Tag Archives: #oer #openscot

#oer23 #oer2023 #OpenScot Open Scotland Reflections on Pre-Conference Workshop and in Conference Plenary⤴

from @ ...........Experimental Blog


To mark 10 years of the Open Scotland initiative we held two events as part of the OER23 Conference to bring together members of the education community in Scotland and some of the international delegates to reflect on how the open education landscape in Scotland has evolved over the last decade against the backdrop of global crisis and uncertainty (Campbell and Wilson 2021).

We held a pre-conference workshop and an in-conference plenary.

As ever grateful to ALT and the University of the Highlands and Islands for this opportunity. The OER Conference took place in Scotland for the first time since 2016. A main theme of the conference was.

“Open Education in Scotland #OpenScot – celebrating 10 years of the Scottish Open Education Declaration."

I'm grateful as ever to Lorna M. Campbell my co-founder of Open Scotland and the many supporters we have found across the international and Scottish learning community. It's now been some weeks following the conference allowing me some reflection time (as well as time to do busy and full-on day job) We both juggle workplace commitments while championing open educational practice.

It’s ten years since we set off on what we thought would be a short journey to get Scottish Education to embrace Open Education and open practice. Please dig into the commentary on our slides. It's been more of an uphill journey than we ever anticipated.

It's taken us and the Open Scotland Declaration all around Europe, but it has not had the impact we need in Scottish Education in the round.

Thanks to Jim Groom reclaim hosting for Polaroid.




The workshop and plenary went well but at #OER23 we were talking to the converts. It is really apparent that other countries have embraced the UNESCO declaration and are moving ahead of Scotland at a rate of knots. 

The Scottish system seems - and to use a good Scottish word "thrawn" Everyone we've reached out to sees the Open Scotland Declaration as an achievable aim but equally College Principals, agency policy makers all think that it is someone else's responsibility to drive change across the system. 

Have a look at the output of the workshop and the plenary below. The will is there but the policy leavers and policy makers remain tantalisingly out of reach. 

The padlet is still open but as it has now been shared on the open web input is now subject to approval - but please chip in your ideas. 

The padlet - highlights what might be. The output from the Padlet will become a manifesto for change from #OpenScot.

As a footnote I asked ChaptGPT about Open Scotland. The text it created is below it shows we've been making all the right waves- how else could ChatGPT pick up themes like this. 

But Open Scotland is not yet a Scottish Government initiative - it shows how ChatGPT could create an alternative reality - it created a fantasy. 

We've still to make adoption of UNESCO declaration on Open Education a reality in Scotland.
I hope we don't have to wait another 10 years. 

Once again thanks to the community around the #oer conferences - you give us the strength, love and enthusiasm to keep pushing at the open door.  My last post I hope reflected all the great things happening around the world. 


Made with Padlet

"The Scottish Government has been a strong supporter of Open Education and Open Educational Resources (OER) in Scotland. In 2013, the Scottish Government launched the Open Scotland initiative to raise awareness of the benefits of Open Education and promote the development and use of OER in Scotland.

As part of this initiative, the Scottish Government has provided funding to support the development of OER and the implementation of Open Education practices in Scottish schools, colleges, and universities. For example, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) has provided funding to support the creation of OER through its Open Educational Resources Programme, and the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has developed a framework for the use of OER in the development of qualifications. Education Scotland and HMIE support a number of Open Education initiatives across the school and College system. 

In addition, the Scottish Government has endorsed the principles of the UNESCO Paris OER Declaration, which calls on governments and institutions around the world to support the development and use of OER. This endorsement demonstrates the Scottish Government's commitment to promoting the use of OER as a means of improving access to education and promoting social inclusion.

Overall, the Scottish Government's support for Open Education and OER has helped to raise awareness of the benefits of open education and has supported the development and implementation of Open Education practices in Scotland."

Would be nice if it was remotely true ... 

Reflections on 2021 #oerxdomains , #phygital , #Fujitsu , #openscot , #Bett22⤴

from @ ...........Experimental Blog


The end of another strange year - this year without the lockdown beard. 


It's all been a great team effort. This year topped and tailed by two College Development Network Awards both reflecting well on the work of the Learning and Teaching Academy. 

Amazing really as the team have battled the frustrations and heartbreaks  of  CoVid like everyone else.

    

Highlights 

  • Continued staff support for webinar training and development .
  • Chairing #OER21 
  • Launching College Fujitsu Hub.
  • Sourcing speakers , open badges and chairing sessions at  #Phygital conference
  • Staff and Student input to business case that led to procurement of Canvas.
  • On going cross College work on transition to Canvas. 
  • Trying to figure out what hybrid learning and teaching actually means.
  • On going sanity checks from colleagues in College  and  from ALT and many others across the sector ( you know who you are) and patience, kindness, consideration and teamwork.
On personal level - I am still frustrated by the Scottish systems ongoing disregard of Unesco's guidance on Open Educational Resources - startling really in year of COP26. I will keep doing my bit at institutional level and through Open Scotland. 

