OpenEd Wk 11 *** Open Education and Learning Objects

Yes, I really do agree that open educational resources (OER) "fix" many of the problems experienced by those (ME!) who work with learning objects. This is because there is so much more to localization than just understanding "technically interoperable content systems."

An example.

I have worked in developing countries for the past 12 years doing literacy work for rural groups. Our focus has always been on participatory learning - where those who gather are the same ones create the curricula. The process of participatory learning beings with a dialogue about issues in their lives that are important, identifying the subjects and issues that they would like to change, finding information, learning it, digesting it, working on the skills they need in order to solve such problems, and then identifying and procuring the additional resources/money/supplies necessary to support their initiatives (personal and community) for positive social change.

Manuals (textbooks) exist around the globe; many of those in developing countries are transplanted and (sometimes, but only rarely) modified from Western-based texts or from National Curricula or international NGO programs.

Since many learning tools are not customized to the needs of those in the villages, the potential for educational impact of a textbook is hampered due to barriers which would allow only limited customization (e.g. in parallel to learning objects, it is only possible for teachers to be involved in a “technical way” as they worry about “interoperability of learning systems” in order to do such things as reorganizing chapters, excising/inserting subunits of chapters, integrating existing case studies or story problems published in the text but not necessarily localized to the culture/politics/economy of the village where the textbook is used).

Since the OER movement targets the opening of educational resources, learning objects are no longer in the textbook format at all. Although templates exist, the pictures, the case studies, the story problems can all be tailored to the needs of the learners in the "classroom" to the extent that the teacher/facilitator knows where he/she can access more resources and identifies ways that it is suitable or not for the needs of the learners in his/her jurisdiction.

We can see how OER tools may be more useful than LO through another scenario:

My sister, Natasha, works in Sudan on a public health project. Knowing that I have several resources for literacy in Africa here at home, she emailed me requesting support for an HIV/AIDS prevention training that she was conducting the next day. She did not wish to reinvent the wheel, but had no training tools available on demand.

I scanned chunks of an HIV/AIDS manual (pictures, stories, songs, case studies, and facilitator props/questions) designed for rural Kenyan villagers and sent her several PDF files by email.

With these, she was able to translate the text, customize the cultural context, and rearrange the order of questions (dialogue triggers) in order to make it most suitable for the needs of those whom she was to train the next day.

She further tailored the tools by involving local staff members and villagers in the localization of the training packet and incorporated indigenous pictures, examples, and tools from Sudan. Building from a base of resources which I sent to her, she avoided a lot of wasted time trying to redevelop a tool which had already been pilote-tested in the field in Kenya and proven to be useful and relevant to rural African villagers.

OER has the potential to take learning objects to a new level of usefulness and accessibility. I believe that, while LO are a start to supporting customized learning, OER fixes the technical issues and expands the opportunity for more teachers/learners/users to be involved in the process of making these learning resources even more useful and increasingly accessible to more people across the globe.

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