Tag Archives: Further Education

Open World 2014-11-17 17:55:33⤴

from @ Open World

poerup_2(Cross posted from Open Scotland.)

Earlier this month the Policies for OER Uptake Project (POERUP), drew to a conclusion and published its final reports and deliverables on the POERUP Referata.  The overall aim of POERUP was to undertake research to understand how governments can stimulate the uptake of OER by policy means. Led by Sero Consulting and involving the Open Universiteit Nederland, Athabasca University, the University of Leicester, Université de Lorraine and EDEN, POERUP ran from 2011 – 2014.  The project’s key deliverables include a final report, thirty-three country reports focusing on the national policy context relating to OER, a comprehensive list of open education initiatives with OER maps, policy advice for universities, colleges and schools and, policy proposals for eight EU countries, plus Canada.

The Country Option Pack for Scotland (pdf) puts forward evidence based policy recommendations for higher education, colleges and schools, though many recommendations are applicable across all three sectors.  The recommendations are directed at the Scottish Government and Government funded education agencies, rather than at individual institutions.

Many of the policy recommendations put forward by Open Scotland are echoed by POERUP and the pack takes the Scottish Open Education Declaration as its starting point.

In particular, the report focuses on the importance of open licensing, and calls on Scotland’s funding bodies to ensure that

“any public outputs from their funded programmes are made available as open resources under an appropriate license.”

 The POERUP team suggest that a small amount of funding investment can go a long way to help create a culture in which open education can flourish, and they recommend that the Scottish Funding Council invests in open education by setting up an innovation fund to support new online initiatives in higher education, further education and the school sector with a commitment to opening up education.

The report also focuses on the potential of developing more flexible approaches to measuring and accrediting knowledge and competences including workbased learning, flexible learning and accreditation of prior learning.

In addition, there is also a welcome emphasis on professional development across all three education sectors, with the report calling for the establishment of an adequately funded

“professional development programme to help lecturers, teachers and administrators understand the benefits and uses of OER and open licensing.”

The report highlights the potential importance of the College Development Network’s  Re:Source OER repository in developing a national quality assurance standard for OER content produced in Scotland and urges the initiative to consider establishing and funding an OER evaluation and adoption panel.

The POERUP report represents a valuable step forward in promoting the development and uptake of policies to support open education in Scotland and it is to be hoped that the Government agencies towards whom it is addressed will take note and act on these recommendations.


Jisc RSC Scotland – a service at the heart of Scottish education⤴

from @ Open World

“Putting customers at the heart of what we do: it’s a commitment that many organisations are making, from e-commerce to education.”
~ Robert Haymon-Collins, Executive director customer experience – Jisc

A few weeks ago I went to the Jisc RSC Scotland annual conference in Glasgow,  I’ve been trying to get to this conference for years now, but due to other commitments that always seemed to get in the way, this was the first year I was able to attend. Colleagues have always spoken very highly about the conference and it certainly lived up to expectations.  It was really inspiring to see such a diverse group of people coming together from across Scottish Further and Higher education to share examples of innovative education practice taking place in colleges and universities right across the country today.  One of the highlights of the conference is always the iTech awards and you only need to look at the wide range of entries this year to see the breadth of education technology innovation across the sector. You also don’t need to look far to see the critical role that Jisc RSC Scotland play in supporting education technology innovation across Scottish education. Indeed for many colleagues Jisc RSC Scotland are Jisc’s real presence north of the border.

Consequently Jisc’s recent announcement (Towards a new-look customer service function for Jisc) that it intends to

‘transform our front of house operations, initially including the current network of regional support centres‘

rings all sorts of alarm bells.  ‘Front of house service’ seems like an odd way to describe a service as central and critical to the sector as Jisc RSC Scotland.  However it could be that I am not sufficiently au fait with the new customer focused discourse that frames this announcement.

Talk of ‘bringing together customer services’, ‘a unified Jisc presence’ and a ‘core customer service team’ does rather concern me though as it rather suggest the centralisation of Jisc services.  Jisc RSC Scotland’s team of specialist Advisors have an irreplaceable  breadth and depth of experience of the unique character and requirements of Scottish education and any loss or disruption to the services they provide would be a major blow to the sector, particularly at a time when further education is reconsolidating after a period of major funding cuts and regional restructuring.

Such changes could also have a huge impact on the development of open education practice in Scotland as Jisc RSC Scotland have been tireless supporters and promoters of open education through their Open Badges in Scottish Education Group, their CC licensed iTech case studies and their partnership with the Open Scotland initiative.

It’s not entirely clear from the announcement how these changes will affect Jisc RSC Scotland and, to be fair, the blog post does stress that Jisc will enter a consultation process before new roles are recruited in the autumn.  I sincerely hope that Jisc will consult widely with their ‘customers’ throughout the Scottish higher and further education sector and that the Scottish Funding Council will work together with Jisc to ensure that the invaluable service provided by Jisc RSC Scotland is maintained for the benefit of Scottish Higher and Further education as a whole.


Ross High S5 Careers Talk June 2014⤴

from

Hello S5.

Welcome to your careers talk and to day we are going to start developing your Career Managaement Skills and in particular start looking at yourself and your strengths. The following presentation outlines the main points and we will go over these now.

LMI Presentation Ross HS timed

Now we are moving on to a personality test callled Buzz so please follow this presentation.

S5 Induction – Ross 2014

Make a note of your animal because you will be need the information later.

Now it’s time to do some work!

Make sure you are registered at MWOW

Pathways to the Professions provides advice and guidance to local state school students interested in applying for Medicine, Law, Veterinary Medicine or Architecture and you can find out more here

Newsletter Complete S5 Ross High 2014

Direction is important!

Dancing hands here

Background music here