OER in Higher Education

Open Educational Resources (OER) are an important element in the process of digitizing university teaching and are considered an essential building block for openness in the education system. They are also referring to teaching, learning, and research resources that are published free of charge or under an open license. In this workshop, you will learn what OER are and why they play an important role in higher education. Together we will discuss searching using, utilizing and dissemination of OER. Afterwards, we will introduce the OER Converter tool (convOERter) and discuss its functionality. convOERter is a web-based tool for creating OER and transforming existing materials into OER. The tool will support instructors in their everyday practice of creating teaching materials. Among OER novices, the tool can serve as an assistance system, while professionals can use it as an optimization tool when needed. The tool is intended to support teachers' independent work and reduce hurdles to getting started with OER.

- Introduction to Open Educational Resources (definition, motivation, goals)

- Licensing through Creative Commons licenses

- OER cycle (search, use, edit, create, redistribute)

- Practical sessions ("OER Editing" Game, OER Converter Tool), where OER Editing is a developed game, that will be used within the practical session to allow the participants practicing OER Editing (Collage and Composition). OER Converter Tool is a web-based tool that supports the educators converting their already exiting materials to OER. The participants will be given the opportunity to test the tool and provide us with a feedback.

The Workshop is recommended for all instructors and those interested in teaching who would like to get an overview of the topic of openness and the culture of sharing in the field of higher education teaching and who are interested in "Open Educational Resources (OER)" in the educational context.