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OER glossary

From OER_Wiki

Use this space to create a glossary of terms, abbreviations, acronyms and other jargon that have been used in the UNESCO community discussions on Open Educational Resources (OER).

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[edit] A

Attribution (BY): Creative Commons license condition that allows others to copy, distribute, display and perform a copyrighted work - and derivative works based upon it - but only if they give credit to the original author.

Attribution restriction: The original author(s) or producer(s) of content licensed under a Creative Commons license, as well as the author(s) or producer(s) of derived works, must be acknowledged and given credit for their contribution.

[edit] C

Careo

Collaborative Learning

CMS: Content Management System, or Course Management System

Connexions

Copyleft restriction: If a creative work carrying this restriction is altered, transformed, or built upon in any way, resulting work may only be distributed under an identical license that includes this restriction. Copyleft is a generational protection of Attribution-ShareAlike. Copyleft means that anyone who changes a work must give the changes back under the same license. It also means that the changes are made known.

CSS: Cascading Style Sheets - a World Wide Web Consortium-endorsed style sheet format for HTML documents (web pages) that gives site developers and users more control over how pages are displayed. Using CSS, developers can create formatting and layout for a web site independently of its content.

[edit] D

Developing Country: For now see Wikipedia article ...

Distributed Learning Environment

DRM: Digital Rights Management

[edit] E

EFA: Education for All. An ambitious international movement that aims to meet the learning needs of all children, youth and adults by 2015. For more information see the UNESCO Education Sector's webpages on EFA.

Educational: Defining “educational” raises the question as to whether it only refers to materials produced in formal educational settings and for the purpose of formal educational settings. If the latter applies, several institutions providing formal courses and other informal training processes will be excluded. Downes (2006) argues that it should not be a priority to stipulate that a resource is educational, as learning extends beyond formal setting and resources.; It is therefore better to stuck to the purpose of OER – to enhance learning that enables the development of the individual as well as social capabilities. OER can therefore be used in formal and non-formal learning and/or development opportunities. OER is not only applicable in formal educational settings – the focus is therefore not necessarily on education as such, but rather on learning!!

[edit] F

FLOCUS: Free Learning and Open Contents - Universal Sharable

FLOSS: Free/Libre Open Source Software

Free Learning

FLOSSE: Free/Libre Open Source Software for Education

FORE: Free and Open Resources for Education

[edit] G

GEM

Granularity: The size of an educational resource. The more granular a resource, the smaller the chunk of information it contains. For example, a single learning object, such as a graphic used in a lecture or for class teaching is more granular than a complete course presented in a format which prevents its being broken down.

[edit] I

IANAL: I am not a lawyer. Discussion participants often start posts on copyright, intellectual property and licensing with this acronym.

IIEP: International Institute for Educational Planning. IIEP is a semi-autonomous institute of UNESCO, established in 1967, with a mandate to help strengthen the capacity of UNESCO's Member States to plan and manage their education systems. For more information, see the IIEP website. The Community of Interest on Open Educational Resources was created, and is supported, by IIEP.

IMS: IMS Global Learning Consortium is a global, nonprofit, member association that provides leadership in shaping and growing the learning and educational technology industries through collaborative support of standards, innovation, best practice and recognition of superior learning impact.

IMS CC: The Common Cartridge harnesses a variety of IMS specifications addressing content packaging, assessment,and integration with third-party tools. These are augmented with IEEE LOM for metadata and support for SCORM 2004. With support from the user community, CMS suppliers, and the publishing industry, it defines the format for learning content for the 21st century. A widely adopted Common Cartridge will bring the following benefits to vendors and consumers in the e-Learning community:; 1. Content providers (encompassing both commercial publishers and the open content community), will benefit from substantially reduced production, testing and distribution costs.; 2. Education and training providers will benefit from the broader choice of content on offer and being able to mix-and-match content from different sources.; 3. LMS providers will benefit from a broader complement of content for their platform and reduced production and testing costs.

IMS CP: The IMS Content Packaging Specification provides the functionality to describe and package learning materials, such as an individual course or a collection of courses, into interoperable, distributable packages. Content Packaging addresses the description, structure, and location of online learning materials and the definition of some particular content types.

The Content Packaging Specification is aimed primarily at content producers, learning management system vendors, computing platform vendors, and learning service providers. Learning materials described and packaged using the IMS Content Packaging XML format should be interoperable with any tool that supports the Specification. Content creators can develop and distribute material knowing that it can be delivered on any compliant system, thereby protecting their investment in rich content development.

