Browsing by Author "Abeywardena, Ishan S"

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    Open Access
    Accessible OER: Where to Start?
    (2017-12-20) Kanwar, Asha; Abeywardena, Ishan S; Mishra, Sanjaya
    Presented by Professor Asha Kanwar, President & CEO, Commonwealth of Learning, at the 6th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology and Accessibility, 20 December 2017, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. Co-written with Dr. Ishan Abeywardena, Adviser: Open Educational Resources, COL and Dr. Sanjaya Mishra, Education Specialist: eLearning, COL
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    Open Access
    Collaborative Approach to OER Policy and Guidelines Development in the Commonwealth: The Case of Botswana, Cameroon and Sri Lanka
    (2018-05-30) Abeywardena, Ishan S
    Presented by Dr Ishan Abeywardena, Adviser: Open Educational Resources, Commonwealth of Learning, at the Festival of Learning 2018, Vancouver, Canada, 30 May 2018. // Access to relevant learning resources is an important aspect in ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all as outlined in SDG4. The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) has identified the development of OER as a potential answer to these challenges. A total of 29 provincial OER policies and guidelines were drafted in Sri Lanka, Botswana and Cameroon closely involving the provincial policy makers for school education. This session aims to share how this bottom-up approach was used to ensure wider advocacy for OER and the increased uptake/ownership from a larger number of policy makers/implementers spread throughout these developing countries.
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    A Collaborative Approach to OER Policy and Guidelines Development in the Commonwealth: The Case of Botswana, Cameroon, and Sri Lanka
    (2018-04) Abeywardena, Ishan S; Karunanayaka, Shironica P; Nkwenti, Michael N; Tladi, Lekopanye; McGreal, Rory; Conrad, Dianne
    Access to relevant learning resources is an important aspect in ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all as outlined in the sustainable development goal 4 (SDG4). The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) has identified the development of open educational resources (OER) as a potential answer to these challenges. A total of 29 provincial/regional OER policies and guidelines were developed in Sri Lanka, Botswana, and Cameroon closely involving 608 provincial/regional policymakers from the general education system. The innovation of this project lies in the collaborative approach adopted for OER policy/guideline development where a maximum number of policymakers at the provincial/regional level have been included in the policy development process. Key applications of the approach are mass-sensitization of policymakers, identification of champions in each province or region to drive the OER agenda forward, and the development of policies/guidelines tailored to the specific needs of a particular jurisdiction. The paper will also highlight the success factors, challenges, and the follow-up activities of the project.
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    Open Access
    Development, Use and Assessment of OER
    (2018-07-05) Kanwar, Asha; Abeywardena, Ishan S
    Workshop presented by Professor Asha Kanwar, President & CEO, Commonwealth of Learning, at the International Conference on Open and Innovative Education (ICOIE), Hong Kong SAR, 5 July 2018. Co-written with Dr Ishan Abeywardena, COL.
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    Educational App Development Toolkit for Teachers and Learners
    (2015-11) Abeywardena, Ishan S
    The Educational App Development Toolkit for Teachers and Learners is designed to introduce the basic and some intermediate concepts of Android app development on the App Inventor (AI2) platform. It provides hands-on activities and tutorials to use the Designer and Blocks Editor components of App Inventor to create apps that can be readily downloaded and used on any Android smartphone or tablet. Furthermore, the hands-on sessions will guide you on how to use features such as text-to-speech, accelerometer, speech recognition, drawing, video, games and music playback. The Toolkit also provides guidelines on how to package and distribute your app. For teachers a training plan is also provided that can be used to provide training to students in an instructor-led environment.
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    Educational App Development Toolkit for Teachers and Learners (Bengali Version)
    (2018-07) Abeywardena, Ishan S
    The Educational App Development Toolkit for Teachers and Learners is designed to introduce the basic and some intermediate concepts of Android app development on the App Inventor (AI2) platform. It provides hands-on activities and tutorials to use the Designer and Blocks Editor components of App Inventor to create apps that can be readily downloaded and used on any Android smartphone or tablet. Furthermore, the hands-on sessions will guide you on how to use features such as text-to-speech, accelerometer, speech recognition, drawing, video, games and music playback. The Toolkit also provides guidelines on how to package and distribute your app. For teachers a training plan is also provided that can be used to provide training to students in an instructor-led environment. // Translation done by Professor Dr Sadia Afroze Sultana. // English and Sinhala versions also available. See http://hdl.handle.net/11599/1729 and http://hdl.handle.net/11599/3070 respectively.
