Workshop on Open Educational Resources Organized at Vardhaman Mahaveer Open University, Kota
The Vardhaman Mahaveer Open University (VMOU) at Kota was host to participants from nine universities in Rajasthan to discuss about the potentials of Open Educational Resources (OER) and develop skills to create OER in a three day workshop organised at the University Campus in Kota from 17-19 May, 2013. Organized in collaboration with the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), the event is part of the commitment of VMOU, which has recently adopted a policy for OER use in teaching and learning in the University. Over twenty teacher-participants from VMOU and other universities in the state of Rajasthan participated in the workshop inaugurated by Prof. Sudha Rao, Former Vice Chancellor, Karnataka State Open University (KSOU). She emphasized that curriculum development and learning material development expertise is already available in Open Universities (OU); and OER being a new initiative, the OU faculty needs training in this important area. Universities perform three important tasks -- they are the authority for content delivery, they are a learning community, and universities provide certification. “The OER landscape has impact on all the three tasks, and universities like VMOU can start OER based courses on niche areas that are relevant to the state locally with global appeal”, she said.
The event was introduced by Dr. Dinesh Gupta, Director, Academic Affairs, VMOU, and Dr. Sanjaya Mishra, Director, CEMCA, presented the rationale behind CEMCA’s engagement to promote OER in the region. Dr. Mishra highlighted the UNESCO-COL hosted World OER Congress and the OER Paris Declaration 2012. Guest of Honour in the inaugural session of the event, Mr. Pramod Maheshwari, Vice Chancellor of Career Point University stressed on the importance of open content development and development of local expertise.
Dr Vinay Kumar Pathak, Vice Chancellor, VMOU lauded CEMCA’s efforts in promoting in different area including Community Radio, Web Radio and OERs. He emphasized the need for a different mind-set to put learning materials in open licensing. “This is a time of collaboration, and gone are the days when just one book was sufficient for learning”, he said. Stating the initiative of MIT as an example, he said that huge amount of learning materials are now available as OER, and it is important for the faculty to understand and know how to use these for the advantages of their students. The present workshop is a step towards that direction to help teachers to develop the requisite skills to use OER. The inaugural session ended with thanks by Dr. Karan Singh.
The technical sessions for the three days of the workshop were facilitated by Dr. Pankaj Khare and Dr. Ramesh C. Sharma, and used the WikiEducator platform to facilitate the use of wiki skills development. The workshop covered the history and development of OER, its significance, basic wiki editing skills, and open licensing issues to help the teacher participants develop a better understanding of OER.
