THE EXPERIENCE OF UNIVERSITY EDUCATION THROUGH OPEN COURSE-WARE

Francisco González-Díaz, Mª Belén Fernández-Collados, Sira Martínez-Abeledo, Alicia Rubio-Bañón, Mª Isabel Sánchez-Mora, Carmen Sánchez-Trigueros.

THE OPEN COURSE WARE:

CONTEXTUALIZATION The Open Course Ware (OCW) stems from an

international project which consists of publishing free educational resources on the net to make them available to both students and the scientific community and even to anyone interested in the subject. This project began in 2001, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

THE OPEN COURSE WARE: CONTEXTUALIZATION

As indicators of the impact and evolution of the OCW, it is worth saying that it has 40 million visits and 31 million visitors from almost every country in the world, with an average of more than a million log-on access per month.

THE OPEN COURSE WARE AND THE

UNIVERSITY OF MURCIA Murcia University joined the project through UNIVERSIA-OCW

Consortium in 2007, namely April 22, 2007. From that year, the Department for Innovation and European Convergence has promoted and supported the development of an OCW portal at the University of Murcia, which started in 2008.

THE OPEN COURSE WARE AND THE UNIVERSITY OF MURCIA

The project at the University of Murcia is coordinated by the Department for Innovation and European Convergence. This Department supports the project by giving educational and technical support by means of the Virtual Learning Coordination, the Support Groups to Electronic Teaching and to the OCW, and the Area of Information Technology (ICTA), which is responsible for the more technical aspects the project may have.

The process for being part of the OCW requires the revision of the contents to ensure the intellectual property of the resources as well as the optimization of these resources to guarantee their scientific, technical and pedagogical quality. The publication of resources is licensed under Creative Commons and is formalized with the signing of a contract between the teachers and the Rector of the University. This contract authorizes the publication and assumes responsibility for the teaching material.

THE OPEN COURSE WARE AND THE UNIVERSITY OF MURCIA

At the beginning, there were two different sources for the materials that were incorporated in the project: On the one hand, there were materials that came from the teachers who had been granted a scholarship called "Official Announcement for the Production of Materials that Foster the Development of the UMU Virtual Campus." On the other hand, there were materials that came from volunteer teachers who taught virtual courses as well as English courses. In this respect, the Vice President for Innovation and European Convergence, together with the Distance Education Unit of the Institute of Educational Sciences, developed a specific training plan for all the teachers involved in this project. They also specified the steps for the publication of materials on the OCW site of the University of Murcia:

THE OPEN COURSE WARE AND THE UNIVERSITY OF MURCIA

1. The signing of a contract between the teachers and the university agreeing to upload their subject on the net with a Creative Commons license, which means that they offer the materials to be used, reused, translated and adapted for non-commercial purposes.

2. The revision of the materials on the part of the teacher in order to:

- guarantee the intellectual property of all the information, - edit the information according to minimal criteria that ensures

its scientific, technical and pedagogical quality, and- review the structure of the materials according to the

categories established in the portal (Presentation, Program / Teacher Guide, tutorial, lecture notes, practice, exercises, projects, case studies, recommended reading, bibliography, assessment tests, and department staff).

THE OPEN COURSE WARE AND THE UNIVERSITY OF MURCIA

3. The structure of the course materials must be made by the teachers and the revision of such materials must be carried out in collaboration with the GAT (Group to Support Distance Learning) as technical support.

4. Once the entire material has been completed it would not be published until a committee, appointed by the Department of Innovation and European Convergence, and a Virtual Learning Coordinator reviews it.

5. After the committee has evaluated and approved the materials, they would be published on the OCW site by Attica.

6. Teachers will get € 1,000 of financial aid, whose expenditure will be managed by the Office of the European Convergence. Teachers will also be credited for their participation in the OCW project of the University of Murcia.

