RELEASE THE CROWD! FACILITATE STUDENT PRODUCTION OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Teaching a course can be modelled with a well-known triangle called “The didactic model”. The model conceptualizes teaching and learning. The corners in the triangle; teacher, student and content are the three main elements of a didactic system. The didactic model has been expanded by multiple authors over the years. Kinnunen[1] introduced multiple layers in the model to place teaching and learning in a bigger context than the course itself. A second layer describes the course in an organizational context (e.g. university). A third layer describes the society where the educational organizations exist.

Within the “content” corner of the didactic model, we find course resources. In recent years, sharing resources within the international educational community has been well established. This community is all about sharing what we call Open Educational Resources (OER). In this paper we look at OER production through the lenses of two well-known guidelines within computer programming: High Cohesion and Low Coupling. We show that using these guidelines results in small-scoped resources where clearly defined concepts or subtopics are explained. These small resources should be created with a low degree of dependency to an outer context. In this paper we discuss benefits of producing these Small Open Educational Resources (SOER) in all levels in Kinnunens model. And by emphasising resources covering subtopics within a course, we introduce a new layer 0 in the model.

The traditional production of OER is reserved faculty staff. SOER are easier to produce as they are small and independent. In this paper we argue that we as educators should facilitate student production of SOER. Students should be encouraged to share their newly acquired knowledge and skills through these resources. In fact, SOER production can be used in evaluating learning outcomes. And as students produce SOER, educators within the international educational community can use these resources when maintaining existing courses, or creating new courses. And as the resources are loosely coupled, they should be easy to use in multiple contexts. We exemplify this by looking at SOER production in an introductory database course.

There are multiple dedicated OER repositories with resources ready to be reused. However, the dedicated repositories are not the first choice for people searching for educational resources. Earlier research suggests that the everyday search engines are the primary tool to find relevant resources. We argue that student production of SOER will have a positive effect, not only for the community, but also for the student herself. And when all students tag their resource with the tag “OER”, we will find it, even outside a dedicated OER repository.