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Politecnico di Milano

Using Open Educational Resources in Teaching

Open Educational Resources are the result of a different approach to education: the focus is on sharing, improving and reusing educational materials created by people (not only super-experts) who are willing to let knowledge spread and be used by anyone.

For participants from Ukraine: materials in Ukrainian language | Для учасників iз України

Цей курс частково локалізовано українською мовою Науковою бібліотекою Українського державного університету науки і технологій. Зокрема, ви знайдете українські субтитри до всіх відео. У вкладці "UKR - додаткові матеріали" ви також знайдете версію українською мовою всіх щотижневих тестів. У файлах ви знайдете більше інформації про те, як ними користуватися, щоб ви могли отримати сертифікат безпосередньо від Polimi Open Knowledge, навіть якщо офіційні тести англійською мовою.
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Course description

What are Open Educational Resources and why they could be a great support for teachers at every level? According to UNESCO, they are “any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation.”
In this MOOC you will find:

  • the basics about Open Educational Resources;
  • different perspectives about key issues;
  • some tips to try OERs in your course, a set of tools we will provide you, some useful resources shared by other institutions and OERs workforce.

The videos of this MOOC were recorded in 2016. The affiliation of our experts might have changed over time. Some examples (i.e. software) are time sensitive, and we suggest checking for up-to-date options when participating in this MOOC.

In this MOOC you'll meet some of the greatest experts in the field, who choose every day to openly share their experience and their deep knowledge with everyone: Anant Agarwal (CEO at edX and Professor at MIT, USA), Jane-Frances Agbu (Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences & Former Head of OERs Unit at NOUN, Nigeria), Ariane Dumont (Professor at Western Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, CH), Cable Green (Open Education Director at Creative Commons, USA), Rory McGreal (Professor and UNESCO/Commonwealth of Learning Chairholder in Open Educational Resources at Athabasca University, Canada), António Moreira Teixeira (Director of the Department of Education and Distance Learning at Universidade Aberta, Lisboa, Portugal), Joseph Pickett (Publication Director at MIT OpenCourseWare, USA), Susanna Sancassani (Managing Director at Politecnico di Milano – METID, Italy), Robert Schuwer (Lector OER at Fontys University, Netherland), Katsusuke Shigeta (Associate Professor at Hokkaido University, Japan) and Andrea Zanni (former President at Wikimedia Italia). We also had the chance to add to the additional materials a valuable contribution from Martin Ebner (Graz University of Technology).

Total workload of the course: 13 hours

This MOOC is provided by Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with UNIT (Université Numérique Ingénierie et Technologie)

Université Numèrique Ingénierie et Technologie

The content available in the Ukrainian language is the result of the collaboration with the Scientific Library of the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies, thanks to Creative Commons funding.

Ukrainian State University of Science and Technologies

Information about fees and access to materials

The course is delivered in online mode and is available free of charge.

Course materials will remain available to all enrolled users after the end of the current edition, so they can return to content later. The current course edition will be followed by a new one just after its end.

Learning schedule

The course is structured in 5 weeks:

  • Week 1 - Experience
  • Week 2 - Reflection
  • Week 3 - Theoretical Background
  • Week 4 - Let's Try
  • The pedagogical approach adopted in this MOOC

You’ll have the chance to choose among three different levels of involvement, even if there is no explicit distinction in the contents, considering the effort you may put in it: reading and viewing, communication and production paths are available.

Week 0 is an introduction to the MOOC, its structure and the main subject we are dealing with.

From week 1 to week 4 you’ll find the core part of the MOOC, about OERs: you’ll start from concrete experiences and, through a deep reflection on them and a guided analysis of the theoretical background, you’ll reach the “hands on” part, in which you’ll have the chance to start using this approach for your own course’s design.

Finally yet importantly, there is a final section, which focuses on the pedagogical approach applied in this MOOC as a whole. This section has been designed and developed by Université Numérique Ingénierie et Technologie. In this section you’ll have the chance, as a teacher, to reflect on the overall design phase of a course, as a meta-level.

Intended learning outcomes

By actively participating in this MOOC, you will achieve different intended learning outcomes (ILOs).


Week 1 - Experience

  1. Get familiar with the definition of Open Educational Resources (OERs)
    ESCO: e-learning
  2. Welcome with us some of our guests who are sharing their long-lasting and meaningful experience in the OER scenario
  3. View some relevant teaching and learning experiences based on OERs, from different contexts around the world
  4. Define your own learning outcomes for this course
    ESCO: instructional design models ESCO: use learning strategies
  5. Get familiar with the Open Education glossary, with a first taste of opportunities and challenges
    ESCO: standards for web-based e-learning

Week 2 - Reflection

  1. Identify the challenges that may be encountered while using OERs
    ESCO: perform risk analysis
  2. Recognize some key factors for success
    ESCO: think analytically
  3. Become aware of the importance of the alignment between OERs and the methodological approach adopted by the educator in any new course that includes them
    ESCO: manage resources for educational purposes

