10.0: Chapter Introduction
- Page ID
- 31094
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When you have completed this chapter you should be able to determine:
- how your role as an instructor is likely to be changed by developments in open learning;
- when you should create your own material and when you should use open educational resources;
- how to maximise the use of digital materials once created.
What is covered in this chapter
- Scenario H: Watershed management
- 10.1 Open learning
- 10.2 Open educational resources (OER)
- 10.3 Open textbooks, open research and open data
- 10.4 The implications of ‘open’ for course and program design: towards a paradigm shift?
Also in this chapter you will find the following activities:
- Activity 10.1 Should access to post-secondary education be completely open to anyone?
- Activity 10.2 Deciding on OER
- Activity 10.3 Using other open resources
- Activity 10.4 Build your own scenario
- Open educational resources offer many benefits but they need to be well designed and embedded within a rich learning environment to be effective.
- The increasing availability of OER, open textbooks, open research and open data means that in future, almost all academic content will be open and freely accessible over the Internet.
- As a result, students will increasingly look to institutions for learning support and help with the development of skills needed in a digital age rather than with the delivery of content. This will have major consequences for the role of teachers/instructors and the design of courses.
- OER and other forms of open education will lead to increased modularization and disaggregation of learning services, which are needed to respond to the increasing diversity of learner needs in a digital age.
- MOOCs are essentially a dead end with regard to providing learners who do not have adequate access to education with high quality qualifications. The main value of MOOCs is in providing opportunities for non-formal education and supporting communities of practice.
- OER, MOOCs, open textbooks and other digital forms of open-ness are important in helping to widen access to learning opportunities, but ultimately these are enhancements rather than a replacement for a well-funded public education system, which remains the core foundation for enabling equal access to educational opportunities.

