First of all, it is very important that the teacher is instructed on how to choose appropriate and relevant digital resources for the teaching, learning, and assessment activities, in order to facilitate and improve the entire educational process. Also, the teachers should be able to create by themselves open resources for achieving the objectives, in different pedagogical contexts (CRED 2014-2020).
When using OER for creating assessment for the students, the teacher should discover and use high-quality resources to determine the level of the students’ progress. There should be used concrete data which can offer a better support and which can be personalized for each student, according to their strengths and weaknesses, needs and interests (practices.learningaccelerator.org/problem-of-practice/how-can-i-leverage-open-educational-resources-when-planning-lessons-and-assessments-to-meet-my-students-needs-in-my-personalized-learning-class…).
The open resources are dynamic and can be personalized at any time for didactic activities. Educators now tend to use them, in order to create student-centred lessons and assessments, which offer a more active and deeper engagement of the students (ibid.). This can be done through different means, such as videos, support for language learning, simulations, webinars, comics, games, applications and so on.
When the teacher wants to evaluate the students with the help of open resources, he/she needs to ask himself/herself the following questions for which we will also try to provide answers (ibid.):
1. On which standards do you want to assess your students?
2. How do you plan to use the assessment data?
3. Can any of your current open resources meet your and students’ needs?
4. How do you determine the alignment and rigor of the assessment?
It is known that, first of all, the teacher has to know exactly what he/she is evaluating and on which standards he/she plans to assess the students. The educator should take a close look to the content he/she provided for the students and at the general and specific objectives of the discipline. The teacher has to find relevant and interesting open resources that are adapted to the students’ level and interests, so that the assessment is realized not on the principle of equality, but on the principle of equity. Some students may prefer writing to speaking or some may prefer to record themselves talking about a given topic, or to make projects and so on.
The teacher also needs to take into account the fact that the after-assessment collected data must be used in order to find solutions for the improvement of the students’ abilities, capacities, knowledge or behaviour. Of course, he/she needs to make sure that the open resources are appropriate for the educative process and that they have relevance for what it is evaluated. Furthermore, the educator need to know how to make the difference between a good resource and a bad one or between a relevant and a not so relevant one for a specific objective.
Examples of OER
We will provide some examples of the OER that can be found online. We will just enumerate them and we will provide links and some explanations where possible (libraryguides.lib.iup.edu/c.php?g=660341&p=4636709).
1. OpenCourseWare (OCW) – this is a free and online publication of different educational materials, organized as courses; the courses can be found on YouTube;
2. Learning modules – these modules are created with the help of PowerPoint and have a great impact upon the students because they can bring together texts, images, videos, charts and so on.
https://youtu.be/eQRF4EsdxMU – this is a YouTube video about how to create learning modules;
3. Open textbooks – typically they belong to the universities, but are published online, so people can have free access;
4. Streaming video – the content is sent over the Internet and people can view it in real time.
https://youtu.be/AeJzoqtuf-o
5. Open access journals – provide free, immediate and online availability of articles in the digital environment;
6. Online tutorials – provide a self study activity designed to teach a specific learning outcome;
https://youtu.be/BdliEq_0qeQ
7. Digital learning objects – can include a lesson, an activity and an assessment; the teacher can use the assessment part, in order to provide a digital type of evaluation;
https://youtu.be/E6jf71MYDII
8. Ted Talks – they can be also used even when evaluating students; the teacher can ask them to write down 10 important ideas presented in the video or to make a summary of the discussion; also, the teacher can ask the students to debate the same topic that was presented in the video;
9. www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm – where you can find a great amount of materials;
10. www.curriki.org/ – again, a place where you can find materials, blogs, articles;
11. cnx.org/ – both the teachers and the students can find here materials for many disciplines;
12. www.oercommons.org/ – this site provide help for the teachers; the materials here can easily be used for creating an assessment;
Furthermore, we would like to introduce some platforms and applications that can be used for the creation of assessments. The first one that we will talk about is Google Forms (www.google.com/forms/about/). This platform is very simple to use. You can either choose to create a form for personal or business purpose.After choosing the purpose for which you plan to create a form, you can select the type of form you like: Blank, Blank Quiz, Course evaluation, Assessment or Exit Ticket.The teacher can easily assess students using the Blank Quiz type of form and then adding questions that can have short or long answers, that can have multiple choice, checkboxes or dropdown. You can select for every question the type of answer you desire to recive.
Another platform that can be easily used for assessments is Microsoft Teams. Firstly, here you can add as many classes as you wish and as many students as needed. This platform is relevant for the evaluation activity, since it gives you the opportunity to create assignments that must be returned at a specific time. The students can also see their grade directly on the platform.
Google Classroom is another platform that can be used in order to provide digital means of evaluation and it is interesting to use. You can create assessments as well, you can insert comments and grades directly on the platform, as was the case of Microsoft Teams. As a teacher, you can always see the progress, the ones who uploaded their assignments and you can always change the grade or add new comments if it is the case.
Google Jamboard is also relevant for assessing, since the teacher can ask the students to create Jams with their observations, ideas, answers and so on. The teacher can observe how the the comprehension of a text or oral discourse (for example), how the students write in English and how developed their digital skills are.
Another interesting way to engage your students into the teaching-learning-assessment process is to use comic strips. The following site allows you to view a large number of comics. These comics can be used in the evaluation, because they have both text and images that can be exploited. The teacher can ask the students to find a new ending for a comic, to write a summary of a comic or even to create a new comic by themselves. (comics.azcentral.com/) As I mentioned above, students can create their own comics. In order to do that, they can also use the following website: www.pixton.com/.
One can also use games for evaluating students, such as the following: www.mes-games.com/plural1.php. The students will have to answer correctly (singular and plural nouns) and to win the basketball game. This is game is both fun and appropriate for assessment.
We tried to present some examples of Open Educational Resources that can help teachers to improve their educational process, especially the assessment part. They are all easy to use and free of charge. Of course, some of them require that you sign up, but some can be accessed by anyone who owns a device and has an Internet connection.
We strongly believe that the OER can be used as sources for assessments, since they attract the students’ attention and facilitate the entire process. The students will feel more free when they encounter such assessments, because OER include a great part of their daily lives, which is, of course, the technology.
Advantages and disadvantages
As we have already seen, there are lots of advantages when using Open Educational Resource for creating assessments. We consider that these OER facilitate the didactic activity, because there is no need to print papers anymore, there are no limits of downloading or using the materials, there are low costs or even no costs at all. The students are happier and more interested to use digital and open resources, because the bring together the education and the real life. They are free to express themselves through different means and to have different types of support, such as videos, images, texts or audios.
But there may be some disadvantages as well. It is known that the teacher should do a lot of research before choosing and using on open resource, since not all resources are relevant or even appropriate for a type of activity or for some students. There can also be some quality issues. The teacher will have to put some effort into adapting some of the existing resources to the classes’ needs. Also, some of the resources are created in such a way that they will not need the intervention of a teacher, so there will be a lack of human interaction (libguides.umgc.edu/c.php?g=23404&p=138771#:~:text=Advantages%20of%20using%20OERs%20include:%20expanded%20access%20to,time,%20and%20they%20can%20access%20the%20material%20repeatedly.). Of course, when using digital resources, there can appear some technological issues, such as having a bad connection to the Internet or no connection at all. Also, some students and some parents may see these open resources as being something not relevant or something synthetic. They may believe that the students will not be able to assimilate information or to develop skills through these resources. And, if they have this opinion about digital and open resources, they will certainly not agree with assessments based on them.