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For the traditional course structure, it basicly consists of these parts: common organization elements for the course; course credit hour; how many people enroll in the course; the type of the course. These elements give a basic structure for online courses design.

As I am a economic major student, I try to connect everything with economic. So, I was thinking, is there any relation between open learning and economy.

As I wrote my topic 4 blog, I found that OER is more expensive than commercial material at early phase. Wiley and Hilton (2018) state at their conclusion:

“In the early days of OER adoption, research found that there are ways of adopting OER that actually cost more than using commercial materials. For example, Wiley, Hilton, Ellington, and Hall (2012) illustrate how a poorly planned print-on-demand strategy can make OER more expensive than publisher textbooks.”

According to Gallup and Pearce, no matter it is a developing country like China or developed country like U.S. Instituions are suffering from a financial pressure. Educator and instituion are finding a way to use low cost to have high quality teaching. Once we talking equity of learning, it is helpful for those students who have mental or physical disability to have whole new instrument. Then, open-source digital design 3-D printer came out. Students can use software at home and design online, they can easily get what they want. What is more, open learning in my opinion, is giving students a open thinking space. 3-D printer can print whatever they want, it has a same concept with open learning. “This study also provided preliminary evidence that educators from around the world are already embracing the use of distributed manufacturing to produce learning aids. The results show that the average learning aid evaluated in this study was downloaded over 1500 times and presumably printed as many times.”(Gallup, & Pearce, J. M. 2020)

Personal thinking

In the essay, Major (2015) states that the open course from Dave Cormier have more than two thousands of people enrolled. I was wondering, how the professor evaluate these students by traditional scale format? Use assignments? But there are more than two thousands of students, it is very hard for professor to evaluate each students assignment carefuly. By using quiz format is also inapproapriate. As it mentioned before, it is a online course. Doing quiz or exam online is easy to cheat. Although there are people who do not need this course for credit, there are still some students who use this course as a credit course. So, it is not fair to give credit to these kinds of students who shows no real efforts to this course.

When design a online courses, we need to figure out what institution we are at. There is a difference for higher educationa or young adult teach. The most important thing in my opinion is we need to figure out who is our students.

After I review these professors’ case, I found that they have some similarities. First of all, they make their sites very clear or funny for students. A clear and funny sites may attract students use them. Personally speaking, I feel stress when I need to use a boring, messy website to have a online study. Also, and I think is the most important part, is professors give a open space for students to discuss. This place can always have some amazing idea. Students who afraid face-to-face discussion may talk online. This is also the advantage for discuss online-everybody can talk at the same time.

Reference

Major, C. H. (2015). Teaching Online – A Guide to Theory, Research, and Practice. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uvic/detail.action?docID=3318874 (pp. 76-108)

Wiley, D., & Hilton III, J. L. (2018). Defining OER-Enabled Pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(4). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i4.3601

Gallup, & Pearce, J. M. (2020). The Economics of Classroom 3-D Printing of Open-Source Digital Designs of Learning Aids. Designs, 4(4), 50–. https://doi.org/10.3390/designs4040050