Composing Educational Resources

In some areas, composing educational resources has come a long way from a black board, borrowing books from a library, photocopying, or creating over head projection transparencies. Anyone who has had more than a superficial search of the Internet knows there are more educational resources than ever before! In most areas including "developed regions" however, accessing the Internet is a real challenge. This does not have to mean we forget about using Internet based resources in education, it just means we get smart on how!..

The questions in this course then are:

1. How can we more effectively find resources that are free for reuse?
2. How can we efficiently manage all the resources that we find?
3. How can we compose educational resources that are accessible and reusable?

This course has been developed by staff in the Educational Development Centre of Otago Polytechnic, based on the Wikiversity course Composing Free and Open Online Educational Resources. This course is designed to help both formal and informal learners access and interpret models, research, and develop professional expertise in the composition of educational resources. After completing this course people should be confident in locating and composing educational resources, and/or be able to critique and offer advice to other people in the process of composing educational resources.

To join this course: Participation in this course is free. The next facilitated session is TBA. To join, simply complete the tasks in the Orientation section of this page. Alternatively, you can start and finish at any time, working through the schedule at a pace that suits you. If you think you will benefit from receiving focused and personal learning support, assessment services, or a certificate in recognition for your participation, please consider enrolling as a formal participant. You can inquire about formal enrollment by emailing: TBA

I've been meaning to reuse Teemu Leinonen and co's course on Wikiversity, Composing Free and Open Online Educational Resources, and rejig it for a rerun. Finally I have been able to get to that item on the to-do list.

At first I was considering editing the original course slightly - but not deviating much from the original content. I left a message on the course's discussion page, indicating my intensions.. it didn't appear as though anyone had any objections. On consideration though, I realised that I want to change the content quite a bit.

I want to move the focus away from open educational resources, and onto educational resources generally. The open access and reuse will still be a major component, in fact you could call it a given, weaving its way throughout everything.. open ed resources, is there any other way? in other words, but I also want to focus attention on the skill of searching for reusable content, managing 'libraries' of what you find, and finally how to create - or compose your own educational resources, without getting too bogged down on the intricacies of open ed.

I also want to move it more in the direction of off-line and analogue media as well, to address Internet access issues, which many people mistake as being 'developing nation' needs only.. NZ and Australia therefore are clearly developing nations then. I have some ideas on how online educational resources can be complimentary to things like community radio and news paper - including the communicative aspects of Web2.. ie talk back radio working together with podcasting..

So, I'm chipping away at this new version over on Wikieducator. Composing Educational Resources. I'm hoping to be able to offer it as an open course starting late next month... high hopes really



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons (Attribution) license.

This blog is being prepared for a course in composing educational resources. The course schedule is under development at http://wikieducator.org/Composing_educational_resources