By
HSU Team (Sigrid Hartong & Ina Sander)
🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: hier lesen
Over the past months, the ETH-TECH team had intensively worked to create and continuously improve the Open Educational Resources (OERs). Now, we were excited to test and evaluate the OERs for the first time with a large audience consisting of colleagues and students from various countries. The 2-hour online session was scheduled on February 24, organized by the HSU ETH-TECH team (Sigrid and Ina). During the session, participants had the opportunity to explore an OER of their choice and reflect on it in small groups. The goal was to gather comprehensive feedback on the OERs once again, but also to evaluate how the OERs function in a real-world (online) application scenario.
A total of 54 participants from 8 countries attended the event. First, participants received a brief overview of the project and were able to provide insights into their context via an interactive survey. They then gained insights into the current status of the meta-OER, as well as the design principles and process behind the OERs (see BLOG STORY). The participants then split into breakout sessions, which the ETH-TECH team facilitated in both English and Italian. Since OER1 and OER2 were the most advanced in their development at the time of the event, the breakout sessions focused on these two OERs, while OER3 was limited to a presentation of its current state.
Within the small groups, participants were able to browse through the respective OER wordpress sites and download the OER materials. The interactive OER tutorial was also presented to the participants. Following this, the OER activities were carried out in a condensed form within the group. During this activity and afterwards, participants had the opportunity to provide feedback on the OERs via an online tool. The feedback was reviewed and discussed during a joint closing session of the event.
Overall, it became clear that the OERs were very well received in terms of their basic design, and many participants could easily envision using them in their own higher education settings. At the same time, the participants once again offered diverse perspectives, which greatly helped us to critically reflect on the design needs and usage challenges of the OERs. In this context, many participants contributed promising ideas on how the OERs could be further improved and adapted for broader applicability.
Following the event, another testing session was held in early March by our practice partner MED. With a large group of pre-service teachers, OER materials were presented here as well, and important feedback was gathered, here specifically focusing the specific context of OER usage in school contexts.
In the coming weeks, the ETH-TECH team will process the extensive feedback before the OERs are finally published. Stay tuned!
Leave a Reply