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    Educational App Development Toolkit for Teachers and Learners (Sinhala Version)
    (2018-07) Abeywardena, Ishan S
    The Educational App Development Toolkit for Teachers and Learners is designed to introduce the basic and some intermediate concepts of Android app development on the App Inventor (AI2) platform. It provides hands-on activities and tutorials to use the Designer and Blocks Editor components of App Inventor to create apps that can be readily downloaded and used on any Android smartphone or tablet. Furthermore, the hands-on sessions will guide you on how to use features such as text-to-speech, accelerometer, speech recognition, drawing, video, games and music playback. The Toolkit also provides guidelines on how to package and distribute your app. For teachers a training plan is also provided that can be used to provide training to students in an instructor-led environment. // Translation done by Chandi Chathurika Perera. // English and Bengali versions also available. See http://hdl.handle.net/11599/1729 and http://hdl.handle.net/11599/3069 respectively.
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    Learning with Virtual Reality
    (2018-08-30) Abeywardena, Ishan S
    Presented by Dr Ishan Abeywardena, Adviser - Open Educational Resources, Commonwealth of Learning, on 30 August 2018 as a guest lecturer at Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), Islamabad, Pakistan.
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    OER Mainstreaming in Tonga
    (2019-02) Abeywardena, Ishan S; Uys, Philippus M; Fifita, Seilosehina
    In the race towards achieving the Education 2030 agenda, open educational resources (OER) act as a key enabler for sustainable development goal 4 (SDG4). Leading to the 2014 Regional Focal Points Meeting, Commonwealth of Learning’s (COL) Focal Point for Tonga had identified top priorities for the country where COL can further support the national agenda till 2021. Based on these needs, the Strategic OER Implementation Project in Tonga was initiated by COL in response to a request by the Ministry of Education and Training (MET) of Tonga. The project aims to assist MET in (a) developing a framework for fully utilizing the new fiber optic network infrastructure to deliver online learning to Tongans distributed in the 45 islands; and (b) improve the chances of sustainable livelihoods for Tongan youth by training them in life skills tailored to higher education and employment opportunities in Australia and New Zealand. This paper details the use of the horizontal framework for OER mainstreaming and the OER mainstreaming checklist within this project. The novelty of this project is its approach to mainstreaming OER at an institution in a systemic manner. The contribution this paper makes is to provide a proven plan for sustainable OER mainstreaming in a development setting.
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    Open Access
    OERScout: Autonomous Clustering of Open Educational Resources
    (2012) Abeywardena, Ishan S; Tham, Choy Y; Chan, Chee S; Balaji, Venkataraman
    The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement has gained momentum in the past few years. With this new drive towards making knowledge open and accessible, a large number of OER repositories have been established and made available online throughout the globe. However, despite the fact that these repositories hold a large number of high quality material, the use and re-use of OER has not taken off as anticipated due to various geographic, socio and technological limitations. One such technological limitation is the present day inability to effectively search and locate OER materials which are specific and relevant to a particular academic domain. As a first step towards a possible solution to this issue, this research paper discusses the design and development of a clustering algorithm which accurately clusters text based OER materials by building a Keyword-Document Matrix (KDM) using autonomously identified domain specific keywords. This algorithm is the first phase of a larger technology framework named “OERScout” which is a potentially new methodology for effectively searching and locating desirable OER for academic use.
