Hudson Valley Community College

Elissa M. Baker, M.S. Ed.
Instructional Designer; Distance & Online Learning Teaching Faculty; Teacher Preparation and Computing & Information Sciences Departments

What you would do with OER or open pedagogy if you had unlimited time and resources?

If I had unlimited time and resources available to me, I would develop OER content and use open pedagogy for my Technology in the Classroom online course. Currently, I use a commercial publisher’s textbook for the historical components of technology in education along with introducing learners to the resources and tools available and the methods for successful integration. With the rapid changes in technology and resources available for educators to integrate into their instruction, I find the technology resources and tool suggestions are unavailable or old by the time my class explores them but if I was able to create, find and use OER content I could update the lectures and technology tools easily.

Given the nature of the content and context of my course, I would prefer creating lecture materials that could replace the need for a textbook. Currently, I have pulled lecture material together from a wide range of resources such as YouTube and educational technology websites, but as I increase my knowledge of OER, I would like to do more with it. Currently, time is my most significant constraint as I need it for curating materials and determining what OER resources are out there that are best for this topic.

I’m also interested in Open Pedagogy. I want to incorporate assignments where my students are creating materials for future students. I’ve tried this before, but the tools I used seemed to limit the ability to share from class to class each semester. Again, I’m aware there are tools available that are more accessible, but I need the time to find the best one, develop the first lessons and implement the assignments for students to complete and build on. Once that’s complete I would like to share them with others at on a larger scale for others as OER content.

As I reflect on this introductory course on OER, I have learned new information that can help me in my goal to develop an OER course for my students and hopefully others. I’m hoping through additional classes, and with the support of the OER initiative at my institution, I can achieve this goal. Once I’ve successfully developed the course, I will need to get buy-in from my department chair, but I’m hoping the OER initiative will help my defense for implementing and teaching my OER based course.