The OER Knowledge Cloud makes use of cookies. By continuing, you consent to this use. More information.
Use and reuse of OER: Professional conversations with language teachers
Beaven, Tita

Published2013
JournalJournal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society
Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages 59-71

ABSTRACT
In the last ten years prestigious Open Education Resources projects have been set up, often with generous support from funders. Funders and institutions that support OER want evidence of their use and reuse; it seems, however, that OER have not yet been widely adopted by teachers as part of their daily practice.
This paper investigates the use and reuse of OER from a subject-specific repository for language teachers. In particular, the small scale study investigates how and why language teachers use OER in their teaching and rework existing resources. It also examines whether the teachers understand the resources and how to use and adapt them effectively, as an inability to do so has been considered an impediment to their reuse (Dimitriadis et al. (2009), Conole (2010b)).
One of the difficulties in working with open resources and open practices is that “the open is the enemy of the knowable” (Beetham, 2011): investigating the adoption of OER and open practices is indeed not without difficulty, and this study proposes a qualitative enquiry based around professional conversations to investigate use and reuse of OER.
The research found that, far from not engaging in reuse, the teachers in the study did adapt OER, although most of those changes were not published again. In addition, they drew on considerable professional knowledge when considering the use and reuse of OER for their lessons.
The current study suggests that evidence of use and reuse cannot simply be gathered through metrics; some of the reuse and sharing is not necessarily visible, and sharing might not always be appropriate. It is possible that the adoption of more open educational practices will result in reuse and sharing of both resources and practices becoming more visible in the future but, for now, more research is needed to provide evidence of the “invisible” reuse and sharing.

Keywords language teaching · OEP · teacher experience · use and reuse of OER

ISSN(online) 1971 - 8829, (paper) 1826 - 6223
RefereedYes
Rightsby/3.0
URLhttp://www.je-lks.org/ojs/index.php/Je-LKS_EN/article/view/802
Export optionsBibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar



AVAILABLE FILES
802-1697-1-PB.pdf · 580.9KB34 downloads



Viewed by 100 distinct readers




CLOUD COMMUNITY REVIEWS

The evaluations below represent the judgements of our readers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cloud editors.

Click a star to be the first to rate this document


POST A COMMENT
SIMILAR RECORDS

Performing Languages: an example of integrating open practices in staff development for language teachers
Alvarez, Inma; Beaven, Tita; Comas-Quinn, Anna
In 2009 the Department of Languages at The Open University, UK, developed LORO (http://loro.open.ac.uk), a repository of Open Educational Resources for language teaching and learning aimed at language teaching ...
Match: beaven, tita; language teaching; oep

Teacher professional learning communities: A collaborative OER adoption approach in Karnataka, India
Kasinathan, Gurumurthy; Ranganathan, Sriranjani; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Arinto, Patricia B.
This chapter analyses collaborative Open Educational Resources (OER) adoption amongst Indian school teachers by examining the enabling and constraining techno-social, techno-pedagogical and sociocultural factors in an ...
Match: professional; oep

OER (re)use and language teachers' tacit professional knowledge: Three vignettes
Beaven, Tita
The pedagogic practical knowledge that teachers use in their lessons is very difficult to make visible and often remains tacit. This chapter draws on data from a recent study and closely analyses a number of Open ...
Match: beaven, tita; professional

MOOCs for teacher professional development: Reflections and suggested actions
Misra, Pradeep
Teacher Professional Development (TPD) has become a major policy priority within education systems worldwide. But keeping teachers professionally up-to-date and providing them professional development opportunities on ...
Match: professional

The effects of participants’ engagement with videos and forums in a MOOC for teachers’ professional development
Bonafini, Fernanda
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for teachers have emerged as a new wave of MOOCs that provide free professional development for teachers around the globe. These MOOCs for teachers often rely primarily on discussion ...
Match: professional

Designing continuing professional development MOOCs to promote the adoption of OER and OEP
Karunanayaka, Shironica; Naidu, Som; Rajendra, J.C.N.; Ariadurai, S.A.
There is growing interest in the adoption of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) in a variety of contexts. Continuing professional development (CPD) among practitioners in the effective ...
Match: professional

Equipping Language Educators at Scale: Open Educational Resources and Institutional Collaboration for Professional Development and Practice
Power, Tom; Deane, Michele; Hedges, Claire
In much of South Asia (e.g. India, Bangladesh, Sri-Lanka) there had been a post-colonial emphasis on the use of mother tongue. For instance, in Bangladesh, a nation almost solely founded on the basis of the language ...
Match: professional

Elementary STEM Teachers' Open Educational Resources and TPACK in a Professional Learning Network: A Case Study
Park, Yujin; Moon, Jewoong; Na, Hunhui
There has been growing attention on investigating elementary STEM teachers' Professional Learning Networks (PLNs). However, what types of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Technological, Pedagogical, and Content ...
Match: professional

MOOCs as a professional development tool for librarians
Ecclestone, Meghan
This article explores how reference and instructional librarians taking over new areas of subject responsibility can develop professional expertise using new eLearning tools called MOOCs. MOOCs – Massive Open Online ...
Match: professional

MOOCs for professional teacher development
Jobe, William; Östlund, Christian; Svensson, Lars
A MOOC is a trending concept in education that is disrupting traditional methods of learning consumption. The emergence and use of MOOCs for professional teacher development is still uncommon, but on the verge of ...
Match: professional