After finishing studying an open educational resource I felt that it was a very flexible, convenient way to learn. For example, as an international student with 6 courses in one semester, it is very hard to devote all the time to one subject or concentrate on one subject for a long period of time. But with an online course (I call them open educational resources) no matter how much content they, I am able to split the work into many parts and digest them at any time I want. There is no time limit, unlike the other classes which require attendance at a fixed time. If I miss the class, I will miss the lecture from my professor. Open educational resources relieve my workload giving me more time and energy to slowly digest new knowledge. I think OER is a very successful way to create an opportunity for everyone from any country to access free resources and exercise the right to learn knowledge. It allows people who cannot afford the latest learning materials and school tuition to have the chance to access free, updated resources so that they can get a quality education. On average, students in the U.S. spend about 600 dollars buying textbooks per year; students in Canada spend about 385 dollars on textbooks per semester which can increase student debt. Today, more and more people have accepted this practice and have started to use open educational resources to study, revealing the potential of OER.
The open educational resource is a lecture for me. It is a one-way media that requires critical thinking skills. Plenty of time is needed to understand the material in order to fully get the gist of the content. That is also a disadvantage of open educational resources, there is no way to ask questions. OER could provide us with a convenient and friendly platform for students to communicate and ask questions. Help from an EDCI professor through email could also improve the system to a two-way media that is communicative media. Any questions can be solved right after I finish reading the materials alone by either discussion or help from the professor. The image I attached below is creative in that it has many hands come out of the book which symbolizes help. With some changes, Open Educational Resource could allow people to reach out to either help or receive help with no distance limit and time limit. Sometimes the learner can receive several hands from different people of different countries and they can give different ideas and opinions based on their knowledge which in turn can enrich a learner’s mind and broaden his/her perspective.
I think most people would think OER is asynchronous. People can access it at any time freely. But it could also be synchronous when a time limit is added on to it. For example, if an assignment is going to be due in a week, OER could become synchronous by having everyone share the same due date, forcing them to read the material within the 7 days. Compared to a shorter time-fixed class, the online course just has a longer time-fixed class. Many people have the habit of leaving the assignment to the last minute, OER demonstrates many people are reading the material within the same time frame but at different rates of progress.
The richness of media is very broad. It can be performed in many ways: video, audio, context and more. So far, the richness of OER is already very broad; I have seen many versions, videos, voice over, contexts, and maybe a few pictures. It is important to avoid being monotonous and to have different forms of teaching which can stimulate learners’ interests and thinking. The richness of media really gives OER a new life and helps people to engage in the content, therefore aiding them in understanding the materials better. My experience is that after reading a long context, it is better to have a picture or short video to conclude or demonstrate what the article or paragraph is trying to tell the audience. There are always pictures attached between paragraphs while I was reading the content on the open educational resource. It is very helpful to have the richness of the media to effectively teach the learners. OER is a very good example. To make my post look better and easy to understand, I also embedded multimedia in the content so that readers can have a deeper understanding. I hope that more people can have the opportunity to know more about OER.