ICEM&SIIE 2011 Joint Conference - Universidade de Passo Fundo

Proceedings of ICEM&SIIE‘11 Joint Conference
rigorous as an endorsement lens, content in an affiliation lens is assumed to be of a quality
on par with other members of that organization.
My Favorites Lens – Each user account has a private My Favorites lens which can be used
to keep track of a user's favorite modules and collections.
Member Lists – An account holder can create member list lenses to organize related content,
such as to keep track of referenced source materials or to use as a course reading list for
students.
All lenses except for the My Favorites lens can either be made privately viewable for
personal use only or publicly viewable for anyone to see. The My Favorites lens is always
private (Connexions, n.d.a).
Additionally, Terry Anderson (2011) suggests on his blog a ―produsage‖ development of
educational materials in which users (mostly educators) are not only content consumers but
also are active producers/contributors to the resources they are willing to make use of.
Anderson suggests that ―it is time we trained ourselves and pre-service teachers to become
produsers, not whining consumers with insufficient cash to buy the products we want.‖
Downes (2007) also points out that scalability and sustainability happen more readily when
people do things for themselves and that decentralizing is more scalable and sustainable.
2.1.3. International Accrediting Body Based Quality Assurance
In a UNESCO report D‘antoni (2009) suggests that the OER movement would benefit from
an exploration of current international quality-assurance mechanisms and general guidelines
and, potentially, from linking with existing quality-assurance agencies. Moreover, Albright
(2005) reports that some participants on the UNESCO IIEP Internet Discussion Forum on
Open Educational Resources Open Content for Higher Education contended that there
would be more confidence in and acceptance of OER if assessments were made for quality
assurance, perhaps using internationally established standards applied by a global
accrediting body. Another approach could be university consortia (rather than international
governance) that set and maintain quality standards (Albright, 2005).
The OpenCourseWare (OCW) Consortium, which is a collaboration of higher education
institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep
body of open educational content using a shared model, aims to serve as a resource for
starting and sustaining OCW projects, as a coordinating body for the movement on a global
scale, and as a forum for exchange of ideas and future planning (OpenCourseWare
Consortium, 2011). Looking at what the OCW Consortium aims to achieve, it could be
argued that it is also trying to fulfill the need for an international organizing body that will also
handle the issue of access to high-quality resources. The Consortium also provides the OER
community with a toolkit to guide them in their creation and use of OER.
To sum up, if the OER movement is to take hold widely, the resources must be – and be
seen to be – of high quality (D‘Antoni, 2008). The quality assurance could be secured by a
centrally designed process or in a decentralized manner, or open processes or more closed
ones could be adopted. Arguments can be made for all these approaches much depending
on which kind of OER initiative or programme is being considered (Hylén, 2005). However,
all sorts of combinations could also be used together as it is in some examples provided.
3. Worldwide OpenCourseWare Examples and Turkey
Since 2002 when the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative was started with 50 courses
under The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation‘s sponsorship, a great many other courses -
both in MIT OCW (2.000 courses by 2010) (MIT OCW, n.d.a) and in other OCW initiatives
started by other educational institutions – have been created all over the world with the
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