OER Commons – A Useful (Re)Source for Planning an Art Lesson?

Planning an art lesson can sometimes be nerve-wracking if one aims to provide the students with engaging activities that foster creativity and enhance learning. So how can educators use technology to find reliable resources for their lessons?

As Bower (2017) states teachers ‘often draw from open websites, blogs, YouTube, and a range of other online resources that have not necessarily been created for educational purposes let alone a specific learning activity’ (p. 112). To focus on resources that are particularly aligned with educational needs, Open Educational Resources (OERs) seem to be the right choice. Bissel (2009) as cited in Bower (2017) determines OERs as ‘digiti[s]ed materials offered freely and openly for educators, students, and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research’ (p. 97). A database for discovering OERs suited for primary education as well as all other levels of education is OER Commons: https://www.oercommons.org. To find a resource, keywords can be entered, further, it is possible to select one or more subject areas, the respective grade level, and the education standard. 

There are additional specifications available to refine the research, for example, the material type, the media format, etc. Moreover, the usage rights can be simply identified by the three categories: Share only, Remix and share and Read the fine print (OER Commons, 2019).

Let us just assume that I want to prepare an art lesson for my 4th-grade primary class. The lesson’s overall aim is to foster the students’ creative thinking and digital literacy through problem-based learning. My idea is to let the students collaborate to create slow-motion videos. If I search on OER Commons for that specific lesson material, I receive zero results:

Even if I perform a less specific search, the results are still limited. Furthermore, there is an additional five stars rating system. A guarantee for the quality of the available resources is an pivotal feature of OERs (Butcher, 2015). However, the rating system seems to be used only rarely.

Although EOR Common offers a sophisticated data system with a lot of resources, this example illustrates that the opportunities of OERs are apparently not fully exploited. Educators are obliged not only to use or ‘remix’ the provided material for their own teaching but to re-upload or share own insights to ‘to use cooperation to find simple solutions to pressing problems we face in education’ (Butcher, 2015, p. 45). In the best case ‘OER can make an important contribution to a diversified supply of learning resources. A plethora of digital learning resources support methodological diversity, which again is a prerequisite for promoting individualisation of the learning process’ (Hylén, 2008, p. 19). 

Taking a glimpse at an alternative platform that is non-educational, for example, Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com.au), reveals that there is more content provided for the same search criteria as used on OER Commons:

Unfortunately, this also brings problems like missing indications for the educational value of the material and no clear information about the usage rights. Besides, the ‘pinning’ might be easier and more attractive to collect and share resources but this does not necessarily mean that there is actual diversity in the material. Lastly, quantity does not necessarily mean quality. Teachers' ability to reflect critically on the provided material is needed more than ever. Thus, a sustainable development towards more contribution and better collaboration among educators on EORs would be desirable to facilitate the designing process of lessons. But how do we get there?

References

Bower, M. (2017). Design of Technology-Enhanced Learning: Integrating research and practice. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited.

Butcher, N. (2015). A basic guide to open educational resources (OER). Commonwealth of Learning (COL).

Hylén, J. (2008). THE CASE FOR OER. The Open Source Business Resource, pp. 15-20.

OER Commons (2007 – 2019): https://www.oercommons.org.

Pinterest Europe Ltd. (2019): https://www.pinterest.com.au.