Wawasan Open University hosted a capacity building workshop that started today – a follow-up to the first held in January – to finalise the draft of the OER-based E-Learning course to be offered later this year.
The five-day “Institutional Capacity Building Workshop II for OER-based E-Learning” at the main campus was organised by WOU in collaboration with the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), New Delhi, which is part of the Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver.
DR SOM NAIDU WELCOMES THE PARTICIPANTS.
Prof Som Naidu from Charles Sturt University, Australia and Dr Sanjaya Mishra, Director of CEMCA, returned as facilitators. A total of 14 original participants attended the follow-up workshop, and they comprised 10 from WOU and the rest from open universities/institutions in India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.
The first workshop taught participants how to integrate Open Educational Resources (OER) into their teaching and learning, and how to design ‘OER-based E-Learning’ for the professional development of teachers. Their discussions provided input towards developing the curriculum and content of the course, including rough sketches of the lessons. The five modules decided for the course are: Concept and Practices of OER and Their Significance; Selecting and Evaluating OERs; Designing Learning Experiences for OER-based e-Learning; Copyright and Licensing for OER; and Integrating OER in e-learning.
Over the last four months since the first workshop, the participants continued to work in groups to develop the modules. WOU even held one internal workshop, with its academics being mentored by Prof Mohandas Menon, Assistant Vice Chancellor (Academic Support), and Prof Phalachandra Bhandigandi.
WORKSHOP IN PROGRESS.
This second workshop, again sponsored by CEMCA, looked into fine-tuning the modules and finalising content. The participants, divided into five teams, presented the draft modules, with feedback from facilitators and others. Prof Som Naidu is tasked to edit the course – the final outcome would be an OER-based course that can be used for training purposes by any institution. The course package will also include four case studies capturing experiences of institutions in the creation and integration of OER. This includes the experience of WOU in the use of available OER for developing a course on ‘ICT in Education’ for its Master of Education programme.
DR MISHRA – ONE OF THE FACILITATORS.
Dr Mishra stated, “Our idea is to develop an online course that any university, school, centre of professional development, teachers can use. We expect this online course to be accessible by end of this year.” CEMCA aims to mount this course on its website to allow interested institutions to run it online using the CEMCA platform.
