The Moodle MOOC is my sixth cMOOC (well actually the fourth, if I substrate the two MOOCs that I haven’t finished) and one would imagine that after so many MOOCs I should become familiar with MOOC environments and know my way around quite easily. But, far from it! Again I struggle to get orientated in the Moodle MOOC environment.

New MOOC, new Challenge.

probably we should rename the MOOC into

• M – ost
• O – often
• O – rientation
• C – hallenge

So why can’t we have a standard for MOOCs?

A MOOC consortium, similar to the W3 consortium.  It would make things a lot easier, could save a lot of time, because after your second or third MOOC you are familiar with the MOOC environment. Probably that’s the reason why some people prefer xMOOCs over cMOOCs (read more about the different MOOCs in Debbie’s ‘Ultimate study guide to xMOOCs and cMOOCs‘), because when you take xMOOCs with e.g. Coursea the environment/platform stays the same.

But, would a standard platform for all MOOCs around the world be really desirable? Right now, where a procrastinate getting a start with the Moodle MOOC, already running behind,  I would definitely find it convenient. I could concentrate on the content and on collaboration and communication with others, instead of grappling with orientation tutorials, clicking here and there, going back again to read more instructions, etc.

The advantage is obvious, if you prefer the same old story Imagine, every platform I introduced in my ‘MOOC around the world’ series, published on the MOOC News & Reviews website, would use the same platform, follow the same pattern. I leave it up to you, to decide whether you would go for a  unified MOOC platform or prefer the uniqueness and the challenge of non-standardized MOOCs.

My decision is made, I go for variety, diversity and take on a fresh challenge with every new MOOC, though I posed that not  so serious question. As a MOOCoholic I simply cannot resist, I simply have to try them all.

Who can resist seeing all that colorful MOOCs

Image by Erika Muth

You might want to watch the recording from the  Online-Event or view the Slide Share presentation from Martin Ebner.

The task for wOERer’s

Consider the cost for your OER. How much does it cost to develop and to provide them, what does marketing and public relations cost? What value (not necessarily monetary) can be achieved with the OER?

I can highly recommend Sonja Gerber’s post and the way she handled that task using the business model called EDA-Costs. Here the short version of her post, as it applies to my situation as well.

• OER Development
  only my time (working or leisure) is required – no additional costs arise as I am not paid on an hourly rate from the school ministry. Whether I license them under CC and share my teaching material with other or use them on my own – the ‘costs’ are the same.
• OER Provision
  I could upload my OER e.g. to a wiki again with no costs. Cost would arise for hosting an own domain.
• Quality management / adaptationI constantly revise my teaching material before re-using it again to adjust it to a new teaching situation and new students. Again with no additional costs.
• Marketing / PR
  I could imagine a little self-promotion via social media tools, again it just requires some of my time, but no costs arise.
• Value of OER
  again I resort on Sonja’s blog post (thanks for the CC license
  • Saving of time (for me using other OERs and for others who use my OER)
  • just for the fun of it and to learn something new
  • belief in the philosophy of collaboration, sharing and open content for everyone.

Hence, no additional cost arise for my OER.

However, financing looks different for educatinal institutions who offer OER or MOOCs, this year’s trend.

The next task for wOERer’s in the third OER unit (13.05 – 26.05.13) was to consider possible OER applications.

Here are the questions we should consider when elaborating the task.

• How are OER used de facto?
• Who finds the application how and why useful?
• Which scenarios are available and which proved useful?
• What obstacles needs to be overcome, which solutions have proved to be sucessful?
• Who are the different stakeholder (learners, educators, educational institutions  and  -networks) who evolved in the OER context?

And here is the link to review the Online-Event about OER applications.

Well, that task is not easy to answer, as my knowledge is limited to my own perspective as a teacher. From the perspective of a teacher OERs are used as resources to find teaching material, which can be used one-to-one or depending on the license, as well modified for the own needs. I do not use OER on a regular basis, but I like to collect ideas for my own teaching. That kind of answers already the second questions how finds the application useful. Educators, but also lifelong learners may find the OER useful, because they offer open eductional resources (OER) available to everyone.

Wikipedia and all related wikis, like the ZUM Wiki and for my subject the Pflegewiki (Healthcare wiki) as well as OER commons are available scenarios which proved useful. I am sure there are a lot more OER to mention (like mentioned in one of my previous blog post), e.g. from the Open University UK OpenLearn and LabSpace, but I skip to the next question about the obstacles that needs to be overcome. Here is a list I came up with obsticles that I see.

