Open Education 2016

Abstract:
Experiences & realizations from designing, producing, & sharing CC-BY-SA video-based, interactive online short courses for K-12 teachers.

More information:
Earlier this year, we developed and shared customizable, modularized, online "short courses" that are designed to help elementary and secondary teachers learn to plan curriculum-based lessons, projects, and units that incorporate educational technologies in effective ways. (See: http://activitytypes.wm.edu/shortcourse/.) As we designed and developed these courses, we planned to offer the materials to the larger teacher education community as OERs. In so doing, we worked to anticipate the needs of a wide range of teachers with varied experience, working in differing contexts and cultures, as much as possible. Framing our work in this expansive way brought much unanticipated learning, which we hope to share with interested OpenEd16 participants.

The content of the courses is divided into brief, sequential modules that help teachers to build their professional knowledge while learning to design technologically enriched instruction. Each module begins with an overview and learning goal for the segment, and is presented as video-based content that includes narrated slides, interviews with practicing teachers, imagery, and additional online resources. Each of the videos ranges from 2-13 minutes in length, and includes verbatim closed captioning. In addition to the video segments, the modules also offer editable student learning guides that scaffold each step of the learning, and regular prompts for realtime or asynchronous discussion with colleagues and mentors. The modules can be used as supplements to face-to-face courses or as a completely online learning experience that would span approximately 2-3 weeks. We have created different versions of the short course for elementary and secondary preservice and inservice teachers so that we could customize the examples included to maximize relevance for the learners.

We consciously created the materials to be perhaps too prescriptive and detailed for more experienced and/or advanced learners, since we suspected that it would be easier for users to remove some of the material than to have to create additional supports. We acknowledge, however, that despite our efforts to create content and structure in the short courses that could be used productively in many different teacher learning programs, providing options for other teacher educators to freely customize, amend, and remix the modules and supporting materials offers the most flexibility for using these materials. Therefore, we offer the course materials in three forms, providing instructors with maximal options for addressing their students' professional learning needs.

1. The courses can be used "as-is" through open Web sites.

2. Users can also download a learning management package file to import into a number of different learning management systems, such as Blackboard and Canvas. Once imported, users can modify the content, prompts and materials.

3. For those who would prefer more customization options, we also offer all of the course components for download, including video files, PowerPoint slides, and Microsoft Word document versions of the scripts and student materials. These can be modified, remixed, and used in any digital learning format.

We hope that our efforts will catalyze more widespread sharing and adaptation of professional learning OERs among teacher educators.