Week 3 - Theoretical Background

  1. Learn the history of OERs
  2. Have a hint of the students’ perspective and their use of a Personal Learning Environment (PLE)
    ESCO: consult students on learning content
  3. Understand the specificities of OERs and MOOCs
  4. Obtain some information on how to manage the “Licences” topic
    ESCO: licences regulation

Week 4 - Let's Try

  1. Recognize the different stages of the OER lifecycle
  2. Obtain some information on how to choose and respect licences
    ESCO: licences regulation
  3. Reflect on the perspectives of use you can adopt in your own context
    ESCO: teaching and training ESCO: conduct educational activities

The pedagogical approach adopted in this MOOC

  1. Show the importance of the teaching approach you adopt in your courses
    ESCO: education science ESCO: pedagogy
  2. Put forward arguments about the mix between your role as a teacher, the teaching and learning strategies adopted and the flipped classroom approach
    ESCO: teaching and training

Prerequisites

No prerequisite knowledge is required for this course, even if previous experience in didactics and teaching will be helpful. The course is mainly addressed to professors and teachers, at all levels, who are willing to think about some innovation in their pedagogical approach.

Activities

Over and above consulting the content, in the form of videos and other web-based resources (the reading path), you will have the opportunity to discuss course topics and to share ideas with your peers in the Forum of this MOOC (the communication path). The forum is freely accessible and participation is not guided. You can also perform design activities to build your own courses using templates and suggestions about new assessment strategies (the production path).

In addition to these different types of activities and levels of involvement, the course entails questions in the form of self-assessment quizzes or as hints for reflection, as well as discussion activities in the Forum and design activities in WEEK 4. You are not required to answer these questions or participate to activities to complete the course, but we strongly believe they offer you a concrete opportunity to improve your knowledge! Instead, the quiz you will find at the end of the core WEEKs (except WEEK 0 and the final section on the pedagogical approach) will be evaluated.

Assessment

The final grade for the course is based on results from your responses to the quizzes you will find at the end of each week (weekly quizzes). You will successfully complete the course if you reach 60% (or more) of the total score by the end of the edition. The course’s total score will be calculated by averaging the scores of the assessed quizzes for each individual week.

The course entails also questions, in the form of self-assessment quizzes or as hints for reflection, as well as discussion activities in the Forum and design activities in WEEK 4. You are not required to answer these questions or participate to activities to complete the course, but we strongly believe they offer you a concrete opportunity to improve your knowledge!

Certificate of Accomplishment

The Certificate of Accomplishment will be released to anyone who successfully completed the course by answering correctly to at least 60% of the questions. You will be able to download the Certificate of Accomplishment directly on the website.

Once you have successfully passed the course, you can request the Certificate of Accomplishment without waiting for the end of the edition.

The Certificate of Accomplishment does not confer any academic credit, grade or degree.

European Qualifications Framework Level

EQF Level 6

Thematic area (ISCED-F classification)

011 Education

0111 Education Science

Discussion forum

The forum of this MOOC is freely accessible and participation is not guided; you can use it to compare yourself with other participants, or to discuss course contents with them.

Contact details

If you have any enquiries about the course or if you need technical assistance please contact pok@polimi.it. For further information, see FAQ page.

Course Faculty

This MOOC is the result of a proficient collaboration between many people, at international level. Politecnico di Milano - METID had the chance to enjoy working closely with UNIT partners and to benefit from the kind availability of many international teachers, who already experienced flipped classroom approach.


Paola Corti

Paola Corti

Paola Corti is a Project Manager at Politecnico di Milano – METID; she is an instructional designer involved in MOOCs design and production for POK platform. She coordinated the design of the course, involved international testimonials, together with other curators, in order to collect the experiences available in this MOOC, and she kept together the design and the production groups… and many are things needed : )

Ariane Dumont

Ariane Dumont

Ariane Dumont, Professor at the Western Switzerland University of Applied Sciences, Educational Developer and responsible for promoting innovation in pedagogy. She will nicely guide you through some interesting models, which can support you in exploring and experimenting OERs according to her experience, which she is eager to share with us.

Aude Pichon

Aude Pichon

Aude Pichon, Advisor in Pedagogy in the Center for Professional Development in Education at the Ecole des Mines in Nantes and Coordinator, she has been in charge of the pedagogical development within uTOP (UNIT) in France. She not only advises on teacher training projects, but also develops them and leads them either face-to-face or remotely.

This MOOC could not exist without the valuable contribution of Manuela Milani, instructional designer at Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy).

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

This course is the 2017 winner, for MOOC category, of OER & Project Awards for Open Education Excellence, by the Open Education Consortium.

  1. Classes Start

    May 15, 2023
  2. Classes End

    May 12, 2024
  3. Length

    5 Weeks
  4. Estimated Effort

    3-5 hours/week
  5. Language

    English
  6. Course Number

    OER101
  7. MOOCs For Teachers
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