Dreamweaving Open Educational Practices

The Open University of Sri Lanka
Impacts on learning and teaching
Our knowledge as teachers improved as a result of using OER. Therefore we were
able to engage in our duties with self-confidence and self-satisfaction. Due to the
use of OER, it was possible to organize lessons in an attractive manner to students
and to retain their attention. The use of OER makes it possible to bring new technology
to the classroom and to utilize the students’ interest in new technology to
the teaching –learning process. As OER makes teaching of the difficult subject areas
much easier through the use of pictures, and videos, classroom time can be saved
and as a result more work can be done in the classroom.
Through the integration of OER, as teachers, we have got the opportunity to “think
out of the box” and release ourselves from the traditional teachers’ role. The creations
of our own OER, enhances our thinking capabilities and contribute to the
development of our personalities as well. Finally we can become teachers who are
more suitable for the 21st century.
Future plans
We hope to introduce this concept of OER to many other teachers as possible and
encourage and enable them to use OER in their teaching- learning process. The
concept of OER would be further introduced not only to teachers but to students
as well. As students are more comfortable with ICT, they, especially those in higher
grades would be motivated to create OER by themselves.
Another plan is to create as many OER as possible for different subjects and different
lessons and upload them to the Internet. Special attention would be given to
the creation of OER in Sinhala. In addition, existing OER, if allowed by the license
type, would be modified and changed so that they become more culturally appropriate
for our context, with enhanced quality.
A part of the plan is to change the mindsets of teachers who make use of learning
resources available in the Internet without any consideration of the copyrights of
authors so that they would use OER in a legitimate manner.
The plan to take the message of the concept of OER to as many teachers as possible
and to make them active practitioners of OER could be implemented in stages. We
would start in our own schools with the support of the Principals and then it could
be expanded to the other schools in the education division. For this, support from
the In Service Advisors (ISAs) and Directors of Divisional Education offices would be
obtained. In the next stage, the activities would be further expanded to the Zonal
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