Review and Evaluation of Online Open Educational Resources for Geosciences With Open-Source Software and Social Science Research Methods

• In Event: Expanding the Frontiers of Online Teaching and Learning

Abstract

In the development of online OER to lower the cost of textbooks, open source software and social media can extend the review and evaluation realm beyond institutions and disciplines. In a geoscience OER project sponsored by National Science Foundation and Virginia Academic Libraries Consortium, the researchers used YouTube for content dissemination with a Creative Commons License, open source software hypothes.is for review, and Twitter and Google Analytics for reaching a broader audience. These applications, along with active learning strategy integration, allowed low-cost video hosting with minimum captioning investment and cross-disciplinary review and evaluation. The narrative inquiry is anticipated to provide insights for scientists, instructional designers, and librarians in the use of social media and SEO for OER implementation and evaluation.

Authors

• Juhong Christie Liu, James Madison University

• Elizabeth Johnson, James Madison University