With this issue, the eLearning Papers wants to support the establishment of a new kind of ecology of Technology Enhanced Learning that focuses on Open Educational Resources...
Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning and teaching materials that are
offered freely to anyone under licenses that allow to use, modify and distribute
the items. But that's not all. Through the world-wide movement of OER, magnified
with user-generated content and underlying Web 2.0 technologies, the advantages
and opportunities are numerous for teachers, authors, eLearning practitioners,
developers and content providers, researchers and decision-makers, and last but
not least: the learners.
Different models to develop, use and make OER content available have evolved.
Examples vary from leading educational institutions that have made their content
available for users who otherwise would be deprived of it, to communities of
educators who collaboratively create content and share it. Moreover, new
effective technical architectures are now in place to enable better discovery of
Open Educational Resources across learning repositories on the international
level, which allows users to access larger and more varied collections. Also,
easy-to-use ways to acquire re-mix and mash-up user-generated content are
around, examples of which are seen in the educational context too.
With this issue, we want to support the establishment of a new kind of
ecology of Technology Enhanced Learning that focuses on Open Educational
Resources as a chance to make a real difference in education and lifelong
learning. We want to give a possibility to share OER-related practices and
experiences that support people in acquiring the competences, knowledge and
skills they need as individuals in the political, economic, social and cultural
life of a modern society.
Against this background, the eLearning Papers invites contributions in the
area of Open Educational Resources. The papers should focus on one or more of
the following themes:
Lessons learned and best practices of OER projects, tools and initiatives
New findings, facts and figures of OER development and usage
Discussion and position papers on how the OER movement can be supported
Pedagogical innovations and OER, does OER make any difference?
Transferability and usability of OER
OER as a way to create and support sustainable development