Tag Archives: oer16

#oer16⤴

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

#OER16 Quick Overview and Some important links for Scottish FE
by
Mon, Apr 25 2016 12:22:13

#OER16 Quick Overview and Some important links for Scottish FE

A quick overview of a superb two days thinking time.
  1. Open Educational Resources for those still wondering what #oer means.
  2. This conference has been going since the inaugural conference at the University of Cambridge in 2010 . It was a great privilege to be once again on the organising committee and chairing some of the sessions this year . This storify captures some of the sessions I attended . The event was supported by the great folks of alt.ac.uk/ co-chaired superbly by twitter.com/LornaMCampbell and twitter.com/HoneybHighton and attracted delegates from 29 different countries to two wonderfully sunny days in Edinburgh.
  3. I am prejudiced but I do think some of our most creative educators are interested in open education. I enjoyed the action-bound challenge and I made full use of the excellent and well organised on-line programme
  4. ActionBound would make a great platform for student induction sessions.
  5. You need to download actionbound app #oer16 https://t.co/uuDaPfhVIP
    You need to download actionbound app #oer16 pic.twitter.com/uuDaPfhVIP
    Joe Wilson@joecar
    ·
    Tue, Apr 19 2016 09:30:02
  6. @Catherinecronin did a great job of unpacking the issues around open learning and the digital identity dilemma to being open .
  7. All of the sessions I attended inspired me and showed way forward for all of us in rethnking what education could be . Many of the sessions were recorded you can access them all on the conference web site oer16.oerconf.org There was something for everyone from policy makers to practitioners.
  8. If open is answer then what is question #oer16 @catherinecronin some thinking along with https://t.co/fQgp57SMdu https://t.co/Hu2V5MYi7H
    If open is answer then what is question #oer16 @catherinecronin some thinking along with  http://wikieductor.org/Goopen  pic.twitter.com/Hu2V5MYi7H
    Joe Wilson@joecar
    ·
    Tue, Apr 19 2016 09:53:09
  9. I'll focus here on picking out a few sessions and links that I think further education should tune in to . Every session had something superb wrapped up in it so this is a tough task.
  10. In no particular order and for those teaching computer games development have a look at
  11. joecar
    Joe Wilson@joecar
    RAGE hoping colleges and universities teaching programming or games development tuned in to this #oer16 @EU_H2020  http://rageproject.eu/ 
    Tue, Apr 19 2016 13:12:06
  12. All of the sessions from Wikimedia offered something for Colleges and adult learners - I can't do them all justice in a post . But Colleges should be using Wikimedia tools not just as reference materials but as active learning tools. Learners should be authoring content for all of the wikimedia platforms
  13. If you haven't discovered DS106 and you teach anything creative then have look - that primary learners all around the world are now doing some of the assigments should tell you something startling.
  14. joecar
    Joe Wilson@joecar
    @jimgroom #oer16  http://ds106.us/open-course/  open course aimed at HE and lots of primary kids do the open assignments .. Tells you something
    Wed, Apr 20 2016 08:57:09
  15. I am assured that all of the BBC RES and other re-sources will be available to Scottish Schools through GLOW I hope similar thought has gone into how Colleges will access these probably through JISC services
  16. joecar
    Joe Wilson@joecar
    The research and education space (RES) | RIchard Leeming BBC great session on new resources for learning #oer16  https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/research-education-space …
    Wed, Apr 20 2016 09:49:52
  17. I saw a whole new academic discipline open up as David Kernohan set out his thesis on Blogs as now being more accessible, authoritative, accessible and capable of citation than traditional research. All pointing to new ways of evaluating the impact of academic publishing.
  18. Evaluating blog corpus on open education nice work from @dkernohan now on to semanometrics and citation metrics https://t.co/rI98Nt78jN
    Evaluating blog corpus on open education nice work from @dkernohan now on to semanometrics and citation metrics pic.twitter.com/rI98Nt78jN
    Joe Wilson@joecar
    ·
    Wed, Apr 20 2016 10:28:20
  19. Dublin City University student success tool box - give Colleges a range of customiseable re-sources for induction and much more . Every College in Scotland needs access to this . Perhaps one for CDN to have a look at . Available for download from github
  20. andrewmid
    Andrew Middleton@andrewmid
    Student learning toolkit from James Brunton  http://studentsuccess.ie/the-toolbox/  #oer16
    ·
    Wed, Apr 20 2016 10:54:55
  21. These two superb characters - are driving global changes in Educational blogging and content creation SPLOT is just one of a range of tools they demoed splot.ca/about/ watch their session carefully I liked NSCloner which gives teachers any kind of Wordpress blog they want quickly and easily
  22. BC Represent! @grantpotter @brlamb @unbc_ctlt #oer16 https://t.co/iyan6zErvJ
    BC Represent! @grantpotter @brlamb @unbc_ctlt #oer16 pic.twitter.com/iyan6zErvJ
    Heather Smith@doctahdawg
    ·
    ·
    Wed, Apr 20 2016 11:41:38
  23. Check out too how American Community Colleges use OER across the curriculum
  24. joecar
    Joe Wilson@joecar
    For Students | OER how us community college uses #oer #oer16  http://oer.umd.edu/students 
    Wed, Apr 20 2016 13:08:28
  25. And finally if you want a closer to home example check out Edinburgh University open.ed.ac.uk/ Every College should have its own modest ambitions in opening up learning . There are 210,000 learners no longer in Scottish FE . How are you reaching out into your communities and local businesses and offering real support.
  26. Three strands of the vision #oer16 https://t.co/Q6BAoRxRld
    Three strands of the vision #oer16 pic.twitter.com/Q6BAoRxRld
    Joe Wilson@joecar
    ·
    Wed, Apr 20 2016 14:34:26
  27. If you missed out - think about becoming a member of ALT and/or book your place or better submit a presentation idea to next year's conference
  28. josiefraser
    Josie Fraser@josiefraser
    #oer16 delighted to be co-chairing #oer17 with @atarkowski  https://oer17.oerconf.org/  - the politics of open
    ·
    Wed, Apr 20 2016 15:34:46
  29. And remember too to read and comment on the Scottish Open Education Declaration !
  30. Read (& comment on) the Scottish Open Education Declaration. #OER16 https://t.co/6KEiKk73AH https://t.co/Wd7xWUa17b
    Read (& comment on) the Scottish Open Education Declaration. #OER16  http://openscot.net/declaration/  pic.twitter.com/Wd7xWUa17b
    Edinburgh Uni OERs@OpenEdEdinburgh
    ·
    ·
    Wed, Apr 20 2016 14:30:26

