  I am sure that there are lots of questions pending, which will come up as I get ready to expand on my use of OERs.

Zhiyun’s reflection on OERs

Week 7 Discussion

I was not familiar with the terminology “open educational resources (OERs)” until learning about it in this class, but I have been used open educational resources (OERs) for many years in my own teaching. 

In statistics, there are many free textbooks and softwares (programming languages) available online. One of the most popular statistical programming language that is also an open educational resource is R, and I have used that extensively in my classes. One can download R online for free and install any package with open licenses. Additionally, users are also welcome to contribute/update with personalized functional packages. 

I think that the current proliferation and availability of open educational resources is an important trend in contemporary education. It is a cheap and efficient avenue for the learning process, but care needs to be taken in choosing the resources to ensure quality control.

M7, Susan: OERs and what I thought I knew

Uncategorized, Week 7 Discussion

At the beginning of this module, I did not recognize the term Open Educational Resource; although, I now realize that I have been benefiting from OERs for years. I have worked with material from TedEd (and TedEx), and some of the videos I regularly use in class are on YouTube and have Creative Commons licenses. That said, I’m now realizing that not all of my go-to a/v needs are open source, and I need to be a better citizen of the OER and academic world and get permissions to use material where needed. I also knew that there was a great deal of usable material out there, but I didn’t realize the sheer number of options available. For example, I’m very happy to been shown MIT’s Open Courseware site and its collection of Linguistics lectures. In fact, I’ve already started sharing some of these links with colleagues.

Instead of asking whether one sees value in OERs, I think it’s better to ask: How can one not see at least a bit of value in them? Even in working with courses that have been taught for years or decades, finding new materials to supplement the class is invaluable. It’s also amazing to see all of these talented, creative folks developing interesting ways of presenting material – I simply don’t have the skill or imagination to create these works. Speaking of, if you’ve never seen The History of English in Ten Minutes (broken down into ten one-minute cartoons) from The Open University, I highly recommend it: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/languages/english-language/the-history-english-ten-minutes. OER at its finest.

Navigating the Copyright Maze: Yu Li’s Reflection on M7

Week 7 Discussion, ,

I feel that I have been putting off learning about copyright, but the infographic PDF in this week’s reading package grabbed my full attention. Its cheerful colors, neat-looking symbols, and many speech bubbles made me feel that this was something I could learn. It must have taken Silvia Rosental Tolisano (the author) so much imagination and energy to plan out and create this graphic presentation on such a complex topic. For what? Just to attract readers? I am amazed, and it certainly worked on me. Well, I digress.

The takeaway for me was to create one’s own as much as possible, and if not, use materials form the public domain, with Creative Commons licensing or within Fair Use allowance. This is why, I think, websites like openwashington.com would be so useful – OERs are usually in the public domain or CC-licensed, am I right? Another tool I found helpful was Google’s Advanced Search feature. Apparently it allows specification of various usage rights such as “free to use, share or modify,” and I did not know that!

On a related note, I’ve discovered that the library has been purchasing more and more new publications in electronic format only. To check it out, we are granted access for 14 days. But, we cannot download or copy/paste any of the material. I wonder how this would impact classroom use of excerpts from scholarly books. In the past, I would request for sections of the book (with the fair-use allowance) to be uploaded to CourseReserve, so that students can download and print as needed. I guess students can access the ebooks the same way we do, so we can bypass CourseReserve, but I can no longer require them to bring a hardcopy to class (I don’t allow computers in the classroom). Well, maybe that’s not the end of the world.

M7-Marshall Duke–OER, Where have you been all my life??

Week 7 Discussion, ,

Many years ago, while reading an article about a psychologist who was doing some work on person perception in paintings, I came across the name of E.H. Gombrich.  I had never heard of the man but wanted to see if he had written anything that I might be interested in (the art historians out there, please contain your laughter).   We had card catalogues in the library back then (I am quite old, remember) so I had to physically go to the library to search him out.  Having braved the frigid crossing of quadrangle, I entered the cavernous catalogue room of the library  and pulled out the drawer labeled “Gom to Gom.”  This label struck me as odd until I opened the drawer and realized the entire thing was nothing but E.H. Gombrich!  He was a giant figure in art history and he was totally new to psychologically provincial old me.

And so it was again  today with these OER’s and the Creative Commons. I felt the same sort of shock (and thrill, actually) I had felt standing before the card catalog in the library. I had not heard of these things (I admit total spaciness on this) and here they are, arguably among the most important advances in education in my lifetime (whiteboards and smart podiums have not really moved me that much).  As I read about what is available and saw how relatively easy they are to access and use, I was blown away.  Ready-made for my course on abnormal psychology, I found Open Access Youtube videos depicting various types of mental disorders.  I found PowerPoints from old friends at Yale who are teaching the same sort of abnormal psychology curse I am planning. I learned that Youtube videos are automatically closed captioned, that they can be translated via Google translate into and from any language, that I can actually embed them into a VoiceThread.    I found Flickr (anyone else old enough to refer to this as “My Friend Flickr”?) and Bookstax.   What a delightful afternoon of surprises.  I have not used these OER’s before, but clearly I will be using them now and will not wait until my online course.

The tutorial on finding OER’s was excellent.  The materials on copyright and varieties of Creative Commons licenses were helpful and enlightening.  This has been fun, pure and simple.

 

M7-Reyes: OERs in Nursing

Week 7 Discussion

Hi everyone,

I was part of the the Emory Open Education Initiative last summer so I learned about OERs.  I like the Khan Academy, TED Talks and also YouTube for my materials.  I created an online peds resource last year for first semester students to help organize things.  Happy I did since we are switching to Canvas and I don’t have to “move” anything.

I think being able to share resources across educational settings is great and offers so much more to the students.

I haven’t run into copyright issues and I don’t have any overall questions.