Throughout the Open Math-Open Resources: Engage Adult Learners for 21st Century Skills online course, participants are challenged to identify appropriate OER to enhance a specific math lesson that they develop for use in their classrooms or in their professional learning community (PLC). Each participant collects, evaluates, and shares their OER, as well as their lesson plan goals and OER goals for that plan. They provide feedback to one another along the way to help support their colleagues in the course.
Participants continue to meet the expectations of the course, yet one challenge I continue to observe in this process is how to use the OER as more than supplemental resources or extended practice. Most of us are becoming more comfortable teaching the content with visual models and small group or partnered work, which is fantastic. However, there still is a tendency for us to seek out OER that serve more as instructional support than primary instruction. I wonder if there is something we’re missing in our online course design that can help us to emphasize and demonstrate the complete range of use of OER in our instructional strategies.
What do you think?
Heidi