Research Workshops held on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) at Machilipatnam and Bhubaneswar

Research Workshops held on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) at Machilipatnam and Bhubaneswar

New Delhi: 12/03/2015: Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) organized two research workshops on ‘Open Educational Resources for Development’ at Machilipatnam (Andhra Pradesh) and Bhubaneswar (Odisha) from 2-5 March 2015 and 7-10 March 2015 respectively as part of its research project entitled “Teachers’ Attitudes, Motivations and conceptions of Quality and Barriers to Open Educational Resources in India” supported by IDRC, Canada.  The workshops were organized in collaboration with Krishna University at Machilipatnam and Centurion University of Technology and Management at Bhubaneswar. 

At Krishna University, the inaugural session was presided over by Prof. V. Venkaiah, Vice Chancellor. He urged the teachers to adopt OERs in their teaching learning. Prof. V. S. Prasad, former Director of NAAC, Bangalore and former Pro Vice Chancellor of IGNOU was the Chief Guest who highlighted the opportunities and challenges of OERs in his keynote speech. The workshop was attended by thirty faculty members.

The workshop at Centurion University of Technology and Management, Bhubaneshwar, Odisha was held from 7 to 10 March 2015 which also became a part of the global events as being conducted during the Open Education Week 2015 . This workshop at Bhubaneshwar was presided over by Prof. Chandrabhanu Pattanayak, Director, Institute of Knowledge  Societies. Prof. Mukti Kanta Mishra, President of Centurion University of Technology and Management addressed in his keynote speech, the core issues regarding sharing knowledge, producing thought leaders and action leaders, and rendering service to the society which is quantifiable, sustainable and replicable. He further opined that the teachers should be more competent in order to make use of OER in their teaching-learning context. There were thirty-three faculty members as participants in this workshop.

In both workshops, Dr. Ramesh Sharma, Director, CEMCA, explained the objectives of these research workshops in his opening remarks. Dr. Sanjaya Mishra, Education Specialist (eLearning), Commonwealth of Learning, Canada, provided an overview of the four days programme,   explained the methodology adopted for the research workshop and the way different sessions were going to be organized. Led by Dr. Sanjaya Mishra and Dr. Ramesh Sharma, the workshops introduced to the participants various concepts associated with OER. Some of the topics covered introduction to OERs, demonstration of OER projects and searching, Copyrights and open licensing.

While the workshops were held for three days, the last day was used for interviews of selected participants to gather data for the research project. Both these workshops assisted the university teachers to understand the history and development of OER, enabled them to relate the need of OER in their work environment, and facilitated appreciation of the importance of open license in educational materials.