Production of Educational Materials

The aim of this course is to teach students about the tools and mechanisms to develope the best possible open education materials that would fit user needs and requirements on one side and provide quality learning experience on the other.

Student will acquire the following competencies:

• Train authors to draw up educational materials upon a thorough undersdtanding of the intertwining of technollogical aspects with didactic, methodological and pedagogical aspects;

• Understand basic concepts, know specific tools and IT envioronments for production of educational materials;

• Produce open educational materials of good quality by mastering selected tools;

• Analyze and select the most appropraite tool for a concrete challenges of open learning.

Students should have the basic understanding of the concepts, staregies and didactical models of open education. They should be familiar with the basic tools and mechanisms that can be used in the process of creation learning experiences including content, communication, collaborative work, assesment and analytics and should be prepared to work in interdisciplinary teams.

During the course students will be learning about the basics of the open education material development. During the lectures they will ex-plore the theoretical background of methods being used in OE and OL, models, strategies, tools and approaches.

They will be exploring in detail tools and ap-proaches for content generation, collaborative work and learning, communication, assessment and learning management.

They will explore in detail various tools to han-dle different content modalities from texts, sound to videos, interactive materials and com-plete courses like MOOCs. Special attention will be given to tools and mechanisms to manage complete learning systems and provide person-alised learning experiences.

There will be a lot of emphasis on hands-on practice, so as to combine deep knowledge about essential topics on the instructional de-sign with developing actual skills of using them. The following topics will be explored in more detail:

1) Audience Participation
2) Audio / Sound Design / Podcast: Rec-ord/Edit
3) Course Reserve Technologies
4) Faculty Web Sites / Class Blogs
5) Geo Spatial Technology / Mashup
6) High Performance, Clustered Computing
7) Learning Management System
8) Lecture Capture / Blended Learning
9) Mobile Learning
10) Image Creation/Editing
11) Presentation
12) Create Voice Over Video or Screen cap-ture
13) Publish Streaming Video & Audio materi-als
14) Scanning / Optical Mark Recognition (OMR Grading)
15) On-Demand Technology Training for Fac-ulty & Students
16) Video Production: Record/Edit
17) Web 2.0 / Task & Collaboration Oriented Tools
18) Web Conferencing / Virtual Office / Re-mote Training / Live Webcast

After completing this course, students will:

• Understand and master the landscape of the tools to develope and manage OE and OL

• Be able to analyse and select the most appropriate tools and mechanisms for OE and OL

• Be able to work with most of the tools and understand their prons and cons

• Be able to distinguish between good and bad production of learning materials

• Reflect on personal performance in terms of quality and attractivenes of the open education materials

• Kathryn E. Linder. The Blended Course Design Workbook: A Practical Guide. Workbook, 2016
• Oliver Broadbent, Ed McCann. Development of e-learning resources - A good practice guide. Royal Academy of Engineering 2016
• Deakin Learning Futures Teaching Development Team. Using audio and video for educational purposes. 2014
• Jason B. Ohler. Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning, and Creativity. Corwin Press, 2013 E-version
• Opening up Slovenia. (2016). E-version
• Orlič, D. (2008). Andragoška spoznanja, 14(3–4), 5–6. E-version

• Interim presentations • Final presentation • Final Report

Veronika Dolar has a Ph.D. in economics and has over 17 years of experiences in the field of education. She has been teaching at numerous universities and colleges in the United States including University of Minnesota and St. Olaf College in Minnesota, at Cleveland State Uni-versity, Kent State University, and Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, at Long Island University, and State University Of New York (SUNY) at Old Westbury College in New York where she is employed as an Assistant Professor. She collaborates with the University of No-va Gorica as Adjunct Professor. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in the field of economic education. She has received teaching awards and in May 2020 she became the winner of the SUNY Effective Online Practices Award Program for the project titled Use of PhotoVoice Project in Urban Economics. In addition, she is extremely involved with the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. She was asked to serve at the SUNY OER Advisory Council and was a SUNY OER Faculty Champion. She is currently a co-chair of the Ad Hoc OER Faculty Committee at SUNY Old Westbury. Professor Dolar received Crea-tive Commons Certificate for Educators Course and participated in Pedagogy Foundation Fel-lowship, focused on weekly reflection within a collaborative space to explore and implement evidence-based instructional practices using OER within Faculty Guild’s professional devel-opment platform. Professor Dolar is an active member of Creative Commons Global Network, Creative Commons Open Education Platform, and Open SUNY Online Teaching Community. She has also given numerous lectures and presentations on the teaching and learning with Open Educational Resources and about application of the open pedagogy. She has also partic-ipated, first as developed, and later as a mentor at the Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) – online international mentoring program.

Selected bibliography:

• Dolar, V. (2019). Online Open Educational Resources (OER) Course: Environmental and Health Concerns in Food Consumption and Production, Open Education for a Better World under UNESCO’s auspices

• Dolar, V. (2018). Nutrition, calories, and food prices. SUNY Open Assessment Anthology, 2018.

• Dolar, V. (2018). Does Instant Feedback on Online Homework Assignments Improve Student Learning in Introductory Economics Classes?, Journal of Economics and Economic Education Research, 19(2), 1-15.

• Isoldi, K., & Dolar V. (2016). Chapter 11: Blending Better Beverage Options: A Nutrition Education and Experiential Workshop for Youths, In Areej Hassan (Ed.), Pediatric Behavioral Nutrition Factors: Environment, Education, and Self-Regulation, Apple Academic Press.

• Dolar, V. (2016). Are we Teaching Outside the Box? A National Survey on Teaching Minimum Wage in Undergraduate Economics Classes, Forum for Social Economics.

• Isoldi, K., & Dolar V. (2016). Cooking Up Energy®: Improvements Following Participation in an Afterschool Cooking and Nutrition Education Program, American Journal of Health Behavior, 40(5), 634-644.

• Buttet, S., & Dolar, V. (2014). Design and Use of Rubrics in Undergraduate Economics Classes. Perspectives on Economic Education Research, 9(1), 36-55.

• Dolar, V. (2013). The Treatment of Minimum Wage in Undergraduate Economics Textbooks Revisited. International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, 4(2), 157-182.