We once again missed our French fix on the Ile De Re and had none of our usual foreign jaunts and as CoVid restrictions are back in place in Scotland there will be no #Bett22 for me this year. 

We did manage two great escapes to Isle of Raasay and to Isle of Lewis. We also juggled cases of household CoVid - we still are, currently spending Christmas and New Year in splendid isolation.  

I know 2022 will bring more challenges.  I think the main message in these strange and disrupted times is not to be distracted, keep your eye on the horizon and show compassion for all those around you. 

And just noticed this marks 21 years of blogging ;-). Open reflection and blogging will eventually catch on. 

Happy New Year to one and all when it comes !  Slainte ! 


We, they, did it again!, and you can too! #oerxdomains21 #Openscot #FEUKChat⤴

from @ ...........Experimental Blog

 


We do talk a lot of jargon and acronyms in education. 

Please have a read at this.  I hope it makes sense. I live in a bubble of enthusiasts who want to make the world a better and fairer place. You can still be an idealist and be very grounded. When I say that with my Glasgow accent, believe me, you will be convinced. 

Great too that WonkeHE picked up on the conference.

Depressingly , open education is not a feature of the policies of any of the political parties in Scotland in next week's national elections. That's a great pity and shows that UNESCO policy and many years of lobbying still has to find traction in our venerable and perhaps too self righteous Scottish education system.  

When you put your head in the clouds - you come down with a bump.

My head was buzzing with ideas , links , contacts and as ever the global #OER community re-energised and reinvigorated me. Open should really be the way we do education and the final key note picking out open education as being the route to justice and empowerment was a great note to end on. If you are a policy maker perhaps find time to tune into that one session. If you work in any bit of the education system you will find some useful gems in the sessions all recorded and openly available.  Here is direct link to Rajiv's session.

It was great that this years #oer21 was delivered in partnership with the domains conference and became #OERxDomains21 . It meant that we had sessions on policy, practice and the platforms that can be used to deliver open voices and open education. I've a long list of open and cloud based software that I now need to have another look at. 

Special thanks to  Maren Deepwell, Emma-Jane Brazier, Fiona Jones, and now Christina Vines and the ALT posse for keeping the open education fire burning. 

Waving to my Conference co-chairs Jim Groom and Lauren Hanks , Lou Mycroft, and Louise Drumm who were all so great to collaborate with. 

In a UK context, more Colleges than ever before engaged with an open education conference. That is an important landmark. A special shout out too to Nicolas Garcia, Student President at City of Glasgow College , who was not in the least daunted and made a superb contribution to the opening plenary of an international education conference. I still hope we can bring this conference to City of Glasgow College in the future. 

The technology was simply inspiring and set a very high benchmark around how on-line conferences should be run. I am sure there will be a blog post that I will link to here . The short hand is that the team from Reclaim Hosting wove together Streamyard, YouTube and Discord to create a magical experience - you can capture some of it in the recorded proceedings .

Yes, I am a people person and I miss meeting everyone face to face - I don't miss conference travel and cold chicken buffets though, but I do miss conference bonhomie and meeting old friends and new. 

So down to earth  with a bump - back to planning where City of Glasgow College goes next for a virtual learning environment in August 21 and still explaining why positioning content in the VLE or even on the College intranet is not open education - in fact the discussions are actually pre that , it's explaining that encouraging staff to publish anything outside of the College in an accessible way is actually a very good thing for them and the College and most of all for learners , and an email arrived on Friday asking for support on staff and student digital literacies at a national level, an old chestnut , groundhog day.. the open education journey is a long and challenging one. 

For the ALT Scottish Community it's a more modest pow wow next Friday , where we will share two stars and a wish. 

I tweeted my way through the conference while chairing some brilliant sessions, I've curated a selection here. I can't name everyone here but respect and love to all who presented and participated in #oerxdomains21 and I am certain we will meet up further down the trail. It was a pleasure to be involved. 



I even bought the t-shirt 


Think it is fitting I open and close this post with the great art work of Bryan Mathers it was a critical element in pulling proceedings together. 






OERXDomains21 Conference 21-22 April Tune In #openscot #OERXDomains21⤴

from @ ...........Experimental Blog


Registration is open and conference numbers are growing hour by hour.  Just a reminder to book your place   and a reminder too especially to those in the further education community not used to paying conference fees that
  1. This is great value to get a grip on what you should be doing to open up your own learning materials at institutional and as an individual.
  2. If you struggle to get institutional sponsorship - there are still scholarship places available. 