OER16: Open Culture – that was the conference that was.⤴

from @ Open World

So, the OER16 Open Culture Conference has been and gone and what an experience it was!  Co-chairing OER16 with my inspiring colleague Melissa Highton has been an enormously rewarding experience and I owe a huge debt of thanks to everyone who volunteered their time, effort and creativity to make the conference such a success. In particular I’d like to thank our keynotes, Catherine Cronin, Emma Smith, John Scally, Jim Groom and Melissa Highton for their inspiring and thought provoking talks and, of course, the ALT team for supporting the conference and ensuring everything ran like clockwork.  I can highly recommend charing an ALT conference if you’re ever thinking about it!

oer16_jim_penny

It’s too soon after the event for me to gather my thoughts and attempt to provide any kind of coherent overview so here’s a round up of the conference outputs and some of my personal highlights in lieu of something more considered.

ada_me_oer16

Me & Ada LEGO Lovelace by Stuart Cromar

And of course, my personal twitter highlight of the conference…

oer16_me_josie

 

Taxi Chic OER16 Co-Chairs Melissa Highton & Lorna Campbell by Catherine Cronin, CC BY SA

Taxi Chic
OER16 Co-Chairs Melissa Highton & Lorna Campbell
by Catherine Cronin, CC BY SA

So now it’s time to pass the torch over to the fabulous Josie Fraser and Alek Tarkowski, two of my favourite people working in open education today, who’ll be co-chairing OER17: The Politics of Open.  It’ll be awesome!

 

 

University of Edinburgh approves new OER Policy⤴

from @ Open World

edinburgh[Cross posted to Open Scotland]

As part of its on going commitment to open education, the University of Edinburgh has recently approved a new Open Educational Resources Policy, that encourages staff and students to use, create and publish OERs to enhance the quality of the student experience. The University is committed to supporting open and sustainable learning and teaching practices by encouraging engagement with OER within the curriculum, and supporting the development of digital literacies for both staff and students in their use of OERs.