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE COURSE THEORY OF COLLECTIVE NEGOTIATION IN THE

OPEN COURSE WARE After the first experience of publishing content on the

OCW at the Universidad de Murcia, the Department for Innovation and European Convergence announced a new initiative for 2008-2009: different types of grants to promote the publication of content on the OCW site. This official announcement was part of the actions that appear in the Agreement between the Autonomous Community of Murcia and the University for the academic year 2008/09, published by the rector R-41/2009 Resolution, and dated February 2 University of Murcia. In the announcement there were offered grants to promote the publication of free resources on the website Open Course Ware of the University of Murcia for the year 2008/2009.

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE COURSE THEORY OF COLLECTIVE NEGOTIATION IN THE OPEN COURSE WARE

The official announcement had a total amount of 22,000 euros, and each applicant would be granted a maximum of € 500. With this initiative it was intended "to promote the portal OCW Universidad de Murcia encouraging the participation of teachers that use multimedia digital materials of quality, both from the technical and the educational points of view. In order to do that, the official announcement offers both technical and economic support to teachers to improve or make the most of such resources."

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE COURSE THEORY OF COLLECTIVE NEGOTIATION IN THE OPEN COURSE WARE

The requirements that the digital material to be produced should meet were:

"1. It has to be multimedia material, which means that the material includes not only text but also other visual, audio or audiovisual elements, as well as any helpful resource to promote student learning (manuals, tutorials, activities, self-tests or evaluation, etc.).

2. It has to include hypertext content, i.e., interconnected content to promote interactivity.

3. It should include external links to facilitate navigation on the network from a perspective of open and flexible material. That is, it should include references to documents and network resources, such as documents, specialized portals, electronic journals, databases, etc.

4. It must include navigation guides and information to help the users to understand the layout of the information included and move easily through it.

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE COURSE THEORY OF COLLECTIVE NEGOTIATION IN THE OPEN COURSE WARE

After presenting the proposal for the open publication of contents in the so-called OCW web site from the University of Murcia about the course Theory of Collective Negotiation in the Bachelor of Science of Labor, the grant was finally given and the course was published on the web.

Therefore, the course Theory of Collective Negotiation is posted on the OCW site of the University of Murcia http://ocw.um.es/cc.-juridicas/teoria-de-la-negociacion-colectiva

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE COURSE THEORY OF COLLECTIVE NEGOTIATION IN THE OPEN COURSE WARE

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE COURSE THEORY OF COLLECTIVE NEGOTIATION IN THE OPEN COURSE WARE

As it is indicated in the slide, the contents are divided into eight sections: 1. - Theory of Collective Negotiation (2009) Home:Which specifies the specific aspects of the course: degree to which it belongs,

name of the course; code assigned, year, type of course, LRU and ECTS credits, duration, and language that is taught.

In addition, on the web it is also indicated the prerequisites and recommended prior knowledge students might have to enroll the course, a general description of the course, as well as objectives, knowledge and skills it is intended that the student acquires by the end of the course.

2. - Program: provides an outline which shows the specific agenda of the subject.

3. - Class Materials: They are sort out according to the program. Every theoretical topic of the course can be found in the attached document together with the practices students have to complete throughout the academic year.

THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE COURSE THEORY OF COLLECTIVE NEGOTIATION IN THE OPEN COURSE WARE

4. - Other resources: Users can download a series of documents of interest to complement the theoretical and practical matters of the course.

5. - Bibliography: 6. - Assessment Test: a model can be seen on the

web. 7. - Evaluation: This section specifies the criteria for

evaluation and clarifies the skills that students must acquire. It therefore includes the evaluation criteria and weighted average mark for the final evaluation.

8. - Department Staff: finally the information related to the teacher is shown.

CONCLUSIONS

The mere publication of a subject on the OCW web site does not make a course on-line. However, the teaching of a course posted on this website or any other, helped by a virtual support as the virtual campus of the University of Murcia, means an interesting experience which is halfway between on-line teaching and face-to-face teaching. This form of teaching facilitates the process of learning both to students who can attend regular on campus classes as well as those who are unable to attend. In fact, the final evaluation results from the 2008/2009 academic year saw a considerable improvement, and the evaluation of the teaching of the course showed that students were much more satisfied with the faculty and with the methodology used in the learning process. Furthermore, students pointed out that one of the strengths during that academic year was the publication of the course on the OCW web site.