Question- What are the effective ways to use open educational resources in online training ?

Ans.

Open Educational Resources (OER’s) are readily available resources which are free for the masses. These online materials help corporate learners expand their knowledge and deepen their understanding of specific topics or tasks. The effective ways to use OERs in online training are :

(i) Verify Uses Rights : More OERs have a creative commons license. This means they are generally free to use. However there are different variations of this license. For example; certain creative commons online resources requires an attribution. This means that one must include a link or credit if one decides to use the online training content in corporate e-learning materials while others come with no copyrights attached.

(ii) Ensure that Online Resources Pass The Quality Assurance Test : Every online educational resource should first pass the Quality Assurance Test to ensure that it's factual and aligns with one’s learning objectives.

(iii) Create an OER Repository : OER should be made convenient. Employees should be able to login to the system and have immediate access to valuable online training resources. For this reason, it is wise to create an OER repository, such as a masterlist that features hyperlinks and categories. These and categories, respositories can also provide ‘moment of need’ online resources for work related tasks.

(iv) Use OERs for Inspiration : OERs should be used as an inspiration to create something better. OERs can also ideally be used to brush up on the subject matter. For e.g., if there is a need to create a task based scenario which provides real world online training experience, the steps and skills involved in the taskcan be known through OERs developed by subject matter experts.

(v) Repurpose Resources To Create Comprehensive Courses : If the creative common license specifies that one can modify the online resources repurpose the online training content to suit your needs. The resources can be tailor-made in order to align with one's goals and objectives.

(vi) Encourage Self-Guided Exploration : One of the most beneficial online training activities is self guided exploration. Employees have the opportunity to build their knowledge and skills at their own pace. Goals and needs can be focussed which allows to fill personal performance gaps. Employers can thus improve workplace productivity.

(vii) Host A Live Open Educational Resource Workshop : The two most common challenge associated with OERs in online training is lack of technical know-how. Many employees may not even know that there are OERs available which can help them improve their workplace performance. Even if they do, they may still lack the necessary tech experience to find and access these online training resources. Hence, hosting a live OER workshop or webinar seems a viable option.

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