Benefits, opportunities and challenges of adopting Open Educational Resources in learning and teaching | 19 March

Open Educational Resources (OER) have created opportunities for learners around the world. OER have often defined as freely available and distributable course materials. While most of the time the emphasis is placed upon open-access textbooks, OER include all matter of materials, from images to presentations to course shells and teaching frameworks.

Significant efforts investigated different OER development models for higher education institutions and other educational communities. However, maintaining sustainability remains the main challenge of OER projects, as there is a high demand for raising awareness of the value of OER in higher education, as well as the need for expanding a participation base in the OER development process and improving the quality of OER.

We are delighted to be joined by leaders in this field to talk about the adoption of OER in learning and teaching across the world and what we can learn from their experience and research to advance knowledge construction and sharing at UTS. We will hear about the benefits and opportunities of OER in learning and teaching, which can translate to new initiatives in UTS in order to assist in meeting the learning and teaching objectives more efficiently over the next decade, in line with UTS 2027.

Speakers

David Wiley, New York, US

Dr David Wiley is Chief Academic Officer of Lumen Learning, an organization dedicated to increasing student success, reinvigorating pedagogy, and improving the affordability of education through the adoption of open educational resources by schools, community and state colleges, and universities. He is also currently the Education Fellow at Creative Commons, an Ashoka Fellow, and adjunct faculty in Brigham Young University’s graduate program in Instructional Psychology and Technology, where he is part of the Open Education Group (and was previously a tenured Associate Professor).

David Porter, Vancouver, Canada

Dr David Porter is a Senior Adviser Higher Education at Commonwealth of learning.  Dr Porter has been working in the higher education sector for many years providing leadership direction in support of academic planning, quality assurance, teaching and learning and is a strong advocate for adapting new technologies to provide large-scale educational opportunities.  He is the author of many publications linked to sustainable online learning, professional learning for teachers, and OER. He is also a board member of the Open Education Resource Foundation, a non-profit society that is the coordinating body for Open Education Universitas (http://OERu.org), a network of 30+ universities worldwide that are interested in providing low-cost access to higher education using open resources, practices and pedagogies.

Adrian Stagg, Queensland, Australia

Mr Adrian Stagg is currently the Manager (Open Educational Practice) for the University of Southern Queensland. His career has included over 14 years in both public and academic libraries, as well as positions as a Learning Technologist and eLearning Designer. Adrian holds a Master of Applied Science (Library and Information Management). His interest in Open Educational Practice (OEP) has prompted the commencement of a PhD at the University of Tasmania focusing on the practitioner experience in the reuse of Open Educational Resources (OER). His research areas include the ecology of open educational practice and higher education policy as it relates to and supports, open educational initiatives.