Updating OER Materials in IT Courses: Sharing the Fun and Fulfillment with Students while Sending the Workload to Automation

Abstract

This SIGITE Big Idea in IT Education talk explores students doing class assignments and/or using automating scripts to update open education resources (OER) in information technology (IT) courses. In SIGITE we have long discussed OER-based IT courses replacing textbook-based courses [1,2] and identified a challenge of keeping the course material current. In a traditional textbook-based course, the author and publisher take care of updates, but, OER-based courses most often put that responsibility on the local course designers and/or instructors. Spreading this workload to involve students has two benefits: 1) reducing costs and faculty workload, and 2) increasing students' lifelong learning skills. Automating the mechanical parts of update makes a better user experience and a student-centered educational process.