One of the biggest challenge for OERs is getting used. Despite many large scale projects I suspect most would say that uptake is relatively disappointing. I am sure the new JISC funded OER projects won’t be satisfied with only making everything available in JORUM – but it will be interesting to see what you can find using a basic Google search in the spring.
For OpenSpires the OERs we are producing are podcasts which also means that they don’t have the full text information inherent in most other online content, suddenly metadata and perhaps more importantly resource description becomes more important. However we also know that for the creation of OERs to really take off it is more important for the sharing process to be lightweight and easy then to expect our academics to not only podcast in the first place but then to subsequently provide all the information a consumer could ever require.
However with web 2.0 we are also in a situation where it is not just the content creator who can potentially supply information that makes a resources more discoverable. Recommendations, ratings and comments, as per Amazon etc as well as the sort of metadata a system holds about how a resource is used, by who , when and where, are all things that help a user work out which resource is most likely to be for them.
This is very interesting. I agree that inducement is required for deep learning in vitual environment. Some techniques should be developed to focus the mind, and to enhance the learning activities.