Open Educational Resources and the University: Law, Technology, and Magical Thinking

Online Teaching Tool Simplifies Faculty Use of Multimedia and Improves Student Interest and Knowledge in Science

“…Open-ended comments from the surveys led to the development of an attractive and engaging home page for launching OMTT, the creation of a completely open access non-log-in pathway to instructional chapters, the use of bullets to describe each instructional component or asset, the adaptation of YouTube for more rapid video streaming (Figures 1 and 6 ), and the development of chapter quizzes for each chapter. Access to the OMTT was modeled after the approach taken by the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University ( http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/index.php ) and other universities where students and faculty can use courses with or without registration ( Centivany and Glushko, 2010 ). An important feature of the OMTT, however, is that faculty and students are the target audience.…”

“…We were able to achieve this goal for an entire semester's worth of neuroscience curriculum by soliciting collaboration with developers of digital resources via email and, with their agreement, citation of each asset placed in the OMTT in Neuroscience. These steps were taken to ensure the OMTT complied with copyright issues ( Centivany and Glushko, 2010 ). Online readings from primary literature are also provided, and comply with copyright issues by using links to locations for these articles within publishers’ websites.…”