This paper will describe pedagogical approaches for re-purposing an open educational resource (OER) designed and produced by the Deutsche Welle. This free online program, "Deutsch Interaktiv," consists of authentic digital videos, slideshows and audio texts and gives a contemporary overview of the culture and language in Germany, Austria…

This paper discusses challenges and opportunities arising during the development of open educational resources (OERs) to support communicative language teaching (CLT) with interactive whiteboards (IWBs). iTILT (interactive Technologies in Language Teaching), a European Lifelong Learning Project, has two main aims: (a) to promote "best…

Studies undertaken since the introduction of Web 2.0 have focussed mainly on open educational resources (OERs) such as email, blogging and virtual learning environments. No consistent efforts have been undertaken to study the use of social networking sites as a tool for learning in the second language classroom. This study examined the use of…

Digital media and open educational resources (OER) are said to redraw the boundaries between learners and teachers, by weakening the centralization of expertise and the distribution of subject-matter authority. This paper presents the findings of an ethnographic study of how the use of OER mediates the relations between self-directed learners and…

Peer grading affords a scalable and sustainable way of providing assessment and feedback to a massive student population, and has been used in massive open online courses (MOOCs) on the Coursera platform. However, currently there is little empirical evidence to support the credentials of peer grading as a learning assessment method in the MOOC…

Little research has examined the critical components of successful K-12 online schools, due in part to the theoretical focus of current frameworks on higher education rather than characteristics of K-12 online learners and environments. Using K-12 online research, this paper examined "teaching presence" as explained by the Community of…

Open educational resources (OER) are making their way into a variety of educational contexts from formal lesson planning to just in time learning. Educators and training professionals have been recognized as an important audience for these materials. The concepts of "self-efficacy" and "outcome judgment" from social cognitive…

Textbooks represent a significant portion of the overall cost of higher education in the United States. The burden of these costs is typically shouldered by students, those who support them, and the taxpayers who fund the grants and student loans which pay for textbooks. Open educational resources (OER) provide students a way to receive…

One of the claims the OER movement makes is that availability of (open) digital learning materials improves the quality of education. The promise is the ability to offer educational programs that take into account specific demands of the learner. The question is how to reach a situation where a customized demand can be met using OER with…

The past few years have seen increasingly rapid development and use of open educational resources (OER) in higher education institutions (HEIs) in developing countries. These resources are believed to be able to widen access, reduce the costs, and improve the quality of education. However, there exist several challenges that hinder the adoption…

Interaction has always been highly valued in education, especially in distance education (Moore, 1989; Anderson, 2003; Chen, 2004a; Woo & Reeves, 2007; Wang, 2013; Conrad, in press). It has been associated with motivation (Mahle, 2011; Wen-chi, et al., 2011), persistence (Tello, 2007; Joo, Lim, & Kim, 2011), deep learning (Offir, et al.,…

"The Peckham Experiment" (Innes H. Pearse and Lucy H. Crocker, Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985) is a book about the Peckham Health Centre (1935-1950), which was a scientific experiment and community centre set up to identify and foster conditions of good health for local working-class families in South London. The book was…

Read/write social technologies enable rich pedagogies that centre on sharing and constructing content but have two notable weaknesses. Firstly, beyond the safe, nurturing environment of closed groups, students participating in more or less public network- or set-oriented communities may be insecure in their knowledge and skills, leading to…

If 2012 was the year of the MOOC--massive open online course--then 2013 was the year the MOOC hype returned to Earth. Largely lost in the coverage in both years, however, was the impact MOOCs might have in high schools. Although the jury is still out on that question, high schools around the country are experimenting with adding MOOCs to their…

Today, a third of American children regularly use computer tablets, while over 40% use smartphones and 53% regularly use laptops in their home. While this is encouraging there is still considerable debate about the shape and direction technology should take in school, particularly online education making it necessary for educators to change in…