Abstract:

For a teacher, secondary school periods are very short compared to the time necessary to help students acquire the key competences (knowledge, abilities and attitudes) in order to become aware global citizens. If wisely adopted, the use of digital technologies offers many advantages for both students and teachers: they improve engagement, knowledge retention, self-paced learning, and collaboration. In particular, OERs (Open Educational Resources) are a way for teachers to enhance course content and continually improve resources, personalize teaching according to their and their students’ needs, customizing learning for each student’s strengths, weaknesses and interests, and sometimes reduce textbook costs. However, do teachers know OERs, where to find them and how to use them? The aim of our research is to provide an overview of existing OER repositories and explain how they might be integrated in a lesson, providing teachers with guidance on how to become resourceful in the fields of data research, analysis/use/reuse, and dissemination of open resources. As a case study, we will present our experience of collaboration between the University of Torino, with its open online university project start@unito, and some secondary school teachers who wish to use and adapt open higher education resources to their students’ needs. The start@unito project has been designed precisely as a student-orientation programme, with the purpose of bridging the gap between secondary and higher education; it offers 20 courses in various academic disciplines held in Italian, and by the end of the academic year it will offer courses held in English as well. Since the main target of the project is specifically high school students, start@unito is a unique opportunity to introduce secondary school teachers to the world of OERs and their potential.

Keywords:

OER, open educational resources, open university, secondary education, higher education, open online university.