I agree with this idea of listening to the opponent’s stance, which is very important in establishing better relationships and a peaceful community. Empathizing with a person’s views can bring in comfort and growth in the opponent, which should increase productivity for the betterment of humankind. Emotional Intelligence matters a lot more than Academic Excellence in today’s scenario…
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What role do you see for OER in providing universal access to quality educational opportunities?
Open Educational Resources are the result of Cumulative Technological Advancements we see worldwide. To access them with precise technical tools and additional digital literacy will effectively help a learner taste the fruits of OER. OER is the future I believe…
Sustainable Development Goal: 2 and/or 3: A way to help students who are experiencing hardship could be by implementing a series of mini ‘food banks’ organised by a Student Unions across the country. . Food distributed could be canned foods such as meat, fish, pasta, pasta sources, etc. OER outputs could include amount of food donated by restaurants or other catering firms, as well as the amount of time spent volunteering for the organisation and distribution of food to individuals. Other outputs of a more qualitative nature could also involve a ‘reflective diary’ as a thought process of the overall experience. One such example on student driven ‘food banks’ can be found at the University of Melbourne Student’s Union:
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SDG No. 4: Quality Education- Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Clinical Education for health related subjects require real world training and assessments. I like to develop a series of OERs with clinical video clips and quizzes in dentistry that could be used in practical examinations for university students and also in seminars for professional community to further their life-long learning activities.
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SDG 11 - Sustainable Consumption and Production - from the food we eat, the way we travel, the homes we build, to how we manage / reuse our waste and the consequences of those choices. Engaging directly with individuals, communities, and neighbourhoods to enable them to develop initiatives within their communities and then support other individuals, communities, neighbourhoods to develop and implement same, adapted, or new initiatives within a framework of living in harmony with our environment. A continuum of learning and mentorship.
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Sustainable Development Goal 7 - Clean and Affordable Energy
As an educator of electrical engineering, I am passionate about renewable energy solutions to help reduce CO2 emissions, but also to provide developing countries the opportunity to have access to power, to be able to use computer technology and open learning material. A group of colleagues recently took some Civil engineering students to Vanuatu to help install water and sanitation to their village. It was brought to my attention that the children of the village were unable to read at night due to having no electricity for lighting. An OER course could provide students the opportunity to develop plans and schematics for cheap and simple solar or hydro electricity generation which could be available to developing nations to help them have the expertise to be able to create electricity for their homes or villages. This could be a really valuable method of assessment too, rather than using ‘disposable’ assignments.
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Fantastic point! I agree that education should be more holistic, rather than being too focused on traditional topics. Hopefully we can create a society that is more accepting and understanding.
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Very true, I believe the journey of a lifetime starts with turning of a book. That is why we need education for growth and development
The SDG-4 - in order to gain momentum the OER forums, world over, should be gather together & provide free access to K-12 kids. Still in many countries education is not accessible to many children, the open forums & the governments should work out to bring education “at the doorstep” of all.
SDG4 - Affordable, inclusive and equitable quality education for all by 2030.
OERs came in 2002 and then MOOCs in 2008. The critics have called online education to be “elitist,” the reasons are obvious as almost all good MOOCs are generally paid ones. On the other side, the OERs should be easy to find (search), create, customize, and combine, but it’s yet to happen in the last two decades. I think for a “new/future normal” we may have to put more efforts to develop a common framework or standardized OER architecture so that a relevant common course once developed can be taught /perused seamlessly (find, search, create, customize, and combine) by all Online on a national basis and across national boundaries.
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I really like this idea. I used to teach a Community engagement/service learning course at my university that ended up being cancelled because it needed such a large volume of staff (it was one credit hour required of all the students in my residential academic program - we just couldn’t sustain the teaching load). The idea of turning a course like that into something that could be online, both using and creating OER is a really interesting thought.
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Well said - most MOOCs (despite having “open” in the acronym) are typically not OER. The litmus test for “open” online content is the ability to access course materials without the need to register an account on the respective website.
Agreed. For instance, the OERu has a good number of credit hours worth of university-level courses and we’re growing the inventory by the day. For the first six months this year, OERu online courses have served 110,000 learners and we only have two full-time staff members. By working together we could achieve a sustainable community service learning course based entirely on OER.
I think that in many higher ed courses which include projects learners could be asked to identify a real-world issue they would like to address. Learners could then share their ideas and contributions in a public forum as either summaries of the issue for those new to the topic, analysis of the situation or of remedial measures or recommendations for change.
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LiDA103: SDG12 - Responsible Consumption and Production. The learning activity can focus on participants creating an educational material in the form of a short video/ podcast, which could be presented, in the following formats:
a) Make a pledge on SDG 12: This can be in a form of a podcast/ Video or text for responsible consumption and production. Participants can share ways in which they will like to live sustainably in their local communities. Although, this case maybe for SDG12, it can be applied as an activity for the other SDGs.
b) Creating a digital object: The activity can also be to create a simple message using PowerPoint and make a screen cast on the SDGs. Participants may choose a particular SDG and design an OER material for it which is applicable in their context. The educational video could be useful beyond the course. Participants can use it to educate people/ learners in their context about SDGs.
In this case, the focus will be to design an educational material for SDG 12, which they can apply in their context to create more awareness about responsible consumption and production so that some of the challenges being experienced in the pandemic can be addressed in the post pandemic era.
c) Blogging: Participants can also write a message on their word press blog about a particular SDG and how challenges associated to their chosen SDG can be addressed in their context.
Thank you for sharing your project. It’s a very interesting activity which is well structured. Our wellbeing is very important and as such it becomes important to use an entirely open source software to create an activity for learners around this particular SDG 3. Thanks!
Higher Education students majoring in Adult and Continuing Education could choose a specific location within a specific country and survey the people there for what they see as their educational needs. The students could then prototype a process for learning which would meet the needs. Working and reworking the prototype until it achieved success as defined by the people of that location. Once that process finds success then it can be taken to other locations where it then becomes either the process or a prototype which is developed until success occurs.
One of the goals I would love to see is number 5 - gender equality. How this could be done is for every resource used in this course that a similar or optional version done with or by women so the content is equally represented by women and men.
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SDG 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere.
As an educator by choice, my concern is how to provide education of high quality. However, there are millions of people who cannot access education because of being under poverty conditions. Especially because of covid-19, the percent of people all over the world who live under extreme poverty conditions has been increased significantly
My idea is a course with OER, including interactive videos, interactive presentations, and games. This course would be for learners who may access a computer and a network. The aim would be to reflect, discuss, and, finally, help to make a positive change on this global social problem.
On this purpose, we might use a free and open technology like H5P and persuasive games like 3rd World Farmer
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