Volunteer assignment:

Internet search

 

 

There is an enormous volume of educational material on the Internet that is open and free. Everything on PEOI is published giving the right to anyone to use it in any way they desire including reading, copying, printing and redistributing it. Redistribution is permitted on the condition that the source and names of authors be clearly shown on all material reproduced and that the redistribution not be for commercial purpose.

The course material that PEOI is interested in must be published with the same license to redistribute. Usually this is stated with the wording of on of the forms of Creative Commons licenses which specifically were created to overcome the restriction of copyrighted material that prohibits redistribution. In other words PEOI does not intend to steal anything. The course material that PEOI will import will be enhanced with examples, cases, assignments, review and test questions, and will be translated in several languages.

First, the potential course material must be located and recorded into PEOI's data bank of potential course to be imported. A special procedure and a data bank were created for that purpose. They are accessible once the volunteer is registered and logged in.

Almost all universities strongly encourage their faculty to place their teaching on the internet. A major reason for that is the convenience for students who missed some classes and have an easier time to catch up. Placing course outlines, assignments, test corrections and other such material online saves time for the instructor in not having to make copies and distribute them in class. The university wants to show to new college applicants that its faculty uses the latest teaching methods. For all these reasons, the amount of educational material on the Internet is very large. Naturally, not all of it is open.

As stated above, PEOI is interested only in material that is open. And, among the material that is open, only that can be incorporated into PEOI's course format. When recording a new potential course, it is therefore important to indicate with as much precision as possible what type of content is present in the course.

Some of the open educational resources were created with funding from the Hewlett Foundation. In this case, allowing redistribution of the content was made a condition for the funding. Projects that were funded that way include the open course ware (OCW) at MIT, courses at Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative (OLI), courses at Foothill College and at the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC), and many others.

Several course management systems have been created and distributed free of charge to encourage open education, such as Moodle, aTutor, Claroline and Merlot. A large number of universities have installed such course management system. Moodle produced courses, in particular can be a good source of course material to import.

 

Please bring your skills to help millions of disadvantaged students all over the world, who do not have access to traditional education because of where they live, time constraints or insufficient income. Thank you for your interest.

All tasks can be carried out from home on your own computer and at your own time. Volunteers can join in forum discussions of issues of common interest. Registration is necessary to carry out all tasks and to participate in a forum.

For more details, please write a short message indicating the project you are interested in supervising, attach a recent resume demonstrating your ability to carry out the task, and email to John Petroff listed in contact information.