Abstract:

Modern technology and the advent of Open Educational Resources (OER) have fundamental effects on learning and teaching. Rather than being mere dispensers of information, modern teachers increasingly assume a proactive role, exploiting OER to enrich their course and didactic material and also engaging personally in the production of new digital content. Peer production is also growing, supported by the new collaborative possibilities afforded by the internet. The present paper will discuss the emerging paradigm of teachers as makers of educational content and explores the challenges of content re-use and collaborative authorship, in terms of skills, working methodologies and authoring environment capabilities.

In this context we shall showcase the work of:
(a) the OpenScout project (“Skill based scouting of open user-generated and community-improved content for management education and training”, www.openscout.net) which is aimed at accelerating the use, improvement/re-purposing and distribution of open content in the field of management education and
(b) the ΟΕΙ2 project(“Open Educational Ideas and Innovations”, www.idea-space.eu), which promotes open idea and innovation sharing for learning, education and training.

The Openscout project has investigated solutions and developed tools to make the large amounts of open educational resources on management topics already available globally, accessible to and usable by large user groups, tackling issues like the searchability (featuring skill-based federated search services), localization (featuring culture specific elements and/or multi-linguality), improvement and/or adaptation of those materials, so ad to accelerate the use of open content, promote skill- and competency-based development and also address low user involvement.

The OEI2 project is proposing a socially enhanced environment that will enable educators to collaboratively and openly develop educational ideas into educational resources (https://oei2.dat.demokritos.gr/).

Drawing on these cases the paper proposes an innovative, two-level collaborative course development framework, aimed at promoting and supporting reciprocal learning and dialogue among educators, to develop didactic material that serves the learners’ needs.

Keywords:

OER, collaborative authorship, peer production, collaboration platforms.