Yesterday I got a great run through of the open technology that will be used to stream the conference. The conference will be run through Streamyard through to a YouTube Live broadcast for each session with dedicated social spaces provided by Discord 

And fabulous graphics by Bryan Mathers https://remixer.visualthinkery.com/

Looking forward to seeing your press pass !


Here's my streamyard test piece 


And find out more about Streamyard here 


Innovation in Adversity : Discover #OERxDomains21 Online – 21-22 April 2021⤴

from @ ...........Experimental Blog

thanks to Gabriel Vivas for image under Creative Commons Licence 


I am delighted to be a co-chair of #OERxDomains21 with an inspirational set of co-chairs and an amazing conference committee.

There is still time to get a proposal in and to sign up for the conference.

Theme 1: Openness, care, and joy in the times of pandemic;
Theme 2: Open Education responses to surveillance technologies and data ownership in education;
Theme 3: Open in Action: open teaching, educational practices and resources, how you might be using Domains and other tools;
Theme 4: Shifts in agency and creativity as empowerment of learners and educators;
Theme 5: Open Source Tools: infrastructure, cloud environments, targeted teaching tools.

We've come along way since #OER10 , I've blogged some of my own #OER journey.

My world may be similar to your world - wherever your geographic location.

Teaching staff while juggling their own domestic commitments are finding ways to develop engaging learning experiences . We can see a lot of thought and design going into Moodle courses and higher levels of interactivity through quizzes , forums, and other tools. Staff have been embedding Wakelets , H5P ,Google Sites and in the UK the Blended Learning Consortium content alongside links to open digital materials in the College's library to give students a rich learning experience.

We can see too great use of Zoom , Click-View and YouTube to provide short episodes of learning embedded in courses - while staff are doing crash courses in Microsoft teams used on the admin side of the organisation.

On assessment, staff are developing flexible solutions and making good use of dropbox and Turnitin where these are required - but mainly looking around at more open portfolio approaches to gathering evidence. 

From learners feedback is positive. They understand the challenges we are all facing . They appreciate the richer content , collaborative activities and zoom sessions. They enjoy using social media to support their formal learning and classes now use a variety of tools to stay in touch. They are coping with remote learning along with their own challenges. 

Like any other year the students are looking for more feedback. Some innovative staff are doing this through voice and video recordings as well as through more traditional feedback mechanisms.

One of the biggest challenges is a very human one - how do we get everyone to work with their camera switched on.

On all fronts we are trying to get staff to share and collaborate beyond the institution - in some ways the challenges are the same as 2010 but we have more solutions and staff are more willing to explore these and finally work in the open !

 #OERxDomains21 is a great space to explore what open education could do for you as a teacher and how it can empower your learners. If you are an institutional leader it will steer you to the systems and policy you need to put in place to open up your learning. 

I hope you come along and meet this global community of innovators. 

If ever the world needed more openness it is now !  Tune in 











#OERxDomains #OER21 Two messages for Two Audiences⤴

from @ ...........Experimental Blog

Please Read on - for those who know about Open education this is the place to be and get your proposals in !

Online Conference – 21-22 April 2021 #OERxDomains #OER21

Organised by the Association for Learning Technology and in partnership with Reclaim Hosting’s Domains Conference, this special edition of the much loved event is the 12th annual conference for Open Education research, practice and policy.

The Call for Proposals is now open https://oer21.oerconf.org/call-for-proposals/ 

ALT Organisational Logo


For those who don't really understand what this is all about.

Forty years ago I left a school which gave me a good but narrow education - but one of the best around at the time. I've not stopped learning. I've been a school teacher , a hack , a community education tutor and College lecturer and held my share of senior posts. I am still a Glaswegian with an incurable social justice complex. I do believe that education can make the world a better place. Too often in my teaching career, the book I chose for the class or the resources available for learning were determined by the finances that the institution had. The learners got great learning - but through the narrow letter box view of the resources that we had available for them.

I don't get get that Scotland has not understood yet what open education practice and policies could do for learners and teachers.

We are currently in the midst of this terrible pandemic and we still haven't figured out that we don't compete on how well we re-package knowledge. Education staff around the world are tying themselves in knots trying to improve their notes , power points , instructional videos, that is not a bad thing. But it would be much more effective for learners and learning if that was a much more collaborative activity. It is more than having a set of course materials that are shared around and within your subject team. (though I do know that in many institutions that remains a triumph in itself). While putting a set of learning materials on to your institutional virtual learning environment may be your act of sharing ,you could be a bit more ambitious for learners everywhere. I don't believe learning materials replace a good teacher - but sharing helps teachers and learners. 

It is not a dark secret the answer is making and sharing your learning materials with an appropriate open educational licence. If you , your institutional leadership team , local authority education team , national education policy makers haven't spotted that this is actually practice encouraged globally by UNESCO , mandated for public education  I am not sure where you have been since 2012. 

