Sub-Saharan Africa, more than any other part of the world, is experiencing a crisis in finding sufficiently qualified teachers to meet the needs of expanding school systems. The professional development support provided to serving teachers is also inadequate in most countries. The most recent data on learner outcomes has revealed a worrying…

This paper describes the authors' experience of remixing two existing OER courses to provide an OER course for a particular purpose and context. The developing country target environment is stated as well as the original resources' provenance. The motivation for remixing these OER is explored, and the design of the adapted resource is described…

One of the most impressive uses of information and communication technology is the advent of e-learning. The current E-learning system mainly plays a role of learning assistance such as providing learning content or learning information, and sometime it provides channels or platform in the learning environment for discussion and interaction. In…

This paper presents how virtual containers enhance the implementation of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) subjects as Open Educational Resources (OER). The publication initially summarizes the limitations of delivering open rich learning contents and corresponding assignments to students in college level STEAM areas. The…

The New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE) promotes greater educational opportunities and services for the residents of New England through a variety of programs and state services. Much has changed since NEBHE's founding: New technologies have transformed our workplaces, schools, and homes--and postsecondary education has become a required…

This article offers a critical reflection on the contemporary Open Educational Resource (OER) movement, its unquestioned investment in a collective "content fetish" and an educational "problem description" that focuses on issues of scarcity, access, and availability of quality materials. It also argues that OER proponents fail…

Teacher education nowadays needs a change in vision and action to cater to the demands of changing societies. Reforms, improvements, and new approaches in teacher education are an immediate need. Online training of teachers using OER has emerged as a new approach in this direction. This approach is based on the assumption that online training will…

Creation of knowledge workers holds key for success of a country. Unfortunately, many of the countries though having chain of human resources yet are unable to transform human resources to their advantage as they face multiple challenges like poverty, poor economy, poor infrastructure, limited access to education and inadequate technological…

Reusable learning objects support packaging of educational materials allowing their discovery and reuse. Open educational resources emphasize the need for open licensing and promote sharing and community involvement. For both teachers and learners, finding appropriate tried and tested resources on a topic of interest and being able to incorporate…

This article examines the findings of the recent OPAL report "Beyond OER: Shifting Focus from Resources to Practices". In doing so, it defines current understanding of open educational resources and open educational practices, and highlights the shift from open content to open practice. The article includes a framework for supporting…

This paper argues that designing collections of "closed" educational resources (content and technologies) for use by specific student cohorts and collections of open educational resources for use by any "learner" require different design approaches. Learning design for formal courses has been a research topic for over 10 years…

This theoretical paper attempts to clarify design issues that the field of education has encountered in the context of OER (Open Educational Resources), Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and increased emphasis on informal learning, as examined through the lens of the Interaction Equivalency Theorem. An overview of the core concepts of the…

The open educational resource (OER) movement has the potential to have a truly transformative effect on higher education, but in order to do so it must move into the mainstream and facilitate widespread participation in the sharing or creating of resources and in their reuse. To help in this process, experience can be gained from projects and…

In the communities dealing with the design and implementation of on-line teaching and training (higher education, government, industry), SCORM is a hot topic these days. The "Sharable Content Object Reference Model" is a standard for the packaging and deployment of Web-based "learning objects," defined by Bob Banks as "a relatively small, reusable…

This paper describes the advancements that have occurred in the use of educational technologies over the past ten years (1995-2005) and argues that progress has been slow and reminiscent of the slow progress observed in the previous decade (1985-1995). The paper argues that one of the principal reasons for the less than spectacular results stems…