A return to the core values of education?

Sharing knowledge freely with OER

Dear [First Name]Welcome to Session 1: Why does open matter?Please consult the course schedule on the syllabus page for an overview of this session.If you have just joined us, you will find instructions on the course site for getting started, which provides advice on what you need to do to set up your online learning environment.

Recap

We hope that you found the introductory instructions useful for setting up your personal learning environment.By now you should have:

• familiarised yourself with the layout of the course site 
• reviewed the course guide 
• set up your accounts on: Forums, Mastodon and Moodle
• completed the Scavenger hunt challenge
• completed the optional Fair and Reasonable Practice Survey

This session: Why does open matter?

In this session, you will reflect on teaching as a vocation or profession, consider the meaning of ‘fair and reasonable’ sharing of educational resources, and join in a thought experiment to generate ideas for supporting OER development in your country.Visit the Syllabus page for an overview of Session 1.To get started: first, work your way through:

• the learning materials and activities ; and
• then complete the social media thought experiment challenge .

Weekly online support webinars

Please note that we have scheduled three online webinars — one for each week of the June 2025 course offering — taking place “midweek” on Mondays.

We invite you to post any advance questions you’d like the facilitator to address during the webinar. If you can’t attend live, you’re still encouraged to post questions, as all sessions will be recorded and available for viewing at your convenience.

For more information on links and times of the sessions, please visit the Webinars page.

Need help?

If you need course specific help, post your questions on the DS4OERS general forum.Remember to include the url of the page where you are having problems.Let's leverage the power of peer-learning by helping each other. If you know the answer to a question in the forum, please share your knowledge by posting a response to assist others.Bear in mind that as an international course, academic volunteers helping out on the course may be in a different time zone and could be sleeping when you post a question.We hope you enjoy your digital learning experience and make the most of this opportunity to help you achieve your goals.Best wishes
Your DS4OERS Facilitation team.