Evaluating three different Open Educational Resource models provided to enable Learning in Our Connected World

The swift advancement of Web technologies has provided real opportunities for improving access, transfer and sharing of knowledge and information. One of the outcomes facilitated by these technologies is the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, which has increasingly expanded during the last decade. The definition of OER The term OER was first used in 2002 at a UNESCO forum about the impact of the OpenCourseWare (OCW) movement on higher education institutions (D'Antoni, 2009). Though the term OER emerged after the OCW initiative, OER has a wider meaning, which also includes OCW. The OECD (2007) defined OER as including "learning content, software tools to develop, use and distribute content, and implementation resources such as open licenses" and referred to OER as "accumulated digital assets that can be adjusted and which provide benefits without restricting the possibilities for others to enjoy them"(OECD, 2007, p.10). The development of OER There are now many OER initiatives around the world, each with their own "distinctive models" (Sclater, in press, p.9). The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) OpenCourseWare initiative - "the publication on the Web of course materials used in MIT classroom teaching- is perhaps the best-publicized and most copied institutional OER model" (Albright, 2005, p.4). The MIT OCW movement played a very important role in initiating and disseminating OER around the world and this successful movement could owe its achievement in part to the popularity of MIT and the financial support it received. However, the adaptability of the MIT model by other institutions could be very difficult since MIT was well supported by funding from different foundations (i.e. the Mellon and Hewlett Foundations) (Abelson, 2008) and a dedicated OCW group. It is unlikely that many other institutions would benefit from such opportunities. The purpose of the study Therefore, we need to investigate a number of OER models and find working strategies that can be applied in other contexts as well. In this sense, the main purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast different OER initiatives in terms of the OER development model adopted to enable information transfer to future projects. More specifically quality assurance strategies, sustainability, content type (resource format), pedagogical approach, licensing and user participation are the main perspectives to be considered. To do this, three major OER projects (MIT OpenCourseWare, Rice University's Connexions, and UK Open University's OpenLearn) were selected for investigation. The rationale behind this selection is that they are successful and most importantly they each appear to have their own distinctive OER development model that differentiates them from other OER initiatives. Significance of the study The findings from this study will influence institutions that are new to the OER arena. New initiatives will be able to learn from the challenges faced and opportunities gained from these earlier initiatives. Thus, new OER initiatives will be able to build on, learn from and take advantage of the working strategies of the previous OER initiatives discussed in this paper. The Approach Although OER initiatives have been examined (Atkins et al, 2007; Stacey, 2007), they have been discussed in broader terms. This study however, will explore these three OER projects not only in detail, but also from a critical perspective. In this sense, the current study will try to answer the following research questions: "What makes the OER development models from the three selected institutions distinctive? "What models are ... [the three selected institutions] adopting in terms of the production of OER?" (Conole and McAndrew, in press, p.9) This study will be based on both desk research (reviewing published reports, journal articles etc.) and semi-structured interviews with key people at the three selected institutions. The preliminary results from the desk research are considered below. Interviews have already been undertaken with the three key people in OpenLearn and one key person from MIT and another interview is planned with key person in Connexions project over the next few months. The findings from the interviews will be reported as part of this paper. Though there are some specific questions related with the project, the themes are general structure of the project, sustainability, reusability, community building, staff engagement etc. Preliminary Results These three models can be compared and contrasted in terms of different perspectives. However in these preliminary results, we will examine these different initiatives in terms of content production, content type and revenue model. When we looked at the structure of the content production cycle, it can be said that MIT follows a very faculty centric model. That is, content has been produced from teaching materials of the faculty members. However, in the other two models, users have a chance to contribute their own content. In reality, the general structure of the Connexions model is decentralized which means it is mainly based on end-user participation. As for OpenLearn, we can say that it has a kind of mixed model. That is, its content relies heavily on the Open University's course materials, but the end-user can contribute their own content in the LabSpace, as well. Secondly, in terms of content type, the MIT OCW initiative has materials which are used as supplementary material in traditional classrooms, whereas the OpenLearn project has self-learning materials designed for distance learners though these also have the potential to be used as supplementary material in traditional campus based institutions (Wilson, 2008). Connexions OER are comprised not only of self-learning materials, but also material that supports traditional classroom learning. Finally, when we look at the revenue model, the MIT OCW project has been supported by external funding (discussed above) and OpenLearn had external funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and JISC in the UK. Although Connexions has some external funding, the revenue model is based on the relationship with profit or non-profit making institutions

