Digital resources for nursing education:Open courseware and massive open online courses

Open Courseware(OCW)and massive open online courses(MOOCs)are teaching and learning resources that are easily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.OCW is digitally published learning content including full and partial courses(syllabi,outlines,lectures in pdf or video,slides,reference lists,etc.),simulations,animations,tutorials,drills and practices,modules,podcasts,case studies,and quizzes.This content is free and can be adopted or adapted to the user's needs.MOOCs are online learning experiences taught by university professors using conventional educational tools including video lectures,interactive modules,assignments,study materials,discussion boards,quizzes and tests.MOOCs are offered free or at low cost for personal and professional learning,and as a supplement to classroom teaching.Many MOOCs and OCW focus on topics of interest to nursing,particularly to nurse educators.This article provides the reader with a brief history of the development of OCW and MOOCs,conceptual descriptions,and guidance about how to access and use these new online resources.

Human Rights and Social Justice through Open Educational Resources and Lifelong Learning

A landmark in the realization of UNESCO’s Sustainability Goals,Education for All(SDG4),was passed when the organization’s Recommendation of Open Educational Resources(OER)was uniformly adopted in 2019.Now it is time to transfer from the consciousness of OER to their mainstream realization at all levels,micro,meso,and macro,including all stakeholders,such as governments,institutions,academics,teachers,administrators,librarians,students,learners,and the civil service.The OER Recommendation includes five areas:building capacity and utilizing OER;developing supportive policies;ensuring effectiveness;promoting the creation of sustainable OER models;promoting and facilitating international collaboration;monitoring and evaluation.OER are valued as a catalyst for innovation and the achievement of UNESCO’s SDG 4,education for all,lifelong learning,social justice,and human rights.The OER Recommendation will be a catalyst for the realization of several other SDGs.Because access to quality OER concerns human rights and social justice,this Recommendation is vital.In 2020,the effects of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic clearly demonstrated the importance of opening up education and the access to internationally recognized,qualified learning resources.This article describes and discusses how the promise of resilient,sustainable quality open education can be fulfilled in the new normal and the next normal.

CAS center for water resources opens in Beijing

The CAS Water Resources Research Center (WRRC) has recently been established in Beijing. Its opening ceremony was held on 3 December, 2006, at

Achieve Intended Learning Outcomes and Improving Digital Literacy Skills for Practical-Based Subjects Using Online Teaching via Propagation of OER Materials

As professors are subjected to teaching their classes online due to the recent COVID-19, our local Hong Kong students find it difficult to consult their teachers, and ultimately would fail to achieve the intended learning outcomes, especially for practical-based subjects. In this research, students having online classes of a practical-based fabric design subject were encouraged to self-study from Open Educational Resource (OER) materials for a further and better understanding of their subject. Additionally, online materials were developed to improve students’ understanding via skill of digital literacy. Their learning progress was evaluated and compared to the face-to-face version. The majority of students found online classes combined with self-studying OER materials, potentially be a substitute for face-to-face classes. Most of the students further opined different OER videos assisted them without any face-to-face instructions in practical works, to develop new fabric samples from the inspiration. Analysis of test results, and comparison of students’ final grades with different learning modes, supported these phenomena.

A Trust-Based Approach to Estimating the Confidence of the Software System in Open Environments

Emerging with open environments, the software paradigms, such as open resource coalition and Internetware, present several novel characteristics including user-centric, non-central control, and continual evolution. The goal of obtaining high confidence on such systems is more difficult to achieve. The general developer-oriented metrics and testing-based methods which are adopted in the traditional measurement for high confidence software seem to be infeasible in the new situation. Firstly, the software development is changed from the developer-centric to user-centric, while user＇s opinions are usually subjective, and cannot be generalized in one objective metric. Secondly, there is non-central control to guarantee the testing on components which formed the software system, and continual evolution makes it impossible to test on the whole software system. Therefore, this paper proposes a trust-based approach that consists of three sequential sub-stages： 1） describing metrics for confidence estimation from users; 2） estimating the confidence of the components based on the quantitative information from the trusted recommenders; 3） estimating the confidence of the whole software system based on the component confidences and their interactions, as well as attempts to make a step toward a reasonable and effective method for confidence estimation of the software system in open environments.