Introduction to open education

Despite my new status as a graduate, I’m taking a class this semester, IPT 692R: Introduction to Open Education, taught by David Wiley at BYU. Obviously, he practices what he preaches – this course is available to me (and you, and anyone else) for free. While plenty of free educational materials are available on the web, I have never before seen a course that a professor was actively teaching unpaid students for free. Even if you are not interested in participating in the course, the first lecture is interesting and a good introduction to open content. And if you are interested in participating, why not sign up and join us?

One more selling point for the class, in case free isn’t doing anything for you: it’s set up like a role-playing game. You choose a character class (I want to be a bard!), perform quests, and earn experience points to level up. If you’re not geeking out with enthusiasm yet, I can’t help you.

I haven’t done my first assignment yet (give me a break – the class just started yesterday!), but I have a blog set up for the purpose of posting coursework. For my first post, I’ll be reading the OER Handbook for Educators and writing about it. I haven’t gotten very far into it yet, but it looks incredibly relevant to what I want to do with this website, which is publish my teaching materials in an open, accessible way.