Using an Open Educational Resources Platform to Support Underserved Groups

The Open University (OU) United Kingdom manages two platforms for hosting Open Educational Resources (OER): OpenLearn, delivering the OU’s OER, reaching over10 million learners a year, attracting a mostly UK audience, and OpenLearn Create, reaching 3 million learners a year, where anyone can create and share OER, attracting a mostly international – non-UK – audience. Both platforms release OER using a Creative Commons license and afford accessibility to learning materials specifically catering to the needs of underserved groups, in other words, individuals or groups who may have limited access to education or continuing professional development (CPD) either as recipient or as educator. Using case studies, research data analytics and survey data, this chapter reveals how the approach to delivering OER on OpenLearn Create fosters community engagement and outreach across a broad spectrum of projects in a range of languages and format often to those with restricted access to professional development within organizations. The chapter discusses weaknesses in the platform’s usability for delivering online courses, but strengths and recommendations for its use as an adaptable project-based tool. Research data also reveal that where an institution is prepared to minimally support the provision of such a platform, the contribution to humanizing education for OER projects globally is great

The 'Choice and Autonomy Framework' : implications for occupational therapy practice

Introduction This paper presents findings from a PhD study exploring autonomy of adults with physical disability. The plethora of descriptions of autonomy in psychological, occupational therapy and rehabilitation literature (e.g. Ryan and Deci 2000, Rogers 1982, Cardol et al 2002) detracts from the centrality of autonomy and results in difficulty incorporating it into occupational therapy practice. This paper presents a framework providing an integrated, clinically useful approach to autonomy. Methods Sixteen people were recruited, based on age, gender, impairment and living circumstances (community/residential settings). All have significant physical disability, use a wheelchair and require personal assistance for some/all self-care activities. Qualitative methods were used for data collection, including life-history narrative, diary information and extensive interview. An integrated method of analysis was used, including content analysis and bracketing. Results The ‘Choice and Autonomy Framework’ consists of five strands, including: • the meaning of autonomy • whether or not autonomy is a goal or value • the experience of autonomy • personality factors that impact autonomy • environmental features that enhance or negate autonomy. This paper will describe each strand, as derived from the research. The results suggest that, contrary to common wisdom (Hmel and Pincus 2002), autonomy is not necessarily a universal goal for people with physical disability; an understanding of the person’s own perspective will enhance person-centred practice and enable therapists to further recognise individuality of clients. It will argue that the concept of autonomy needs to be further understood and incorporated into occupational therapy practice