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OER Case Studies
Creating Knowledge Building and Sharing Capacity Through Case Study Development
Overview
A wide range of individuals and organizations are actively involved in the development of free-to-use open educational resources (OER). Partly because the field is so new, there have been few opportunities to share learnings and advances within and across projects and boundaries. Little is known, for example, about how projects are facilitating the adaptation of open content by diverse users, what structures they are instilling to support peer production, and how they are attempting to inspire community engagement.
Our Approach
ISKME has worked with six projects to help them build capacity to track, analyze and share key developments in the creation, use and reuse of open educational resources (OER), and in the practices and models that play a role in project sustainability. The aim was to enable projects to discover unknown or untapped potential, facilitate decision making around which practices to change and which to maintain, learn how other OER projects have overcome similar challenges, and advance the field at large by contributing new knowledge which others can build upon.
The participating OER projects include:
* CurriculumNet (Uganda)
* Curriki (United States)
* Free High School Science Texts (South Africa)
* Mission 2007 Training Commons (India)
* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (United States)
* Teachers' Domain (United States)
The findings from the case studies of the participating projects are being used to develop assessment tools and resources that can assist any open education project in tracking, sharing, and advancing their learnings and success. The long-term goal of is to develop ongoing mechanisms for knowledge sharing on open education initiatives worldwide, through all types of research, stories, and experiences.
Links to Project Resources for Download
Individual Case Study Reports* Building Open Educational Resources from the Ground Up: South Africa’s Free High School Science Texts
* Curriki: Facilitating Use and User Engagement Around Open Educational Resources
* CurriculumNet: Creating Freely Available Curriculum Materials to Meet Uganda’s Growing Student Population
* Mission 2007 Training Commons: Developing a Living Curriculum for Telecentre Workers in India
* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Toward a Sustainable Funding Model for Open Access
* WGBH’s Teachers’ Domain: Producing Open Materials and Engaging Users
The case study white paper is a cross-case comparison of the individual case studies listed above.
* Creating, Doing, and Sustaining OER: Lessons from Six Open Educational Resource Projects
This case study framework seeks to assist OER projects in tracking, analyzing and sharing key developments in the creation, use and reuse of open educational resources. Based on the case studies of each of the six projects above, the framework provides research tools, reflective questions, and examples that OER projects can draw upon in conducting their own case studies.
* OER Case Study Framework
To Learn More
Please contact info@iskme.org for more information