In Scotland a good place to start might be considering The Open Scotland Declaration. and why not come along and meet a well informed set of  international set of speakers. 

Sign up and come along to the Online Conference – 21-22 April 2021 #OERxDomains #OER21 

Full disclosure I am co-chair of  the ALT Scottish Sig and a Co-Chair of this conference - but none of this is fake news ;-) 





#UNESCO , #Openscot Email to My Daughter.⤴

from @ ...........Experimental Blog







 I got some great news yesterday and I tried to explain what it means  to my daughter who is in 5th year in a Scottish Secondary school. I thought worth sharing with a wider audience. I know some organisations that regulate teachers and lecturers like the General Teaching Council for Scotland and the Higher Education Academy, as well as those that fund education developments across the public sector will now have to take notice. It's great news for learners across the world. 

How will we now embrace this in Scotland ?

In my immediate domain one for Colleges Scotland and College Regional Boards to sit up and take notice - this needs to be embedded in practice. We've already started at City of Glasgow College. 

MJ , 
You might remember I disappeared to Malta, Slovenia and Poland among other places over the last few years. I wasn't having a holiday.
This is what I was helping to draft. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/in/rest/annotationSVC/Attachment/attach_import_b1276dcd-237e-488f-8b37-3c8847cb2e31 

I was invited as the co founder of Open Scotland along with Lorna Campbell of Edinburgh University - as what they call domain experts. We were standing on the shoulders of giants from the Association of Learning Technology and early work done by Jisc and many others across the education sector in Scotland and the rest of the U.K. , especially those involved in the #oer , open education resource , series of conferences. 
At the heart of it is a really simple principle.

One that Scottish Education should find easy to embrace.

'That publicly funded learning and teaching materials should be open and shareable.' 
One day, this will make teaching and learning much easier for everyone.
For you, it’s an example of a real UN resolution and now you know someone that helped shape one. It’s just as complex as the resolutions you debate in the schools model UN.

Perhaps you can show it to your teachers and maybe they will start working to share learning materials with colleagues in other schools , colleges and universities.

It was approved to go forward yesterday ;-)



#OER20 #Openscot Tell Your Story , Find out how to become an Open Practitioner , Meet an international community.⤴

from @ ...........Experimental Blog

I know there is a growing amount of open education activity beyond University and College initiatives in Scotland,  for my  international readership this is the  first and the best UK and international conference on Open Education and associated practices . 
Get a paper in and/or get the date in your diary.

We are delighted to announce that the OER20 Call for Proposals in now open. The deadline for submissions is 1 December 2019.

The 11th annual OER conference for Open Education research, practice and policy will be co-chaired by Mia Zamora, Daniel Villar-Onrubia and Jonathan Shaw. Read more about the conference co-chairs.

The conference will be held from 1-2 April 2020, in London, and is themed around Care In Openness. Covering issues of privilege, equity, precarity, power relations and public interest, OER20 will put the spotlight on both the value and limitations of care in open education.

We are particularly interested in receiving proposals from people who have an interest in the following conference key themes: 

Theme 1: Openness in the age of surveillance
Theme 2: Sustainable open education communities
Theme 3: Open education for civic engagement and democracy
Theme 4: Criticality and care in open education
Theme 5: Caring pedagogies and designing for diverse communities of inclusion.

And also Wildcard submissions : open education practice, research or policy session proposals that address the overarching conference theme.

To submit your proposal, please visit our OE20 Conference website where you will find full guidance, and our submission form. The deadline for submissions is 1 December 2019.

#oer Universities and Open Education in Scotland⤴

from @ .........Experimental Blog

Last week I did a short session in a Scottish University with the head of departments around the challenges and the opportunities around open education.

I did not touch much on massive open on-line courses as in many ways for this and other institutions this could be a step too far. I highlighted that they could do much more by simply opening up more of what they do to the communities they touch already and by doing more to harness the staff resource that they have by encouraging much more open practice across the institution .  This could be the precursor to some MOOCs at a later stage but in the short term it would get academics thinking about how they become open practitioners .

I'll stick up my presentation here when I  get back into the office . I borrowed many of my slides from previous presentations on open education. I spoke about past and current developments in Scotland 

The rest of the afternoon comprised of some excellent presentations from the library and learning resource staff. They are actually well on the way to developing open policies that will permit much more open practices . This is probably the right response from institutions who don't have massive marketing budgets to invest in the development and the staffing of massive online courses. It was good to hear that many of the academics already knew and used resources from services like JORUM the challenge is that none of them had ever deposited a learning resource there.

I hope that the new programme from the funding council led by OU Scotland , Edinburgh , Glasgow and University of Highland and Islands will make its focus - not the creation of massive open on-line courses that may prove hard to sustain  but the creation of an open culture that encourages open practices and the sharing on on-line content.