Social Interactions and Games

Digital games have been gradually transformed from single, co-located experiences into endless, socially oriented, multi-played configurations, due to greater technological affordances (Herodotou, 2009). Multi-User Online Games provide the opportunity to create a social environment for friendships and strengthen the relationships. However, some researchers support the idea that players seeking meaningful relationships within a game might have trouble forming meaningful relationships in the real life (Fang & Zhu, 2011; Peters & Malesky, 2008).  This study was conducted with the sample of 168 university students to explore the social interactions in and out of game environment in terms of personality type, gender and game preferences. As a result of the study, it was found that participants mostly prefer playing multi-player games with their real life friends and family members. While they tend to make friends in game environments, they do not prefer sharing sensitive issues with their gaming friends. Moreover; students who reported themselves more extraverted, spend more hours in games. This paper contributes to the debates on the impact of games on social interactions of gamers in and out of the game environment

The Role of Attention for Visual Perception in Desktop Virtual Reality Environments

Virtual Reality Environments (VRE) is relatively new types of human-computer interaction interfaces in which users perceive and act in a 3D world. Researchers use it both as a tool and as an experimental area for their studies. In this study, a desktop VRE was created and used to explore the role of attention for visual perception of 60 university students who participated to the study. The findings showed that configurational knowledge can be attained in desktop VRE. Furthermore, it is found that visual attention has a significant role on forming cognitive maps since the incidental formation of a cognitive map seems to be not possible on the basis of our results

Eye-hand coordination patterns of intermediate and novice surgeons in a simulation-based endoscopic surgery training environment

Endoscopic surgery procedures require specific skills, such as eye-hand coordination to be developed. Current education programs are facing with problems to provide appropriate skill improvement and assessment methods in this field. This study aims to propose objective metrics for hand-movement skills and assess eye-hand coordination. An experimental study is conducted with 15 surgical residents to test the newly proposed measures. Two computer-based both-handed endoscopic surgery practice scenarios are developed in a simulation environment to gather the participants’ eye-gaze data with the help of an eye tracker as well as the related hand movement data through haptic interfaces. Additionally, participants’ eye-hand coordination skills are analyzed. The results indicate higher correlations in the intermediates’ eye-hand movements compared to the novices. An increase in intermediates’ visual concentration leads to smoother hand movements. Similarly, the novices’ hand movements are shown to remain at a standstill. After the first round of practice, all participants’ eye-hand coordination skills are improved on the specific task targeted in this study. According to these results, it can be concluded that the proposed metrics can potentially provide some additional insights about trainees’ eye-hand coordination skills and help instructional system designers to better address training requirements

The effect of uncertainty on learning in game-like environments

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Considering the role of games for educational purposes, there has an increase in interest among educators in applying strategies used in popular games to create more engaging learning environments. Learning is more fun and appealing in digital educational games and, as a result, it may become more effective. However, few research studies have been conducted to establish principles based on empirical research for designing engaging and entertaining games so as to improve learning. One of the essential characteristics of games that has been unexplored in the literature is the concept of uncertainty. This study examines the effect of uncertainty on learning outcomes. In order to better understand this effect on learning, a game-like learning tool was developed to teach a database concept in higher education programs of software engineering. The tool is designed in two versions: one including uncertainty and the other including no uncertainty. The experimental results of this study reveal that uncertainty enhances learning. Uncertainty is found to be positively associated with motivation. As motivation increases, participants tend to spend more time on answering the questions and to have higher accuracy in these questions

