A Canadian instructor at our (unnamed) university was charged with developing a course on “Green computing”. He felt that it could take him up to a year to design and develop it. After discussions with OER supporters at his university, he was inspired to conduct a search for available OER covering his subject area. With a simple google search, he was able to find another Green computing course created by a professor at an Australian university. This was a complete course, and it was created in the Moodle open source learning management system, which was the same one used at the instructor’s university.
He saved the URL, and over the next few days, he was able to assess and evaluate the course and he found that it was of high quality, covering all the material that he felt was important to include in a course on green computing. He adopted the course with only minor changes and added some Canadian examples to the Australian ones. These, he sent to the Australian professor who developed the course and he is adding those. This demonstrates how OER can save time and effort for instructors who do not want to reinvent the wheel and also shows that OER courses are improved when others begin to use them.
Rory
Rory McGreal
UNESCO/COL Chair in OER
Athabasca University