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    OERScout: Widening Access to OER through Faceted Search
    (2013-11) Abeywardena, Ishan S; Chan, Chee S; Balaji, Venkataraman
    In recent years, the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement has achieved considerable success within the academic community with respect to advocacy of the concept. As a result, many organisations such as the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), UNESCO and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), in partnership with academic institutions, have produced large volumes of OER. However, due to the disconnected nature and the constant expansion of volume, many repositories hosting these resources are less frequented or completely ignored by OER users. i.e. only the more popular OER repositories such as Connexions and WikiEducator are frequent stops in the search for academically useful resources. This limitation, in turn, reduces the access to high quality resources hidden away in isolated repositories hosted by lesser known sources. Furthermore, the time and labour required to trawl these repositories with a view of identifying the most suitable OER is tantamount to creating ones’ own material from scratch. As a solution to these issues, this paper discusses how the OERScout search engine uses a “faceted search” approach to locate the most desirable OER from sources spread throughout the globe. It also highlights how focused searching can greatly improve access to OER readily useable in teaching and learning. // Paper ID: 60
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    Open Educational Resources in the Commonwealth 2016
    (2016-11) Phalachandra, Bhandigadi; Abeywardena, Ishan S; Mishra, Sanjaya; Abeywardena, Ishan S
    This study was conducted as part of the OER for Skills Development project of COL, supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The objective of the study was to collect baseline data from Commonwealth institutions with respect to the development, use and reuse of OER; the availability of support; and challenges faced in fostering the use of OER. Six research questions were formed, after reviewing previous studies, to analyse the status of OER in the Commonwealth, based on four recommendations of the 2012 Paris OER Declaration.
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    A report on the Re-use and Adaptation of Open Educational Resources (OER): An Exploration of Technologies Available
    (2012) Abeywardena, Ishan S
    Open Educational Resources (OER) are a relatively new phenomenon which is fast gaining academic credibility as well as the attention of policy makers on a global scale. With increased funding by governmental and non-governmental organisations paired with generous philanthropy, the volume of rich OER available freely to the masses has grown exponentially. As with any new academic movement, the initial challenge for the OER movement was to spread this new philosophy into mainstream academia whereby the use of OER in teaching and learning becomes accepted practice. With strong advocacy by Open Distance Learning (ODL) institutions buttressed by organisations such as the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and UNESCO, OER is currently achieving this objective and is rapidly gaining acceptance as a credible source of knowledge in many an academic community. The whole philosophy of OER rests on a foundation consisting of two fundamental concepts which are (i) free and open access to knowledge; and (ii) the ability to freely adapt and re-use existing pieces of knowledge. Even though the OER movement has been quite successful in firmly planting the first concept in the academic community, the second concept of re-use and adaptation is still to take flight on a larger scale. Although there are many inhibitors to the wider adoption of the re-use concept of OER, one of the major inhibitors is the current lack in capacities among the various stakeholders to effectively utilise existing technologies to adapt and re-use OER. This in turn has created a community of passive OER consumers who are not contributing to the expansion of the movement. The objectives of this report are to (i) explore the current technology landscape with respect to both proprietary as well as Free and Open-source Software (FOSS) technologies; (ii) identify techniques, actual and in development, for re-use of OER materials; and (iii) discuss the implementation in the context of a typical ODL agency. This peer-reviewed report is a detailed catalogue of technologies available to teachers as well as learners for the re-use of OER material in the forms of text, HTML, audio, video and data. It also compares the technologies based on access, openness, usability and availability. The report will serve as a resource for teachers and learners for re-using OER mater.
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    Smart OER: Bridges for Sustainable Education
    (2018-03-11) Kanwar, Asha; Abeywardena, Ishan S; Mishra, Sanjaya
    Presented by Professor Asha Kanwar, President & CEO, Commonwealth of Learning, at Innovation Arabia 11, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 11 March 2018. Co-written with Dr Ishan Abeywardena, Adviser: Open Educational Resources, and Dr Sanjaya Mishra, Education Specialist: eLearning.
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    Transforming OER
    (2018-05-03) Abeywardena, Ishan S
    This presentation explores the latest technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), 360 videos, blockchain and instant messaging (IM) from an educational perspective. It relates how these technologies must transform OER. Presented by Dr Ishan Abeywardena, Adviser: Open Educational Resources, Commonwealth of Learning, at a guest lecture, Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), Islamabad, Pakistan, 3 May 2018.