OERs as a Social Platform

Peretiako-Soto, Alexandria

Cohen, A., Reisman, S.l, & Sperling, B. B. (1 October 2015). Personal spaces 
in public repositories as a facilitator for open educational resource usage.  
International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(4), 
156-176.

Summary: 

OERs are offering many benefits to educators and students as they allow for free
access to many resources. Learning object repositories are a popular means of 
sharing OERs as well as storing them and accessing them. A study was done on 
OER user behaviors such as use, commenting, learning exercises used for, and 
content building materials. Both OER collections and users are growing over time 
showing that they are becoming increasingly important and popular. There are 6 
types of contributors to the OERs studied: teachers, librarians, admins, faculty, 
students, and other. Faculty members were markedly high in uploading content as 
well as submitting learning exercises. OER repositories show high rates of reuse 
of materials, with almost 30% of content being reused. The ability for personal 
expression among repository users would be beneficial. Many repositories require
member status to upload, edit, or comment on resources, but allow anyone to view 
them.

Evaluation:

This article was very interesting as it discussed not only the relevance and benefits 
of OERs, but also the social aspect of OERs. For instance, who is uploading content? 
Who is viewing it? Are people starting educational discussions amongst each other in 
the comments? Who is allowed to comment? As someone who is fairly new to the 
world of OERs, I was not aware that there were platforms used where content users 
and generators could interact with one another.