Dreamweaving Open Educational Practices

The Open University of Sri Lanka
Curriculum-related issues were stated by one member; “some subject matter are
deeper and different than the local syllabus…” Evi d en ce i s gi ven i n refl ecti ve
journals.
As an example, one of our participants stated; “When we searched for educational
materials for Grade 7, we found materials suitable Grade 10 or 11 in the local syllabus.
So we revised and sometimes remixed OER and integrated it according to our
local syllabus...”
Winning path
OER supported us to prepare quality lesson plans for our lessons in all subjects.
Then we were able to incorporate new techniques in our teaching-learning process.
Our lesson evaluators (external & internal) and colleagues highly appreciated OER
incorporated lessons. It was very easy to get students’ attention and it helped to
create a better learning environment.
One member commented that her Mathematics lessons were very successful and
therefore she was encouraged to raise awareness about OER and how to find OER
to other teachers in her school. She further commented that her PGDE project was
very successful because of OER integration.
Advantages and best practices
Finding and incorporating OER to our lesson provided many advantages to us, such
as;
• Enhanced teaching skills
“Using OER, I improved my skills as a teacher. Earlier I used only traditional methods
to write lesson plans. But after I became a member of this project I got new skills to
write lesson plans creatively. My master teacher also appreciated my new teaching
methods.”
• Enhanced language skills
“On the very first day, I only used Sinhala language to find educational resources.
Now my English language skills have improved.”
• Ability to share our teaching resources and OER knowledge
“I shared my OER knowledge with my school teachers by organizing a workshop.
I created more than 30 OER and uploaded to LMS and also found more than 50
lessons related to different subjects.”
• Shared new technological knowledge
In a lesson on numbers inGrade 7, a teacher had incorporated an OER game and she
has realized that all students had actively participated in the entire lesson.
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