A couple of posts ago, when rabbiting on about Wikis, I mentioned WikiEducator, which has rapidly grown to become a leader among Wikis with an educational focus. In particular, its strong refrain is a call to arms to support the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement.

Continuing on this theme, and if you’d like to know more, have a look at one of the latest CIDER sessions (emanating from Athabasca University), titled WikiEducator: A return to the traditions of the academy? It’s facilitated by the Commonwealth of Learning’s (COL) Wayne MacKintosh, who has been intimately involved with the development of WikiEducator (and who seems to have grown a beard since his COL bio pic!). 

You can access his presentation from a variety of formats; PowerPoint presentation, MP3 recording or Elluminate. If you’ve got the time, I’d recommend the Elluminate recording, as it captures the full flavour of the session, and allows you to ascertain for yourself the strengths and weaknesses of the application.

Although the bulk of the session is focussed on WikiEducator (and that’s pretty fascinating in itself), Wayne also briefly covers a few associated topics with respect to e-learning, including costs, development and the principle of self-organisation.

Specifically, as announced in the blurb for the session, it explores “(1) how the research and practice of Open Distance Learning can contribute to the success of emerging knowledge production models in the OER arena; (2) how social software is shifting the power of knowledge back to the academy where it belongs (3) and preliminary thoughts on the sustainability of peer-collaboration models of OER knowledge production.”

Yes, that sounds a bit heavy and academic, but fear not, the presentation is pretty accessible, providing insight into how and why this particular innovation has far exceeded its initial goals and expectations.

And perhaps I should leave the final word to the esteemed Sir John Daniel, President of COL, whom Wayne quotes as stating that “for my generation, the great innovation was the course team. For the next I suspect that it will be Open Educational Resources.”

Over to you!