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View all the Teaching & Learning Centre Spark Plugs!
by Kevin Pitts, Professor in the Teaching & Learning Centre
You may have come across the acronym OER in your travels previously, or you may be hearing it for the first time. What you might not know is that Seneca has been involved in developing and using OER for some time.
Formally, “Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.” (UNESCO, n.d.)
Any educational materials, such as texts, videos, audio files, images, lesson plans, tests, simulations, books, etc. (or any combination thereof) can be considered OER, provided they are distributed under an open license.
The benefits of OER are many. Students benefit from no cost, immediate, continued access to learning materials. Faculty benefit from the ability to customize and repurpose content for their needs.
Lots of great OER work has already happened at Seneca due to a coordinated OER Initiative inspired by the efforts of Seneca librarian Jennifer Peters and supported by former VPA Laurel Schollen.
As part of the initiative a Faculty Guide to Open Educational Resources and Other Alternatives to Textbooks was created. Contained within are many OER examples created, curated, and/or adapted by Seneca colleagues. We invite you to explore the great work that is highlighted there.
And the work continues. Some current OER projects include:
The good news is that there are many, many resources available (open and freely available, of course 🙂 ) to help you get started with OER.
You may want to
And you can start small. You don’t have to create an entire open text or a complete OER course – unless you want to! You might create a small “how to” video and publish to YouTube under an open license. You might create or curate a small online activity (see eCampusOntario’s H5P Studio) and embed it in your Learn@Seneca course.
Regardless of the extent to which you want to get involved, we welcome you to come and join our growing Seneca OER community.
Photo by Elena Kloppenburg on Unsplash
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