OER1047d Short Paper (part of Symposium OER1047)

Opening Doors to Digital Learning: Open educational repositories for community discovery, sharing, reuse and activity

Catherine Bruen, NDLR, Trinity College Dublin, David Jennings, NDLR, University College Dublin

Conference Theme: Open Educational Content, OER Communities

Abstract: The National Digital Learning Resources (NDLR) Service for Ireland is evolving. By the end of 2009 the new service will be launched with some fundamental changes that will impact the future way staff of Irish Higher Education Sector, work, collaborate and develop learning resources as individuals and as members of subject discipline SMART COPs. Up to now the NDLR Pilot has been a closed entity for use by the Irish Higher Education community only with a bespoke licence. Collaborative partnerships with national and international institutions, organisations and industry have been restricted. The new NDLR service is based on the delivery, development and support of open educational resources (OER). To facilitate this, the NDLR now supports the use of Creative Commons (CC) Licenses and thus is aligned with the core principles of ccLearn. The fundamental change to the usage of the NDLR is provided by the ‘open access’ to its resources via a new environment. This 10-15 minute presentation will focus on how NDLR is looking to the future to support the use of open digital content for improving the quality of teaching resources; enhancing associated teaching practice; encouraging a reduction in the cost of teaching via sharing and reuse of digital resources, and above supporting collaborative development and sharing of resources across the education sector in Ireland and internationally, embracing partnerships with research and industry. The OER Movement means that anyone, anywhere may view and utilise the resources under the CC Licence permissions. This reveals new possibilities for subject discipline networks to utilise the impact of digitised materials offered freely and openly to collectively raise the bar for learning design and use and reuse for teaching, learning and research. Finally this presentation will outline some of the ways of supporting a vision where Higher Education sector staff are supported and promoted in the collaboration, discovery, development and sharing of learning resources and associate teaching practices through use of innovative approaches and social networking tools.

Keywords: Open Educational Resources, Communities of Practice, Learning Design, Teaching practices, Open Source, Open Access, Higher Education

References:
1. Downes, Stephen (2006) Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources, National Research, Council Canada, http://ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p029-044Downes.pdf
2. Conole, G. and Weller, M. (2007), ‘Using learning design as a framework for supporting the design and reuse of OER’, paper accepted for the Ist OpenLearn Conference, The Open University, October, 2007.
3. OECD (2007), ‘Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources’, Accessible from http://tinyurl.com/62hjx6http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/images/0/0b/OER_Briefing_Paper.pdf
4. Weller, M. (2008) ‘Exploring new ways of being open’. Originally submitted October 14th, 2008 to the OSS and OER in Education Series, Terra Incognita blog (Penn State World Campus), edited by Ken Udas
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