Using Eye-Movement Events to Determine the Mental Workload of Surgical Residents

These days, eye-tracking is one of the promising technologies used in different fields. However, studies involving eye-tracking are rare in the field of endo-neurosurgery. This study aims to use this technology to promote our understanding of the effect related to computer-based instructional materials on mental workload of surgical residents. Four computer-based simulation scenarios are developed, two of them were designed as general models and the other two as simulated surgical models. During these surgical procedures, in real settings, surgical residents need to use their both hands simultaneously to control the endoscope and the operational tool in a coordinated fashion. Therefore, to shed light on the participants’ behaviors, these scenarios are performed with dominant-hand, non-dominant hand and, finally with both-hands. Twenty-three residents’ eye-movements were recorded while performing the scenarios. According to the results of this study, when performing the simulated surgical models, an increase in the participants’ mental workload was recorded when compared to the other scenarios. Accordingly, it can be concluded that the eye-movements of surgical residents can provide insights about the anticipated level of difficulty about the skill-based tasks. This information might be very critical to properly design and organize instructional materials for endo-neurosurgery, and also to better guide and evaluate the progress of trainees in computer simulation-based skill training environments

Are left- and right-eye pupil sizes always equal?

Eye movements provide very critical information about the cognitive load and behaviors of human beings. Earlier studies report that under normal conditions, the left- and right-eye pupil sizes are equal. For this reason, most studies undertaking eye-movement analysis are conducted by only considering the pupil size of a single eye or taking the average size of both eye pupils. This study attempts to offer a better understanding concerning whether there are any differences between the left- and right-eye pupil sizes of the right-handed surgical residents while performing surgical tasks in a computer-based simulation environment under different conditions (left hand, right hand and both hands). According to the results, in many cases, the right-eye pupil sizes of the participants were larger than their left-eye pupil sizes while performing the tasks under right-hand and both-hands conditions. However, no significant difference was found in relation to the tasks performed under left-hand condition in all scenarios. These results are very critical to shed further light on the cognitive load of the surgical residents by analyzing their left-eye and right-eye pupil sizes. Further research is required to investigate the effect of the difficulty level of each scenario, its appropriateness with the skill level of the participants, and handedness on the differences between the left- and right-eye pupil sizes

Multimodal Comprehension of Language and Graphics: Graphs with and without annotations

An experimental investigation into interaction between language and information graphics in multimodal documents served as the basis for this study. More specifically, our purpose was to investigate the role of linguistic annotations in graph-text documents. Participants were presented with three newspaper articles in the following conditions: one text-only, one text plus non-annotated graph, and one text plus annotated graph. Results of the experiment showed that, on one hand, annotations play a bridging role for integration of information contributed by different representational modalities. On the other hand, linguistic annotations have negative effects on recall, possibly due to attention divided by the different parts of a document

How content management problem of a remote laboratory system can be handled by integrating an open source learning management system? Problems and solutions

This paper represents the design and implementation of the integration process of an open source learning management system (LMS) to the remote laboratory platform. The reason of using a learning management system is to prevent the problems which can be seen in the learner side of the remote laboratory systems. However, since using a learning management system such as Moodle can handle the learner problems, since it is a separate system, there are still other problems to be handled such as integrating it with the other parts of remote laboratory systems. This study explores the background information of LMS, the problems faced while integrating Moodle to remote laboratory applications, the chosen content management systems' architecture, our architecture for integrating Moodle with the remote laboratory system and the solutions we propose for the problems. © 2007 IEEE

Supporting law students’ skills development online – a strategy to improve skills and reduce student stress?

Law students internationally suffer from a high level of psychological distress compared with the general and student populations, and anecdotal evidence suggests that students developing skills without adequate support experience significant stress and anxiety. This article considers an initiative at one Australian law school to develop a degree-wide structured online skills development programme as a means to both improve student skills acquisition and reduce student stress. The project implements, through the use of learning technology, the principles proposed by McKinney for making small changes to law school teaching, informed by self-efficacy theory, which can have powerful results