Dreamweaving Open Educational Practices

The Open University of Sri Lanka
By the end of the day, all the teachers were talking about nothing else, other
than the importance and the benefits of using OER. We were fascinated by their
apparent readiness to search, use, create and share OER in their lesson planning
process of the practical teaching component of their post graduate diploma that
they had already started at OUSL. We were very optimistic to see a collection of
resource-rich lessons implemented by them, and a collection of resources uploaded
as a result of this intervention, by the end of the project. Our intentions were
intensified with their subsequent online reflections.
One participant explained her experience just after the orientation workshop as;
“Today was an important day in my teaching profession…I learned about OER
for the first time in my life. Before this I have used Google to find information for
teaching and learning. Hope OER will help me a lot in my career in the future.”
.
At the same time,
‘‘Today I could learn about 4Rs (Reuse, Revise,Remix, Redistribute).I got an idea
about OER and I’ll use OER for teaching learning process and I want to create
OER and share it with others.”
And,
“The program conducted about OER is really important. It gave me motivation
as well as new knowledge of OER. I have a great belief that I can conduct my
teaching learning using OER. It helps me to manage time in my busy schedule. It
will also be helpful to design my lesson plans and do my teaching well,providing
valuable knowledge to students.”
After a month’s time, we understood that our expectations were being diminished,
and only a couple of participants had even logged in to the learning platform. We
understood that many were not with us in our journey any longer. The next hurdle
in front of us was gathering them for the mid- intervention workshop. As the monitoring
evidence signaled, a majority had dropped out due to various challenges and
only seven of the participants arrived.
This group of seven was the cream of the group who had the need, interest and
desire to work with OER and are, interestingly, the ones who have effectively integrated
OER into their lessons and experienced the benefits of using OER.
According to one of the participants;
After getting an idea about the OER, I always tried to search OER for my lesson
plans. I could teach my students in a very attractive way by using OER and I could
improve my knowledge and share OER with my students and friends.
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