Integrating OER in renewable assessment

Objectives of the activity

• Engage students in authentic assessment 
• Maximise the outcomes from assessment 
• Raise awareness of the value of open educational resources in learning and teaching

How to develop a renewable assessment

The process of integrating OER in assessment design requires some changes to an existing assessment. However, we found that the assessment redesign doesn’t require change of the learning objectives.

Original assignment task (15% of final grade)

Read two books from the Assignment 1 Booklist. Create a Venn diagram depicting the similarities and differences that emerge as you compare the ideas in the two books. Include a focus on communication and learning, language, culture, belonging to and exclusion from a group, religion, traditions and values, socioeconomic and linguistic background, relationships, and formal and informal learning.

Even though students enjoyed the original assessment task, there were a few issues: 

• Some students could not access the books that were required.
• Students engaged at a surface level with the issues they were asked to focus on.
• There was evidence of plagiarism: Some students copied their Venn diagrams.

Step 1: Start with the learning objective of the assessment task

Critically analyse and discuss the impact of language, culture, cultural identity and linguistic background on communication and learning, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners (Australian Professional Standards for Teachers [APST] 1.4).

Step 2: Rewrite assessment task 

Using the six learning activities design, collect, reuse, package, license and publish from in the OER development model, the subject coordinator explicitly included the specific tasks students are required to do while rewriting the new assessment. The new assessment was described to students as in the following:

Renewable assignment task (15% of final grade)

Students were asked to create two digital professional learning activities or resources responding to early years educators’ professional concerns (using a list provided by the course coordinator). For each professional learning resource students were required to add a separate digital file in which they provide clear instructions, explain why the activity or resource is an appropriate response to the educators’ concern and how it contributes to reconciliation and/or intercultural communication and list links to guiding documents.

Step 3: Developing a rubric using the evaluation criteria 

The evaluation instrument that can used to assess the fitness of student-generated learning resources to OER includes: 

Technical: assesses the proper illustration of using features of content authoring software tools to deliver functional learning resources. The criteria also evaluate the design and presentation, and the reusability of the learning resource. 

Openness: the learning resource is flexible to be retained, reused, revised, remixed and redistributed. The criterion also requires the availability of learning resources under an open publishing licence, searchability by other learners and currency.

Educational: This criterion evaluates the accuracy of the learning contents and supporting material such as exercises, clarity of structure and learning objectives, alignment of content to learning objective and well referenced.

Step 4: Supporting students through the development of OER

Offering students adequate technical workshops to raise their awareness of OER and upskill them in the use of content authoring tools. In this case study, the course coordinator required students to use Google Docs as this tool allows for flexible collaboration between the students and the course coordinator. Other tools that can be used include WordPress and H5P.

Step 5: Publishing student-generated OER

In the end, students publish their educational resources using Creative Commons licenses via an institutional open repository or existing OER repositories. In this case study, the outcomes of student renewable assessments were published as open textbooks using the PressBooks platform. The following resources were generated from implementing this assessment:

• Gems and Nuggets
• Hidden treasures

• 

• 

Tips

Use this interactive H5P module to go through the steps to create your assessment components.

Suitable for

• Project-based learning
• Renewable assessments
• Work integrated learning
• Small cohort

Time required

Build	Assess
1 hour	30 min per submission

What tools you can use

Authoring tools

MS Word or Google Docs (non-UTS)

Publishing platforms

• Pressbooks (non-UTS)
• OERCommons

Download an example

Example for UTS users. Please import/download from Canvas Commons

Example for users outside of UTS. Please download from Canvas Commons public folder, then import it into your Canvas site.

What research tells us

In every academic semester, students generate a surplus of assignments in different disciplines. Some of the assignments are repurposed, however, the majority are rarely utilised, rather they get archived for a few years and eventually thrown away. Further, Tualaulelei (2020) has argued that there is a lack of integrating renewable assessments in learning and teaching. This abundance of knowledge production comes in a variable quality and often can be repurposed. In 2010, Clay Shirky coined the term ‘cognitive surplus’, in which he describes the creativity and generosity that online communities create as a result of collective intelligence and collaboration with the driving force of intrinsic motives.

The massive number of assignments generated by students can be described as “learning surplus”.

In this case study resource, we suggest that by tapping into the surplus inside classrooms, students and academics can create value for themselves and the community. This resource presents an example of utilising the Open Educational Resources (OER) development model (Fatayer, 20216) that taps into students’ assignments and repurposes the abundance of knowledge inside classrooms in order to create open resources that benefit other learners.

References

Fatayer, M. M. (2016). Towards a sustainable open educational resources development model: Tapping into the cognitive surplus of student-generated content. Western Sydney University.

Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. Penguin Press.

Tualaulelei, E. (2020). The benefits of creating open educational resources as assessment in an online education course. In ASCILITE 2020 Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, Armidale University of New England Virtual Conference 30 November–1 December 2020 Conference Proceedings (pp. 282-288).

Citation and attribution

Fatayer, M., Tualaulelei, E. (2022). “A case study: 5 steps for integrating the OER in renewable assessment”’ in Adaptable Resources for Teaching with Technology, LX.Lab, Institute for Interactive Media & Learning, University of Technology, Sydney. 

“A case study: 5 steps for integrating the OER in renewable assessment” by Mais Fatayer and Eseta Tualaulelei, availble from The Adaptable Resources for Teaching with Technology collection, LX.Lab, Institute for Interactive Media & Learning, University of Technology, Sydney under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.