IPR: Intellectual Property Rights

IRC: Internet Relay Chat - a system that allows Internet users to conduct online, text-based conversations with one or more other users in real time.

[edit] J

Joomla

[edit] K

K-12: ...

[edit] L

LDC: ...

Libre Resource: A resource (e.g. image, video, module, course, etc.) which is available for free (as in freedom) use, modification and sharing. See Libre Knowledge.

LMS: Learning Management System

Learning Object: A digital resource that can be reused to mediate learning (David Wiley).

Localisation (l10n)

Distinguish "localisation" from translation and recontextualisation. Localisation has taken on a broader meaning in OER conversations than its common use in the software development community. For the latter it refers to automatic (programmatic) adaptations

of a user interface to match the user's preferred (or system active) locale including, for example, date formats, currencies, images, colour themes, screen layout, text elements (such as titles, user prompts and other information displayed in the user's selected language), etc.

In the OER community, "localisation" also includes more significant modification (by humans) of learning material to be more understandable in the context of the learners.

For example, changing references to "the London bus" to more locally familiar modes of transport,

etc.

LOM

[edit] M

MDG
Millennium Development Goals: For now see Wikipedia article ....

Merlot

MIT

Moodle: An open source course management system (CMS) designed to help educators create online courses and learning communities. For more information see the project website.

[edit] N

No Derivative Works (ND): Creative Commons license condition that lets others copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of a creative work, not derivative works based on it.

Noncommercial (NC): Creative Commons license condition that allows others to copy, distribute, display and perform a creative work - and derivative works based on it - but for non-commercial purposes only.

[edit] O

OCW: OpenCourseWare

ODF: Open Document Format

OECD: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

OER: Open Educational Resources

OLPC: One Laptop Per Child

Open Access

Open: Open refers to the principle of openness, implying that it is freely available on the internet, and secondly it refers to the fact that there are as few legal, technical and price restrictions as possible (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, 2007).; According to Tuomi (2006) oppenness impacts on two domains/areas, underpinned by technical and social characteristics.

    •	In the social domain, openness refers to the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.
    •	Openness in the technical domain is motivated by technical interoperability and functionality, implying that software has the capacity to function and/or link to proprietary systems.  Open source systems break the boundaries by moving beyond inter-operable modules – source developers may therefore make modifications across systems boundaries.

Openness refers to the user’s capacity to change, run, duplicate, improve and copy the resource – the user therefore has the freedom to modify and apply the resource in his/her context.

Open Source library

OSS: Open Source Software

[edit] P

PLE: Personal Learning Environment

[edit] Q

[edit] R

RSS: Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication is a format used to aggregate and distribute short descriptions of web content (e.g. news headlines or blog posts), together with a link to the full version of the content.

Resources: Resources are defined as supplies/materials/assets that is used to function effectively. It is important to note that resources in an educational context includes a wide array of supplies and materials, as learners do not necessarily learn and develop within formal educational settings and may therefore make use of various types of materials and sources for learning.; Teachers view educational resources as follows (Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, 2007):; “anything that can be used to organise and support learning experiences”. In the context of computer-aided teaching and learning, resources are often understood as learning content that can be stored in a digital repository as a text, audio or video file. This view might in some cases be problematic, such as when different kinds of social software are used for discussions, cooperation and help and advice as part of the learning process. In such cases it is the flow or the automatically generated service rather than the stock that constitutes the source of learning.”

[edit] S

SCORM: Sharable Content Object Reference Model - a collection of specifications that enables interoperability, accessibility and reusability of web-based learning content.

Scout

Share Alike (SA): Creative Commons license condition that allows others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.

Social Software

[edit] T

Teachers Without Borders

[edit] U

UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. For information about the Organization, see the About UNESCO page from the UNESCO portal.

[edit] V

[edit] W

WC3: World Wide Web Consortium

Wiki: A web application that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum or blog, but also that allows anyone else to edit that content.

[edit] X

XML: Extensible Markup Language

[edit] Y

[edit] Z

[edit] Other OER glossaries on the web

ISKME OER glossary: A list of the terms and their definitions used in the Connexions course, The "How Tos" of OER Commons.

Definitions of licensing terms have been adapted from a tutorial by Derek Keats, which was in turn adapted from the definitions found on the Creative Commons web site.

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