Presentation titled "Green Education Using Open Educational Resources (OER): Setting up a Green OER Repository". SPDECE 2012 Symposium, Alicante, Spain, 14/6/2012 (http://transducens.dlsi.ua.es/congress/spdece2012)
Green Education Using Open Educational Resources (OER) (SPDECE 2012)
1. SPDECE-2012. Multidisciplinary symposium on the design and evaluation of
digital content for education
Green Education Using Open
Educational Resources (OER):
Setting up a Green OER Repository
V. Protonotarios, M. Ungur, H. Ebner, N. Manouselis
Alicante, Spain, 14/6/2012
2. About Open Educational
Resources
What are the OER?
OER = Open Educational Resources
Educational materials that are freely available and
licensed in a way that gives users the legal
permission to
reuse – use the work “as-is” without having to ask
permission
revise - alter or transform the work to meet the user’s
needs
remix – combine the work with other works for an
enhanced effect
redistribute – share the work or derivative work with
others.
3. Why use OER?
Shared content becomes a vehicle for
collaboration and connection
Shared materials are continually
improved upon through revisions
Materials can be adapted and
localized to fit the specific audience
needs
Saves time, cuts costs, and reduces
duplication of effort
5. How to find OER?
OER is supported by an ever-growing active
movement
◦ Usually available through specialized learning
portals
We need to focus on OER in the area
of agriculture / green topics!
6. OER Commons
www.oercommons.org
Provides access to a number of OER
on agriculture
Provides a number of search options
and filtering of the results
Green OER Commons
(www.oercommons.org/green) hosts
resources specifically on green topics
7. Organic.Edunet Web portal
www.organic-edunet.eu
Provides access to almost 11,000
resources on Organic Agriculture &
Agroecology
Features four different search
mechanisms and filtering of the results
Not all resources are OER, so one
should be careful!
8. MERLOT www.merlot.org
Provides access to a number of
resources on agriculture and green
topics
Features classification of resources by
type as well
Users may comment and review
resources
9. OER Africa – Agriculture OER
www.oerafrica.org/agricultureoer
Provides access to a number of
resources on agricultural topics
The number of resources is constantly
growing
Resources are mostly relevant to
African agricultural sector
10. FAO Organic Agriculture portal
http://www.fao.org/organicag/en
Provides access to publications, reports,
projects, glossary etc. on organic
agriculture topics
The number of resources is relatively
high and growing
Resources are classified according to
their top-level topic and are easy to find
Suitable for vocational training
12. The issues faced
In most cases:
Limited use of metadata = issues in
retrieving the resources
◦ Time consuming task
Lack of collection policy
◦ Providing info on the attributes of the
collection / resources
Lack of quality assurance / criteria
◦ Ensuring the quality of the provided
13. Our proposal: Green OER
collection
a collection of OER focusing on green
topics
◦ a collection of metadata records which
describe quality educational material on
green topics
covers green topics, such as
sustainability, agriculture, environment,
ecology, energy, biodiversity etc.
Describes items like complete lessons
or lesson plans, guides and
handbooks, journal articles and
information sheets
15. 1. Content retrieval
Content experts browsing the web for
appropriate content
Communication with content providers
in special cases
Quality Assurance: Content has to
meet the Organic.Edunet Core Criteria
16. 2. Annotation
Content/Metadata experts using
Confolio tool
Annotation with Organic.Edunet IEEE
LOM AP, using all available info
Support for multilingual versions of
metadata!
17. 3. Publication
1. Organic.Edunet Web portal:
http://www.organic-edunet.eu
Currently features almost 11,000
resources!
18. 3. Publication
2. Green OER-Commons micro-site:
www.oercommons.org/green
Currently features more than 2,000
resources!
19. To sum up
There is an obvious need for quality
OER in green topics
Metadata descriptions are usually
incomplete, making retrieval of
resources a hard task
Quality assurance is not apparent
We are working towards addressing
these two issues with the Green OER
collection!