07 Tuesday Aug 2012
Posted in OER's, Open Access, Technology Enhanced Learning, Uncategorized
Here is a new site which will be a great resource for researchers and lecturers teaching research methods:
http://www.digitalscholarship.ac.uk/
It provides a number of OER’s on the following topics:
20 Friday Jul 2012
Posted in Conferences, OER's, Open Access, Seda, Technology Enhanced Learning
The Higher Education Academy and SEDA held a one-day conference today at Aston Conference Centre, Birmingham. “Following three years of funding from the Higher Education Academy and JISC, a wide range of programmes and projects have explored the creation, development, use and reuse of open educational resources. Globally, the open resources movement is changing polices and the development needs of staff and students alike. This timely conference will explore answers to the question: Where next for open practice and staff development? It will feature contributions from funded projects and new directions in thinking on this exciting and challenging area of developing academic practice.”
Welcome and opening address
Dr David Mosley, HEA Academic Lead for Online Learning,
Chris Rowell, Technology Enhanced Learning Advisor, Regent’s College and SEDA Executive Committee member
Keynote – Are we ready for OER?
Peter Hartley
Oers’s at Teeside University – equipping academics to design fit for purpose Distance learning curricula through experiential learning using an OER
Philosophy underpinning the module: Designed a module for the lecturers to use in a very experiential way. (Pedagogy not technology drives the design, learning by doing, modelling the way, designing for realistic delivery, Relevant output for participants)
4 units: divided up overall structure (typically this includes: aims and outcomes, intro to topic, reflection on prior learning, directed learning tasks)
Balancing local purpose with transferability: Local staff can engage with (for a PGCert module)
Project blog: https://eat.scm.tees.ac.uk/blog/tag/jisc-oer-project/
Info: g.james@tees.ac.uk
Language Open Resources Online (LORO) at the OU – from Open Educational Resources to Open Educational Practices – Professional development of language teachers through collaborative writing and peer review
Background to the OU: Languages at OU – 1000plus students, English Spanish French German Italian welsh and Chinese. Blended approach to teaching, course materials produced centrally, 300plus tutors line managed in regional teams.
LORO data base for language learning materials, 1.5 million page views, 2500 resources, 1200 registered users. Attempts to make it interactive, leave comments, registered users can leave a profile of themselves.Creative commons license.
Benefits of using LORO, ‘Value of feedback on one’s work’, good recourse for lecturers to brose and download teaching material. However, very few if any lecturers created their own resources.
They set up a project for tutors to use LORO collaboratively and develop their own teaching resources. Stages of project; selection of participants( up to 20 experienced and enthusiastic language lecturers), training sessions (compulsory, Synchronous, peer reviewing others work and reviewing progress) follow up meetings, collaborative activities ( Dedicated Elluminate room for training, Project forumn and wiki, emai, participant Elluminate rooms), publicising the project (internally), Evaluation questionnaire.
Results: 20 new resources have been created. Questionnaire results showed an increased use of interaction of LORA….but also a clear preference for tutors to use their own materials. Tutors enjoyed the collaborative working and peer review process. Number of resources uploaded in LoRA has increased. It as a ‘valuable staff development opportunity for participants’. General perception of a successful project
You can access LORO at: http://loro.open.ac.uk/
Project team: T. Beaven, A. Comas-Quinn, A. Duensing, M. Gallardo, S. Heiser, C. Pleines.
OER’s and Staff development at University of Oxford
Oxford University has produced over 4000 teaching resources to be shared on iTUnesU.
Why: enhance the capabilities of new and experienced academic staff
Lectures are written by the lecturers so it’s a big thing when lecturers decide to give away their resources
“Open content literacy is knowing when and why open content is necsaary, where to find and share it, evaluate and use it in a ethical manner”. The crucial issue is the ability to reuse resources.
Most of the work done was with intellectual property (with a lawyer) to produce a single sign-off sheet for copyright purposes.
This raised the whole issue of copyright and publishing (especially when Oxford Uni press is part of the University).
Oxford Uiversity settled on the Creative Commons licence which give attribution to non-commercial parties. This gives consistency and contingency to all of Oxford’s resources. I.e. they are giving a licence to share a resource.
Why are Oxford producing OER’s? promotion and marketing of the university is the main reason.
Feedback from Oxford’s OER’s has enhanced the lecturer’s experience, as they get feedback from outside the college and from their peers. They have also enjoyed the interaction with the school curriculum and an increased understanding of a digital presence and online publishing, like blogs. Especially for very topical issues like the higgs- boson stuff.
Some of the lecturers are getting over 100,000 download of the resources and to get feedback, “it’s a huge personal boost to receive feedback; as a teacher its is just what you want to hear”
Open Notingham: Knowledge without Borders.
Open source tools Open learning publishing ….U-NOW- Xerte – Xpert (300,000 OER’s, iTunesU, Xpert attribution tool,)
OER is a stated objective of the Uni’s strategy on Social Responsibility but is also related to ‘Excellence in Education’, ‘promotional opportunities’, ‘Internationalisation’ and ‘cost efficiencies’
What support does it have?
Senior support, Vice Chancellor Pro Vice Chancellor- Director of Teaching and Learning. Opt-in, schools can pilot or provide as much content as comfortable. Impact on staff 70per cent of schools engaged. 500% increase in content submission 21010-11. 3600 credits by 2015. Individual schools, eg offered over 600 credits and their ‘Politics in 60 seconds’ iTunes channel.
Digital literacy course is now an optional module on the PGCHE and is freely available to all staff.
Lastly we saw a demo of Xpert for downloading OER images.
OER13 National OER conference ‘Creating a Virtuous Circle’ 2013 26th and 27th March – Nottingham.
Reflections on the day – Professor Phil Levy, Deputy Chief Executive (Academic), HEA
10 Thursday May 2012
Posted in OER's, Open Access
Tags
In John Naughton’s recent article in the Observer he gave some persuasive arguments why academic journals should become ‘open source’.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/22/academic-publishing-monopoly-challenged
The subscriptions to journals is a massive cost to university libraries and in turn the taxpayer, ”the average cost of an annual subscription to a chemistry journal is still $3,792 and many journals cost far more. The result is that unconscionable amounts of public money are extracted from our hapless universities in the form of what are, effectively, monopoly rents for a few publishers”. Surely this money could have alternative uses.
Academics are setting up their alternative freely available journals. There is even advise on the web on ‘How to run an open access journal’; http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2012/03/06/an-efficient-journal/
This in turn is being supported by lecturers promoting their own research articles via Blogs and Twitter. The evidence is beginning to grow that this is a very effective way of getting these articles read by people that matter. See for example, ‘The verdict: is blogging or tweeting about research papers worth it?’: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/04/19/blog-tweeting-papers-worth-it/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ImpactOfSocialSciences+(Impact+of+Social+Sciences)
SEDA publishes Innovations in Education and Teaching International (IETI) and Educational Developments plus numerous special publications….which are fantastic!!I think Seda publications should follow ALT’s lead and become ‘open access journals’ http://www.alt.ac.uk/researchinlearningtechnology2012. This would lead to better access to SEDA publications, substantially reduce publication fees, speed up the publication process and increase the influence and relevance of SEDA ideas in education.
Any comments?
