| The Open Learning Network (OLnet) |
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Principal Investigators: Candace Thille and Patrick McAndrew The aims of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation's Open Educational Resources (OER) program in 2007 were stated as to: 1. Sponsor High-Quality Open Academic Content; 2. Break Down Barriers to Open Educational Content; and, 3. Encourage People Worldwide to Use Open Educational Resources. The resulting OER movement has been successful in promoting the idea that knowledge is a public good, expanding the aspirations of organizations and individuals to publish OER. The Open Learning Network (OLnet) aims to extend this cultural shift, to evaluate the impact of OER on teaching and learning and to facilitate transformative educational practices. Those aims are achieved by developing the links among the design, use and evaluation of OER. OLnet provides the infrastructure and builds capacity for a community concerned with improving OER design and applying methods for assessing robustness of OER. The approach of OLnet is to build structures and activities to nurture the growing pool of OER and associated services, developing a complementary infrastructure to investigate and report on the issues around OER deployment and evaluation. OLnet takes the opportunity to go beyond isolated, individual views of OER effectiveness, by aggregating data, sharing evaluation know-how, and mediating dialogue and debate within the community. |