1. lack of awareness  and low profile of OER among educators and educational institution
2. lack of willingness develop OER and to share them with others (teacher a lone fighter – though I think that is changing slowly
3. lacking knowledge about OER and licensing
4. uncertainty about legal aspects
5. lack of financing and/or sponsors for the development of OER

In my humble opinion teachers/educators still know to less about OER. If I would ask my colleagues I am sure most of them would be at loose ends with OER. In my department (home economist and healthcare) I am the  nerd. Well, it might be gender related, but I am pretty sure asking colleagues in the economic department the number of teachers knowing about OER would be marginally higher. Probably I do them wrong, but being a teacher for more than 25 years I did not see a visible change regarding collaboration, communication and sharing between teachers. I know I reflect badly on my colleagues, but that’s my experience I made, apart from a couple expectations – including the #COER community

The task for this unit is to create an OER (alone or in collaboration) and to license it. We can upload our OER to the course wiki (link) or to our own platform. Additional we should tag it by edutags.

After thorough examination of the course material, including the  two live sessions about ‘How to create OER’ and ‘OER licenzes’ I decided to create an OER about reminiscing work with elderly. The initial idea emerged during another MOOC, the MobiMOOC organzied by Ignatia de Waard.

The plan at the beginning was to create an OER with other participants and you might remember my enthusiasm that I quickly found fellow campaigner with an interest in health-related topics. We/ I  even created an interest group , but  communication and interest ceased down and came to a stop. I have to admit, after visiting the forum for a duration of about two or three weeks, I kind of gave up myself and just occasionally check the forum.

Well, one thing is for sure, each MOOC has its own momentum, like I stated before in my posting ‘Do all MOOCs follow the same pattern‘.

Below is an example from Damian Duchamp’s that explains OER. As you see the green area is the least restricted OER where you can freely share-alike with attribution, whereas the red section represents the standard copyright.

Source: Image from Damian Duchamp’s blog.

According to Damian Duchamp’s  advice I decided to create my OER using HTML/CSS format and adding additional doc files since they are a lot easier to change or remix. The intro (OER_map.html) is a linkable map which link to the different resources. The OER is in German, however you can download a similar plan in English here.

At the moment my OER can be found in my Dropbox until I have my own domain.  The only disadvantage is that you would need to download file by file, since it does not open within the Dropbox, therefore here a link to a zip.file. Sorry for the unconvenience It will be soon fixed.

MOOC are definitely addictive. Since I explored MOOCs around the world I would even need more time to join some more Open Online Courses. Yet, I decided on the Moodle MOOC starting tomorrow, 1 June.

I gave priority to the Moodle MOOC, because we use Moodle in school and thought I participated in several Moodle classes, I am far from being an expert. Moodle is such a powerful tool and with all the ongoing developments, there is so much more to learn.

That’s my goal for the Moodle MOOC, to get to know Moodle better, to hopefully learn new aspects of Moodle that I haven’t explored yet, and of course my  main objective – get to know other like-minded people from around the world.

Read more about the first Moodle MOOC on the Moodle News website or the WizIQ website. You may also want to watch the video

By the way, Open2Study, an Australian Open Online Course platform I just recently reported in the third part MOOC around the world, is using Moodle as well.

The only thing that seems first sight not compatible to me is how OpenSource Moodle and the commercial WizIQ fits together. However, I still need to get orientated and familiar with the new environment and find out more about the course, which I just recently stumbled over.

So stayed tuned to find out more about the

1st Moodle MOOC

MOOC around the world

Here the link to all three articles:

MOOC around the world – Our Global List of Open Online Classes, Part 1

MOOC around the world – Our Global List of Open Online Classes, Part 2

MOOC around the world – Our Global List of Open Online Classes, Part 3.

Image source: PublicDomainPicture – CC0 adapted by Sylvia

After exploring MOOC platforms in Germany and the UK and Ireland in the first part, we now visiting several other European countries in the second part MOOC Around the World. You will be surprised how many MOOC platforms we have here in Europe, some of them cMOOCs, but mainly xMOOCs.

