OER Academy: OER Design

Welcome

ISKME's OER Commons Team has designed these OER Academy modules to support and advance your open educational practice. Our comprehensive OER toolset and immersive professional learning program will assist educators in enhancing their capacities to use, evaluate, curate, and create OER. 

This is the second module in our OER Academy series that will provide participants with an exploration of OER desgin. We have designed these modules to first spark the learner's interest in the topics covered and then dig deeper into the content through presentations, storytelling, and demonstrations of the tools. We will offer opportunities for learners to practice exploring the resources and tools, and reflect on how they might use them in their work. 

OER Academy Outline:

Introduction to OER  (3 modules)

- Module 1 - Overview of the what, why, and how of OER; including an exploration in open licensing and a showcase of OER use cases from around the world

- Module 2 - Content Discovery: identify teaching and learning goals, search and browse collections

- Module 3 - Curation and Collaboration of OER with groups, shared folders and discussions

Quality Evaluation (2 modules)

- Module 1 - Quality: participants reflect and share their quality criteria for teaching and learning materials they use

- Module 2 - Tools for Evaluating: explore digital tools for assessing OER (Achieve Rubric, Rating, Comments)

Authoring and Remixing (3 modules)

- Module 1 - Authoring Toolset: demonstration of Open Author and Module Builders

- Module 2 - OER Design: discover instructional design supports, including templates

- Module 3 - OER Remix: overview of the what, why, and how of remixing OER

Open Education Practice for Curriculum Improvement (1 module)

- Deep dive into the feedback, refinement, reflection, and revision process

Leadership and Advocacy (1 module)

- Exploration and planning of ways to lead and advocate for OER

Pre-activities:

To participate in group discussions during the REFLECT sections you will need to create a login and join the Group. Please see instructions below

CREATE A PROFILE on OER Commons to be able to contribute to the discussions in our group, and to save, organize, remix, and author resources. Share some information about yourself and upload a photo or image here: https://www.oercommons.org/profile/edit

JOIN OUR GROUP Once you've logged in successfully, join the Introduction to OER Group by clicking "Join This Group"

Every Educator is an Instructional Designer

Educators are continually designing and developing learning experiences. Some educators devote a lot of time to research, plan, and implement learning experiences; while others may do it more spontaneously to adapt to the needs of their learners in the moment. Not all educators may think of themselves as instructional designers, but we believe that instructional design is an essential role each educator has. This OER Design module aims to support educators in thinking more deeply about how we design and develop learning experiences, and offers structured supports in the form of lesson templates to guide your design.

OER Design

REFLECT: Describe your process for designing and developing learning experiences. Where do you start? What design considerations do you make along the way? Reply here

*Reminder: you will need to be logged in and join the Group to reply to the discussion.

Instructional Design Supports

Devoting some research and planning time for instructional design is essential to curriculum and courseware improvement. You don't always have to start from scratch and create a brand new lesson or module. You may want to revisit an existing lesson or module you currently use in your teaching, and redesign it to better meet the needs of your learners. Or you may want to try out some new teaching or learning strategies. Or you may want to explore alternative assessment techniques. Or you may want to integrate interactive technology into your instruction.

Here are a few research considerations to help inform your instructional design approach: 

• Assess your curriculum needs - What content gap areas do you need new or redesigned resources for?
• Consider your instructional strengths and needs - What areas are your instructional strengths and passions? What are some areas you would like to grow and expand your expertise?
• Research, analyze, and identify learner's needs - Understanding who you are designing for is essential to instructional design.

Once you have done your research, it is time to move into design:

• Determine your learning goals - What will student's learn through this learning experience?
• Develop a plan for assessing learning - What methods will you utilize to understand that student's are learning and how they are progressing through the learning experience.
• Structure content and activities to support your learning goals - How will you scaffold the learning experience?
• Decide which types media and digital materials you will use to support your learning goals - Will you use images, videos, games, simulations or interactives throughout this learning experience?
• Continue to research, assess, revise and rewrite content to best meet your learner's needs.

EXPLORE authoring templates that were created to help guide OER design 

• STEM Inquiry Lesson Template - supports STEM teachers and librarians in working collaboratively to create  lessons that build science practice and STEM inquiry skills in alignment with state and national science standards, and that address the literacy shifts around close reading and building textual evidence. 
• OER Design Challenge Lesson Template - created for educators in the Caribbean to create, remix, and share OER, such as lessons, activities, and games, that showcase their unique cultures, while integrating ICT.

REFLECT: Now that you have a deeper understanding of instructional design and have had an opportunity to explore some authoring templates, let's return to our discussion around our processes for designing and developing learning experiences. Find the comment you shared earlier and add a few more design considerations to it. Reply to your comment here

Next Modules

Our third module will be an introduction to the what, why, and how of OER Remixing, highlighting examples of ways educators have remixed OER.