Open Educational Resources

Commons

Free online educational resources constitute a major reference for educators as they provide an endless list of different types of materials that teachers as well as faculty members may use for their classrooms. Among the many of the websites that provide such service, this blog will focus mainly on the Open Educational Resources (OER) Commons.

OER allows you to search for any content and the ability to filter your search by typing in your search keywords and choosing other filters, such as subject, educational level, and standard. After you click search, search results will show and you still can manipulate the results the way you want. You can add/delete filters to narrow down the results the way you want them to be. In fact there are way more filters that you may use than in the home page when the original search was done. When the search results are shown, they are shown in thumbnails and you may, for example, choose what material type you prefer, a full course, lesson plan, lecture notes, assignments, etc.

After finding the closest match to your search and/or spotting something of interest, click on the link to that item and you will be directed to a page with more information on that resource. Information include the owner's information as well as information about the material itself. Additionally, what I like the most is that materials have an abstract in this page and it gives a brief overview of what the material is about. This way you may decide early whether this is the material that would work for your need or not instead of having to browse the material itself and see if it fits your needs.

For the purpose of this blog, I looked into something related to my major, educational technology. When I clicked in the "View Resource" button, I was redirected into another website. The website contained materials of two full courses in addition to some learning activities. To view the website, click HERE. There are a lot of information in this website that I am actually studying in one of my graduate courses this semester. This made me feel that I have been missing a lot. There are a lot of free open resources online that we just need to explore and make use of.

Merlot

Another website that provides free educational materials and resources is Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching ( MERLOT). MERLOT was originally established in 1997 by California State University Center for Distributed Learning. This website provides learning, teaching, as well as professional development materials that educators around the globe may use. MERLOT provides the ability to search for materials by typing in some key words, but that is not the only way of searching for resources. Users may search for certain members, libraries, ISBN, or learning exercises. However, what I like the mots is that you may just browse the materials and filter them as you browse them to narrow down the results. This feature is very useful especially if you are exploring for new topics.

I believe that faculty members as well as school teachers must be made aware of the plethora of resources available through this website. From my experience, teaching could be made much better and more interesting if these resources are utilized. Conventionally, educators often struggle with creating teaching and learning materials, but I believe that with the availability of these resources, that era is gone. A teacher or a faculty member would definitely find that fits his/her needs. These resources cover all grade levels and almost all fields of studies. Most importantly, you can access all these materials even without having to sign up for the website. Moreover, a teacher or a faculty member may also create their content and share it through this website so that others may benefit from it.

for the purpose of this blog, I looked at THIS material. This is a ten-module tutorial that was designed by Center for Assistive Technology and Environmental Access. This material mainly introduces some best practices and methods about how to take into consideration the most common needs of  people with disabilities when designing distance education materials. Put differently, this tutorial talks about approaches to the usability of online materials for all the students with various needs. I liked this tutorial very much because it touches on an important issue that I have not thought of. when I think of online learning and environment, I tend to assume that users are people with no special needs and who have all it takes to be in an online class, for example. This tutorial enlightened me to think more about what needs to be taken into consideration when designing online materials.