Open Learning Network

Over the past decade Open Educational Resources (OERs) have grown in importance on a global scale, however users in the wider community searching for content dont necessarily look for an OER when they search and even when they find useful OER content most of the time they don't know that they have found an OER. The truth is that the wider community isn't even aware of what an OER actually is, so why search for it?

Probably one of the most difficult aspects especially since it requires rising above the crowd and spotting content potential all the time. However it also shows an ability and willingness to constantly learn and enquire what is of value to your online audience. From the research, I have detected 3 ways of generating unique content; generated by the owner of the site; generated by external actors; and generated by the users themselves.

The past couple of months I have been researching user behaviour on websites and more specifically what makes people visit and revisit a site. I have been looking at sites about music, cooking, pets, legal issues, arts, software development, education, games, kids, infants, parenthood, books, journalism, heritage, history, medicine, gardening, finance…you name it, I have probably looked at it.