DE Oracle @ UMUC

Including Engaging Dynamic Content in WebTycho Conferences

Laddie Odom

Multimedia Producer

Center for Support of Instruction

Published: January-February 2011

Category: » Online-pedagogy » Teaching-strategies

Introduction

This article examines the benefits of using Open Educational Resources (OERs), discusses how to find dynamic content from non-educational providers and make it instructionally relevant, and reviews various methods for including dynamic OER content within the WebTycho conference area. It also links to a tutorial on how to embed objects in WebTycho conferences.

OERs and Their Benefits

According to Rawson and Thomes (2008), "OERs are any type of educational material that are freely available for teachers and students to use, adapt, share, and reuse. OERs include learning content such as videos, audio clips, images, lecture notes, reading lists, course assignments, syllabi and lesson plans, textbooks, data, instructional games, tests and quizzes, etc." Because OERs have already been developed by other people and organizations, faculty can easily incorporate them as supplements to their existing course materials and not have to bear the burden of creating the resource themselves.

Dynamic OERs can assist faculty in fostering discussion because they provide a more interactive mode of content delivery than plain text. Interactive content also helps address the needs of different learning styles. In a government-funded research report, Crook et al. (2008) documented several benefits that come from providing dynamic content in the online classroom, including that it stimulates new modes of inquiry, creates new opportunities for collaborative learning, allows students to engage with new literacies, and encourages proficiency in the publication of content. The report also indicated that faculty can encourage students to research and share relevant OERs, which can foster a sense of ownership, audience engagement, and peer assessment. In short, OERs can help the teaching and learning process in a variety of ways.

Finding OERs and Using them Appropriately

Numerous OERs are available and waiting to be used. Rawson and Thomes (2008) detail where to find them from known educational content providers and how to evaluate those resources. But OERs can be discovered in other (seemingly unlikely) places such as video hosting Web sites if faculty are willing to think outside the box. A video on one of these sites may seem self-contained, but by writing around that video and explaining why it is important (or what important ideas can be gleaned from it or how it relates to what is being discussed in class, and so on), faculty can take an otherwise non-educational stand-alone object and turn it into something that is instructionally relevant.

As an example, a search on YouTube for environmental topics turned up The Plastic Battle, a one-minute video that takes a brief look at overpackaging in children's toys. The video won a Best Green Film award from Friends of the Earth, an international organization that focuses on the environment. Although the video has no dialogue, it can make more of an impact through its visual imagery than text alone can convey. As a stand-alone video, The Plastic Battle is cute and accurately portrays the difficulty involved in opening toy packages. Faculty in an environmental management course could make this video instructionally relevant and a useful addition to course materials by placing it in a conference note, providing information that relates the video to the course materials or the discussion topic of the week, and telling the students what they should do with this video (such as discuss the problems with the packaging, offer ideas for how the packaging could have been better, relate the packaging materials to landfill issues, etc.). By taking a creative yet critical view of non-educational content and establishing instructional relevance for their students, faculty will have an even larger pool from which to find appropriate dynamic content to include in their courses.

Methods for Including OERs in WebTycho Conferences

The conference area of WebTycho is a natural space for faculty to provide engaging dynamic content to students by incorporating relevant OERs that foster discussion. Using OERs in conferences creates opportunities to provide different opinions and/or new ways of viewing and considering course material. Strategically placed OERs can help faculty focus on a specific point and make subject matter more understandable, relevant, and current. Practically speaking, the key to using OERs successfully in online conferences is to embed them within the context of the course materials.

As demonstrated below, there are three basic levels of approach to the inclusion of dynamic content, such as The Plastic Battle video mentioned earlier, within WebTycho conferences. The okay method provides a link to the OER while the better method embeds the OER using HTML tags. The best method embeds the OER within a contextual wrapper that explains how the OER relates to course content and provides instructions on how students should engage with the resource.

Okay Method: Link to the OER

The most basic method of including dynamic OER content in the online classroom is to provide a link to the OER, as demonstrated below. However, by providing a link with no context for introducing or using the OER, students may be confused as to how they should engage with the resource. In addition, providing a link that opens YouTube in a new window can be distracting to students, with the variety of other videos available for browsing and viewing.

Better Method: Embed the OER

In the example below, The Plastic Battle video from YouTube has been directly embedded into a conference note via HTML tags. Embedding OERs can help eliminate the visual distractions on external sites. Even though this method keeps students in the conference area and away from distracting external elements, they still may not know how the resource relates to their learning or how to interact with it because there is no contextual information.

Best Method: Embed the OER with Relevant Context

The best method for including dynamic content within the WebTycho conference area is demonstrated below. This method directly embeds the OER in a conference note and provides context that explains the OER’s connection to course materials and how the students should engage with the resource. By providing a framework such as this for the embedded OER, faculty can help maintain students’ interest and encourage reflection, interaction, and collaboration within conference discussions.

Keep in mind that certain content may not always fit appropriately within WebTycho. For instance, it is possible that the size of the conference frame may not readily lend itself to the size requirements of an embedded object and may force a user to scroll horizontally and/or vertically to view the entire object and its functions. In situations such as these, embedding may not be the best choice. Instead, a link to the OER will have to suffice—provided that a proper contextual wrapper is also supplied.

Finally, it is also important to note that when OERs are used in the online classroom, they should be properly cited in the appropriate format to give credit to the owner of the content. 

Conclusion 

OERs have numerous instructional benefits, and they allow faculty to deliver content in different formats that can help enhance the online learning environment. Dynamic OER content can be found in a variety of places, and it is up to the instructor to make each instance of an OER instructionally relevant. While OERs can be added to a classroom in different ways, the best way to include dynamic content in the conference area of a WebTycho classroom is by embedding it in a conference note and providing an appropriate contextual wrapper that will help engage students in the learning process.

Please view the accompanying Embedding Tutorials to help you get started on embedding objects in WebTycho's course content and conference area. 

• How to Embed a YouTube Video in a WebTycho Classroom 
  
• How to Place a Link to a Flash Movie in a WebTycho Classroom
• How to Embed a Flash Movie in a WebTycho Classroom

References 

Crook, C., Fisher, T., Graber, R., Harrison, C., & Lewin, C. (2008, September). Implementing Web 2.0 in secondary schools: Impacts, barriers and issues. Retrieved from http://partners.becta.org.uk/upload-dir/downloads/page_documents/research/web2_benefits_barriers.pdf 

Rawson, J., & Thomes, C. (2008, September-October). Open educational resources. DE Oracle @ UMUC. Retrieved from http://deoracle.org/online-pedagogy/emerging-technologies/open-educational-resources.html