OER and their importance at teaching English
“The purpose of educations is to replace an empty mind with an open one”- Malcom S. Forbes. Distance education or open education refers to “easy access to courses”, “ease built environment”, “offering opportunities for increased diversity in terms of time and location”, and “increasing revenue for institutions” (Chaney, 2007, as cited in Jabbar, 2012). In this aspect, teaching English in OE it has importance because learners need to study this Language in order to have more development in their student process. In this process, open educational resources assign all the things that help students to make their activities or homework and they would find a lot of information related to English. OER helps students in their scholar environment in English skills because pupils find information in different parts of the internet. The implementation of educational videos, digital libraries, and Wikipedia resources helps to OE students to find data related to their English classes.
Implementing pages with educational videos in Open Education helps into the knowledge of the students because they develop their English skills like vocabulary and pronunciation. One example of a page with educational files is Khan Academy that consists of an online learning environment where students find courses and many of them have a relation with language (Thompson, 2011, as cited in Ahmet, 2019). In addition, the page has an international contribution because Spanish, Portuguese, French and Bengali languages support the platform, although the native language used by Khan Academy is English (Ahmet, 2019). So, Khan Academy allows the learner to repeat the topic taught in applied lessons, enabling the learning to take place more effectively (Ahmet, 2019). The use of this resource in OE helps students to learn English themes because on this page they can find different topics related to this language and it does not have any cost for watching different videos. Additionally, the contribution of these countries, at Khan Academy, helps language learners around the world because they can learn with videos according to the culture of each country. Applying this strategy makes a naturalization in students because they repeat the same material in different activities according to their level and comprehension. Moreover, students have the opportunity to search in digital libraries themes related to Learning English.
Using Wikipedia resources in open education makes a positive impact on students because they find the necessary information according to their necessities. The digital Encyclopedia called Wikipedia has a lot of information related to different themes, its enormous breadth with easy accessibility on the web has made this page an essential source of information for many people with various information needs and purposes (Mesgari, Mehdi, Arup, & Lanamarki, 2014). Also, Wikipedia articles have certain qualification that most of the time, academics and common users apply their knowledge in order to create certified articles on this page (Mesgari, 2014). Application of Wikipedia resources supports students to search for different information related to different things, for example, with information related to English and its different themes (vocabulary, writing, etc.). The quality of information in Wikipedia has an interesting production, because this page has articles by expert and non-expert in different topics; it means that students can find information with different perspectives of each article from this page and each article have a verification of authenticity. So, students need to find specific information about English topic with a certification or references. Also, pupils can look for information related to learn English in digital libraries.
Digital libraries help to find different articles, books, etc. in order to use the necessary information by students without copyright problems. In the actually, libraries do not have a restriction to physically located building; digital libraries apply at the concept of not physical buildings because students do not need to travel at a real construction (Jabbar & Bux, 2012). So, D.L support students that need to search for information about their different classes without going to a certain place, they only need to find in library page in order to interact with different articles, books, etc. Students only need to be enrolled in an online course to get a free-access opportunity to many on-payment electronic resources (Jabbar, 2012). It means that students have the opportunity to do their activities in an easy way; in English activities, students can find a lot of articles about this language, for example, they can find grammatical structures or new vocabulary. The use of different resources helps in the process of learning different skills (including English) in students because the digital supplies makes a benefit in the educational process.
The implementation of OER helps students to realize each open educational activity in an easy way because they just have to go online to complement their tasks. Into the class of English, students have the opportunity of learning more about the different use of the language because in these internet resources, learners find different components related to different topics about English. implementing Khan academy helps in different aspects of English because it contains educational videos according to English; for this reason, students develop different skills (vocabulary, pronunciation, and comprehension) with this page. Another one is Wikipedia; its large database that helps students around the world, including, the different topics related to English. And digital libraries support learners with a lot of files related to any kind of theme including topics related to English. The idea of using these resources guide pupils in order to facilitate their open education and make comfortable their digital classes. In conclusion, digital resources offer an excellent way to learn English at open education.
**References**
Ahmet, A., Huseyin, B., and Oahit, N., (2019). Students approaches to massive open online courses: The case of khan academy. Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience,10(1). Retrieved from https://oerknowledgecloud.org/sites/oerknowledgecloud.org/files/884-3285-1-PB.pdf
Jabbar, A. & Bux, N. (2012). Use of libraries in open and distance learning system: Barriers to the use of AIOU libraries by tutors and students. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 13(2). Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ983619
Mesgari, M., Okoli, S., Mehdi, M., Nielsen, F., & Lanamaki, A. (2014). “The sum of all human knowledge”: A systematic review of scholarly research on the content of wikipedia. Journal of the Associaton for Information Science and Technology, 66(2). Retrieved from https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/asi.23172