To provide context to this post: I am currently taking Open Pedagogy Master Class through SUNY OER Services. Reflective journals are part of the course which encourages the participants to think about and discuss their thoughts to the provided prompts. It also provides a way for the participants to build community.
When I think about my hopes for education and particularly higher ed, I think about learners making their own meaning of what higher ed is to them. For some it will be the traditional college campus experience, for others it may be online, and others it may be vocational/trade school. All provide paths for learners. But more so, thinking about access and affordability.
Since I am a practicing instructional designer, part of my daily work is collaborating with faculty as they work through the online course development process at my institution as well as helping experienced online teaching faculty to rethink their course design. As part of the collaborative process, encouraging faculty to think outside the box – consider using other materials, not using a text, or finding other materials that provide another voice to their course and the content. Think about the pedagogy….and sometimes think about the technology that may be appropriate.
If we think about using OER in courses, the roles of the instructor and the student can become that of collaborators in content creation. The instructor can also be more of a facilitator and mentor which can be powerful for the student. It can provide opportunities for instructors and students to build community, solve problems….see the relevance in what they are doing in their course or courses.
Working with faculty to develop online courses can be challenging in that there is the temptation to emulate the face-to-face environment or to just put all the content up in a learning management system and let the course run itself. How boring! So not engaging. In our online courses, we have opportunities to create engaging learning experiences by using what we know about learning and technology integration. The big thing is that the tool we choose to use must be pedagogically appropriate. Just because an app or tool is new and shiny is not a good reason to use it. What ever we choose to build for our learners we should strive to make sure it is the learning experience is engaging to our students, that the content is relevant and learners have the opportunity to apply what they have learned.