Open Educational Resources (OERs) with its digitised availability and various levels of open licences allowing free reuse, remix and repurpose of multimedia resources are generally considered useful to facilitate the development of high quality teaching and learning materials relatively with low cost for a given educational context. Very few research studies have attempted to understand the process of reuse, remix and re-purpose of OER for a given classroom context or for developing new course materials in the open distance learning (ODL) mode. From the review of findings of the existing literature which probed into experiences of individual teachers using these resources in classroom teaching and for distance education, it could be broadly agreed that learning resources when available for open use may have a positive influence in the teaching-learning context. However, there is inadequate research evidence to show that OER when reused, revised, remixed and integrated to the development of self-instructional course materials in an Open Distance Learning context can substantially improve its quality and also its cost/time efficiency in development. There is a further need to have more empirical evidence about the search and reuse processes as well as develop workable techniques and models of OER integration for various educational purposes and situations.
Sub-project 7 intends to probe into the operational processes involved in course development using available online multi-media OER materials for a 5-credit (200 hours study) course on ‘Research in Education’ at postgraduate level. The course development is undertaken collaboratively with the host institution, the Wawasan Open University, with teacher educators in Malaysia and India. The study attempts to investigate aspects related to the reuse and integration of OER viz. availability and findability of OER; levels of usability and ways of reusing OER; cost-time efficiency in the use/reuse of OER; the impact of course development process on course developer’s conceptual understanding about OER; the attitude of the participating course developers and editors towards OER; the effect of OER use on the quality of the course developed; and the reaction of teacher learners on the use of OER in the learning materials produced. The newly developed OER based course materials will be compared with the existing 5-credit course of Wawasan Open University on certain quality criteria.
This paper reports the interim results related to Phase-I of the project which will include the processes involved in searching and finding relevant OER materials and contextualising them by appropriate ways of reuse within a situated learning design. This was done in three workshops one for OER search and the other two for OER use and integration in creating 5 modules of the course. Evidence of the availability and findability of the OER materials were captured on a log maintained during the search process. Similarly a log and reflection diary were maintained during the 5 days of course development for each of the Modules. Additionally a concept mapping exercise on OER, a written individual reflection and a group reflection activity by the module writers were undertaken prior to and after the course development workshops. The attitude of module writers prior to and after the workshops is also being measured using an attitude scale developed for the purpose (adapted from ROER4D Sub-Project 3). The paper will present how the engagement of module writers in OER reuse for course development has changed their conceptual understanding about OER, attitude towards OER and its use, and perceptions about the various aspects of OER availability, quality and relevance to the subject/content area.