The “first pan-European” MOOC platform, OpenupEd.eu, was launched spring this year at Open Universities in the Netherlands. MOOC platforms in Spain or Portugal often work in collaboration with South American universities. Miriada X, a platform created by the University of Madrid works with 1,241 partner universities from 23 countries in Latin America representing 15.3 million students and academics.

So join our MOOC train and read more about MOOC Around the World – Our Global List of Distance Learning Resources.

Image source: Gerd Altmann CC0

We all know the American platforms – Coursea, Udacity and edX,  but what do we know about MOOC platforms outside America? Well, before writing a threepart article, my knowledge was pretty limited.  Together with the MOOC News & Reviews site I started my MOOC around the World journey, to which I want to invite you.

MOOC Around the World – Our Global List of Distance Education Resources, Part 1 is the first leg of the journey, published today,  covering Germany, quite natural considering that this is my home country , then we’ll cross the channel to visit my university the OU (Open University) and other platforms in the UK and Ireland. 

During the next stage of the journey, that will be published midweek, we still stay within Europe, visiting Inge Ignation de Waard in Belgium and her MobiMOOC. Netherlands with the first pan-Europe MOOC platform OpenupEd.eu will follow, as well as platforms in France, before we’re heading south to take a look at Spain and Portugal.

Finally, we’ll make a big jump to Australia, where I discovered some interesting platforms, but India has also MOOC platforms to offer so does Latin America. So stay tuned, it will be an interesting MOOC around the World trip

I just attended the #COER Online Event, though a little bit late, and I come to the conclusion that assigning licenses to Open Educational Resources (OER) is quite tricky, at least in Germany, involving a lot of pitfalls.

Are legal issues preventing OER development?

Might this complicated legal clutter, discourage people to provide their own OER. Well, I am definitely concerned about the legal issues, and hearing the even the expert Matthias Spielkamp from iRights.info, struggled sometimes to provide answers to the question asked in the chat, does not really reassure me. However, this week’s task to create an OER and license them might bring light into my darkness, regarding OER licenses.

I am lagging somehow behind, but this is a familiar condition for me, reminding me on my MAODE study, where I always had the feeling running behind.

I just examine the reading material and it is an interesting collection. Open eLearning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS) offers on WikiEducator a resource about Open Educational Content. The wiki is a collaborative work to create an online-book which objective according to OLCOS is to  support students and teachers in the creation, re-use and sharing of e-learning material. The page is available in several language including English, German, Spanish but also Swedish and Finnish. It’s just to sad that the source is from 2007, latest updated 2008. I am sure a lot of information still applies, but e.g. the tutorial: Use open source tool, -  this weeks topic – is pretty outdated.

The OLCOS structure strongly reminds me on the #COER structure. But there is no need to reinvent the wheel, as the structure is good. I think that is the often the problem from teachers, that a lot of teachers still think they have to create their own educational resources, instead of combining their effort. This is what I most appreciate about this MOOC, raising the awareness about OER and bringing people together to combine their effort to create OER and offer it for free to everyone. Educational publisher might not like that, but considering the rise of MOOCs that has a similar goal – free education for everyone, it seems that the philosophy of openness spreads rapidly.

However, there is also newer material available, e.g. the OER Handbook for Educators 1.0 from 2010.

Brand-new is the ‘General Guide for Creating Open Content‘ from Funny Monkey. I briefly scanned through the article and I loved especially this extract.

“Content that is encumbered under a restrictive license is essentially fixed in time, where openly licensed content can evolve over time through use and reuse.”

Those interested on a comprehensive, up-to-date resource about available technologies and there use to create OER I recommend the suggested article from Abeywardena, Ishan Sudeera (2012). The Re-use and Adaptation of Open Educational Resources (OER). An Exploration of Technologies Available.

COER13 also provided a list of permanent courses.

• OER Workshop and the Asia OER Workshop
• Creating Open Educational Resources from the Open University OpenLearn

I also watched the recorded online-event, thanks to the #COER13 team for providing it André Spang presented several tools to create and publish OER. The tools ranged from wikis, blogs, YouTube, Soundcloud, Prezi, Flickr, etc. For closer information please visit André’s website (German). The introduced tools where all Open-Source software or free-of-charge available. Anyways, I am still uncertain whether an OER needs to be created and published with a (free) Open-Source tool or if I can use a commercial tool as well. I never considered the choice of tools important in the development of an OER. Can anybody please enlighten me.