OER'S production cycle with social authorship and semantic tools

Abstract

Open Educational Resources (OER) are digital content that are accessible through web repositories. They are used as support tools for education, especially for higher education, and they promote equality and social justice by providing access to, applying, and generating knowledge. Until now OER s have been developed from the pedagogic perspective, without taking advantage of the recent developments in communication technologies. Integration of social tools improves the active participation of both the developers and users of the OER s. This promotes the rapid creation of content that is easily accessible via search engines linked to educational platforms and social networks. It also allows tagging, which gives users the ability to add descriptive metadata. Authorship is recognized through the use of intellectual property licenses that promote open use of the material so that it can be used and edited. And above all collaborative learning is promoted. In this article a new cycle of OER production is proposed that includes activities to incorporate social networks and semantic technologies. The phases of the production cycle are developed using the ADDIE instructional model. The purpose of each phase and the social and semantic components to be included are identified. And finally, application guidelines are presented that detail the strategies and expected results for each phase of the proposed cycle. We have determined that the primary reasons for developing a production cycle for OER s using social authorship are: to allow educators and students to develop resources collaboratively; to reduce the amount of time spent in resource development; and to provide for reutilization of quality OER s. Finally, it should be recognized that the success of the model and its application depends on the institutional context where it is implemented, as well as the policies related to content generation, authorship acknowledgement and distribution of the resources. © 2010 IEEE.