OER ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES, AND NEW OPPORTUNITIES
- Toward Building a Relevant Research Community.—The initial phase has quite properly focused on building and assessing pilot projects. Here, however, are some OER projects that are primarily focusing on related R&D—on OER as an object of study. In future activities there is a need to nurture a more coherent field of study around and about OER. There are research components included in most of the large projects together with a few more generic academic research projects such as the following:
- Boston College is establishing a new online Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment.[1]
- Brandeis University is developing SpellBee,[2] a peer-to-peer technology-based community project for young learners.
- Forum for the Future of Higher Education[3] is developing and implementing a forum on human cognition and new technologies.
- Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development[4] is conducting an international study of demand and supply side issues related to Open Educational Resources and creating E-learning case studies in post-secondary education and training.
- Stanford University[5] is organizing a working group to plan for large-scale digitization of Arabic-language books.
- University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education[6] is studying the use of web-based collections of open academic content.
- Building Awareness, Voice, and Understanding.—Some of the projects have given voice to the OER movement, building understanding, capacity, and action in various stakeholder communities, including policy formulators. These include:
- A Columbia University[7] project is teaching educators, technologists, video producers, and other stakeholders about uses of video and open content.
19
