Our work is focused on not only connecting related OER learning objects, but also creating a common voice behind these objects to better simulate the flow of a textbook.
Ever more open educational resources (OER) are being packed into content repositories. As we all are likely aware, much of that movement is driven by the challenge of rising textbook costs for students and its effect on access to college courses. Open textbooks are one solution; a good one, at that. However, delivery platforms continue to evolve, and the cost of sustaining open textbook development and maintaining currency remains a challenge, suggesting that open textbooks might not be the end-all solution. So, what about the smaller OER objects? Can these be collected in such a way as to include all the necessary objectives of courses? If so, then we need to thread these objects together sequentially in order to provide an equivalent flow of course material to students.
At College of the Canyons, with the generous support of the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE), we have taken on the challenge of not only collecting additional OER objects, but binding them together in a content playlist, of sorts. Of course, there are other efforts to do such things (OER Glue). We seek to go further to provide an underlying and consistent voice to the materials. By linking individual OER objects and padding them with transition pieces provided by a single source, a collection of OER is essentially walked-through by a narrator.
We are currently in the development stage of two content playlists and will soon be ready to test and implement them. In this presentation, we will provide an overview of our accomplishments to date and what to expect by the end of our grant.