Developing Open Educational Programs: Moving Beyond the Course Approach

Most universities have faculty who are creating open education resources and courses. Colleges and universities now need to take advantage of moving beyond the resource or course based approach. Michigan State University (MSU) through a grant from the Hewlett foundation commenced a food safety knowledge network. This work has blossomed into a model for other content area themes like challenges in Latin America, sustainability and entrepreneurship. Most of the theme areas are building on non-credit and extension outreach education and developing international opportunities with shared content. However, our university Alumni office is also working with us to build a media knowledge network. Recently more faculty teaching credit courses are engaging in the development of open educational resources and MSU has created several learning pathways for individuals.  The development process is the same approach now requested by the Department of Labor Trade Adjustment Assistance targeted at community colleges. The knowledge network model is growing as a vehicle to package OER learning opportunities. In this workshop, participants will learn

• How to identify target open education curriculum areas within a college
• The importance of developing a competency framework preferably with industry and content experts
• A process for developing a competency-mapping tool
• How to build a multi-faceted approach to learning which allows non-credit and credit learners to use the same resources from a face-to-face workshop on demand, allowing learners to build on missing knowledge
• How to repurpose educational content in a learning management system, as a course and as a resource
• How to develop and aggregate resources aligned with key areas outlined in the competency framework in a cost effective way
• The development process for creation of a bank of test items for competency areas
• Pilot processes for the model through online and face-to-face trainings

It is also important to understand the search and discoverability needs of making your content widely available. There are great repositories and tools available along with building OER websites and hosting them yourself. Research efforts from OLnet and OCWC will also be shared. This movement is continuing to gain steam and planning a path for growth and sustainability will be important in both credit and non-credit learning.