Education

Workgroup 1: Online resources

1- Address human rights “to” and “in” education by Open Educational Resources (OER) and online learning, is it possible? Examine the advantages proposed, their educational implications and the consequences to people and governments everywhere.
The education is considered a human right so it is important that everybody can access to it. It does not matter theage, gender, race or economic status.
Our group thinks that it is possible to reach the human right “to’’ and “in” online learning education because, the fact of having internet resources, makes that everybody can obtain the necessary knowledge.
On one hand, Open Educational Resources (OER) and online learning permits students all over the world to access education. Some advantages of onlineresources could be from the accessibility, availability, acceptability and adaptability of education. Online resources give a good accessibility for disabled people, because the courses are offered in any time and geographic situation; you can access to your online course (or whatever) wherever and whenever you please. This way of education guarantees the access free of obstacles for students withphysical, economic, administrative, gender or socio-cultural problems. Most schools also try to adapt the education to all students, including people with all kind of disabilities.
The education is a public good and with OER is funded as a public service, this help to equalize the access to knowledge and educational opportunities throughout the world. The resources are free and for everybody, andthey include open content.
Another advantage using online education resources is for those people who have a busy life (working a lot of hours per day…), because it is more practical; you have your own timetable so you can organize your time in the best way.
On the other hand, this method of learning doesn’t have many disadvantages to consider. It is almost a positive method for many students, andit is working and growing. One disadvantage is the four-year residential market has been resistant to this innovation.
Another one is that many studies indicate that higher interaction, engagement, access to materials and use of different assessment methods like discussions and team work, are factors which lead to improvement in quality of education.
Also, other authors have created softwarethat can translate the work done in different languages. So this could be an option useful for any learner. But the universities or institutions have to guarantee with a certification the right level of translation about the work.
Talking about online learning in Spain, for instance, one of the main problem or difficulty could be the language. Any original work has to be translated into Spanishlanguage or any language that is the local language in some communities. That means, that on one hand any author who has bought a license can translate it into the local language of our country, but with the author permission.
Let us explain this. Well, there are four ways to change the material in order to make it adaptable.
The first one is “Reuse”. It has to be used as you found it.
Thesecond one is “Rework”. You can change in a way that suits your needs.
The third one is “Remix”. You can change with other work to accomplish your needs.
And the fourth one is “Redistribute”. You can share the original work with the reworked one or remixed work with other works.

However, the original authors are the ones who are legally controlling these four ways of adaptation by the copyrightof their work. For that reason it is very difficult to achieve the 4 A’s as I said before.

Coming to an end, not always students had the power of choosing their future in terms of jobs. But the Open Educational Resources gives them the opportunity of improving their knowledge’s by an online education. In our opinion, these institutions let students find another way to achieve their dream job....