Part I

Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that you can design something better than what you get from massively parallel trial and error with a feedback loop that’s getting your intelligence way to much credit.

I would start this post by quoting Dr. David Wiley, chief academic officer of Lumen Learning for this session’s lecturer. I interpret the line from two aspects. From the educators’ perspective, don’t try to use your own way to teach learners thinking it is the best way of learning. And from the students’ perspective, don’t try to learn and achieve without making mistakes and learn from them.

The session talks about the current situation with OER and open learning. It points out some problems that exists in the incorporation of OER in the students learning, and provides insights to the use of OER from the designers’ perspective. It also points out that most of the OER created are still in the forms of words and pictures in PDF files or HTML pages, which means that they may not serve good functions in aiding the learners’ learning without the engagement of qualified educators.

Questions that draws attention and thinking are:

  • When open has become the majority status of education resources and when might we anticipate that to occur if possible?
  • Is it possible for AI to be implemented in the OER to improve the quality of free education compared to what we have now that are 99% PDF or HTML resources?
Part II

Dr. Wiley points out that OER-enabled Education is sometimes used in learning by the educators for the sake of using it, rather than considering whether it is more beneficial to the learners than other types of resources or not. On the other hand, Open Pedagogy engages the students and make them part of the creator rather than simply consuming it. It uses OER as a means to an end. Dr. Wiley also suggests that the difference between now and before when the idea of OER was first introduced, is that more educators are aware of OER and try to incorporate it in their teaching, while not everyone is able to use it well. The solution could partly be answered by Open Pedagogy because it sees how students interact with the OER in their learning, rather than simply receiving it as part of the information provided by the course.

SMAR Model

The incorporation of OER in education reminds me of the SMAR model where SMAR stands for substitution, argumentation, modification, and redefinition. While the superficial way of incorporating OER in education is to substitute traditional course materials with OER, the ultimate and high-level goal of open pedagogy is to create tasks and learning opportunities that were previously not available without OER.

Part III

An interesting discussion point in the session was on how do educators improve the performance of the underperforming students and close the gap between these students and the high-performing students, instead of improving the overall performance of all students by “shifting the gap upward,” or “raising the field.”

To some degrees the OER becomes the end rather than the means to an end. Sometimes educators use OER as a tool regardless whether it is good for the students learning or not. However, educators should realize that the function that OER plays in the students learning paths is not simply to save money, but to better engaging the students in the learning contents while the existing online contents may not work while considering the individual needs and diversity of the learners’ backgrounds, learning habits, etc.

Another point to consider is the effectiveness of the OER. When students are given OER as a part of learning materials from a class, how students receive the information from it, as well as how students learn from it compared to how the educators expect the students to learn is important because it suggests whether the OER provided is effective. If not, it is the educators’ responsibility to use or design more effective rather than the students’ to engage with the materials better. It is also important to notice the primary and secondary benefits of the OER and incorporate them well in the courses of education.

Reflection

I chose this activity because I think the discussion on OER -enabled Education and Open Pedagogy is really important for the future educators to consider. The incorporation of OER in education should be carefully thought about and designed, so that it helps the learners with their learning path rather than serving only as a substitution. It also links back to the SMAR model and demonstrates it well because of the discussion and reflection of technology used in education. OER, being a type of technological advancement in education, should be used carefully and thoughtfully by applying the rules of SMAR.