Open content for elearning: Cross-institutional collaboration for education and training in a digital environment
The University of the West Indies Open Campus and Athabasca University conducted a pilot
workshop to see if open educational resources (OER) could be used to construct curricula.
UWIOC was interested in increasing distance education offerings and Athabasca University was
interested in expanding programming to offer an online graduate program in Instructional Design. A workshop brought a team together to: come to a consensus on the format of module
specifications, select appropriate resources, and to report on the feasibility of the approach. The
team produced course outlines and specifications for modules using OER. The following were
noted: Use of OER sped the aggregation of content; OER are not available for every topic; OER
differ from the desired scope and academic level; they vary in media and content quality; and
OER that lack clarity of authorship and copyright are difficult to include in courses.
International Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology
