rials to create new textbooks. In both of these cases, teachers had learners create their own textbooks, which then had Creative Commons licenses applied to them. Other examples of OER-enabled pedagogy in action include assignments by JB Murray (licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Murder_Madness_and_Mayhem) and Amin Azzam (licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/UCSF_Elective_2013) that had learners significantly improve articles that were in Wikipedia. When they completed these assignments, the learners had created open artifacts that were useful in both supporting their own learning and the learning of other learners and educators. In these examples, learners created assignments that allowed them to interact with the greater community and ensured that the assignments are renewable, not disposable, artifacts.
A couple of other interesting examples of renewable assignments are a remixed explainer video that a student made, entitled Blogs and Wikis: a fictitious debate (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsFU3sAlPx4) and the DS106 assignment bank (http://assignments.ds106.us/) which is a hub for student-created, CC-licensed content. Additional examples are available on the Open Pedagogy Notebook website (licensed CC BY 4.0 and available at http://openpedagogy.org/examples).
Final Remarks
If you’re just going to use your new smartphone the same way you used your old flip phone, there wasn’t much point in getting a new phone. Likewise, when we use OER to support learning in exactly the same ways that we used the old “all rights reserved” materials, we may save learners money, but we miss out on the transformative power of open pedagogy. As you prepare to use OER in your teaching, think about the new things that are possible in the context of permission to engage in the 5R activities.
5.3 | OER, OPEN TEXTBOOKS, OPEN COURSES
Open Education is an idea, as well as a set of content, practices, policies, and communities which, when properly leveraged, can help everyone in the world access free, effective, open learning materials at either zero or marginal cost. We live in an age of information abundance where everyone, for the first time in human history, can potentially attain all the education they desire. The key to this transformational shift in learning is Open Educational Resources (OER).
