Enhancing Capacity UPRTOU Teachers on Content Development Using OER

Higher Education Institutions, as they look to enhance the quality of educational delivery and increase the number of student uptake, find it best to integrate open educational resources for the teaching and learning process as a strategic option. The need of the hour is to create new ways of teaching and to develop futuristic technical skills set among the teachers who in turn mentor and guide learners. Open Educational Resources (OER) offers enormous benefits as this support the learners in their day-to-day learning. OER offer cost-effective methods of expanding curricula and customizing the learning experiences for individual learners.

Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) a regional centre of Commonwealth of Learning (COL) supports ODL institutions to enhance capacity for quality distance and digital education. In this regard, COL-CEMCA organized a three-day capacity building workshop for the academics and staff of the U P Rajarshi Tandon Open University, Prayagraj on Content Development Using OER from 19 th July to 21 st July 2022. A total of 44 faculty members of different schools/departments who are responsible for developing various courses/programmes offered by the University participated in the workshop.

Professor Omji Gupta, Director, School of Management Studies, U P Rajarshi Tandon Open University (UPRTOU) delivered the inaugural address. In his address, he highlighted the role of OER in Distance Education and the need for implementing UPRTOU’s OER policy. Dr. R. J. Maurya, Programme Coordinator proposed the details of the programme, its needs and objectives, and how the workshop was aimed at fulfilling UPRTOU’s institutional goal.

Dr. Barnali Roy Chaudhury from Netaji Subhas Open University (NSOU), Kolkata, as a resource person, led the three-day long training workshop by providing ample source material to help understand the concept of OER and other related issues. She offered hands-on learning experiences for each of the participants to engage with Open Educational Resources (OER) and exploit the resources held on important websites. She also explained various search techniques for identifying appropriate OER and trained the participants in sourcing, remixing, and contextualizing learning material for use as per their requirements. The workshop was marked with hands-on training activities and the participants worked in four groups according to their subjects/disciplines to create OER. The participants prepared a unit for their respective courses/subjects using the template for course design using OER. It was also discussed during the sessions how the faculty members themselves can take the help of open-source tools to publish their content with open licensing such as the creative commons (CC) licenses for the material they have developed. The participants got exposed to various institutional OER repositories and were also given stimuli to contribute to their own institutional repository.