The policy, together with supporting guidance from Open.Ed, intends to help colleagues in making informed decisions about the creation and use of open educational resources in support of the University’s OER vision. This vision builds on the history of the Edinburgh Settlement, the University’s excellence in teaching and learning, it’s unique research collections, and its civic mission.

The policy is based on University of Leeds OER Policy, which has already been adopted by the University of Greenwich and Glasgow Caledonian University. It’s interesting to note how this policy has been adapted by each institution that adopts it. The original policy describes open educational resources as

“…digitised teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released by the copyright owner under an intellectual property licence (e.g. Creative Commons) that permits their use or re-purposing (re-use, revision, remixing, redistribution) by others.”

However Edinburgh has adapted this description to move towards a more active and inclusive definition of OER

“digital resources that are used in the context of teaching and learning (e.g. course material, images, video, multimedia resources, assessment items, etc.), which have been released by the copyright holder under an open licence (e.g. Creative Commons) permitting their use or re-purposing (re-use, revision, remixing, redistribution) by others.”

This definition aims to encompass the widest possible range of resources that can be used in teaching and learning, not just resources that are developed specifically for that purpose. This description acknowledges that it is often the context of use that makes a thing useful for teaching and learning, rather than some inherent property of the resource itself.

Although open licensing is central to the University’s OER vision, this is much more than a resource management policy. In order to place open education at the heart of learning and teaching strategy, the University’s OER Policy has been approved by the Senate Learning and Teaching Committee. The policy is intended to be clear and concise and to encourage participation by all. By adopting this policy, the University is demonstrating its commitment to all staff and students who wish to use and create OERs in their learning and teaching activities, and who wish to disseminate the knowledge created and curated within the University to the wider community.

600x60-oew-web-banner


OER16 Open Culture Conference – Open as in Open⤴

from @ Open World

In keeping with the ethos of open education, the OER conferences have always made an effort to be as diverse, inclusive and, well, open as possible and OER16 Open Culture is no exception.

The draft conference programme has recently been announced and we’re delighted to have accepted 101 papers and panels from 29 different countries.

oer16_diversity

OER16 presenters will come from 29 countries around the world

Bearing the recent #allmalepanels meme in mind, we’re also aware of issues relating to gender balance and diversity and we’re very pleased to have almost 50/50 representation. Of over a hundred lead authors who recorded their gender along with their submission, 49% are female and 51 % male, and our keynotes are similarly balanced.

Although the University of Edinburgh is clearly a popular destination for delegates, not all of our presenters and participants are able to travel to Scotland for a wide range of reasons, so we are happy to facilitate remote presentation. One OER16 presenter Maha Bali, associate professor of practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo, has previously written in the Chronicle of Higher Education about her own experiences as a remote conference presenter

“I am finding more and more conferences willing to accommodate me as a virtual presenter. This is probably happening more to me than other people because of my travel restrictions (mom of a young child living halfway across the world from most conferences I want to attend and where most of my collaborators reside), coupled with my refusal to ignore the potential social capital I can gain from presenting internationally, that is different from everyday online interactions. There are many reasons why a conference might want to welcome virtual presenters (diversity and equity being two)”

Hospitality for Virtual Presenters by Maha Bali
Chronicle of Higher Education, January 26, 2016

In relation to OER16, Maha also commented:

“Presenting virtually at conferences allows me to have a voice in the field. How often do people in ed tech get to hear the perspective of Arab Muslim women who live in the Arab World? Presenting coupled with virtually connecting conversations allows me to feel more of an equal to my Western peers with whom I collaborate year-round.”

In order to ensure that OER16 is inclusive and accessible, we have aimed to keep the conference fee as low as possible for full delegates. However if cost is a genuine barrier, ALT have a small amount of limited funding available to subsidise registrations for presenters who are students, school teachers, who work in small FE institutions, adult or community education or are members of the public with a special interest in OER. Subsidised places have already been offered to fourteen presenters and applications of funding close on the 6th March.

OER16 also offers many opportunities for remote participation, the majority of which are completely open and free of charge. All five keynotes by Catherine Cronin, Jim Groom, Melissa Highton, John Scally and Emma Smith will be streamed live on ALT’s dedicated youtube channel, and will also be available to view after the conference. There will be a wide range of social media channels including twitter feeds, blogs, hang outs and internet radio broadcasts, facilitated by the ALT Open Education SIG, Radio EDUtalk, Virtually Connecting and others, which will enable remote participants to engage with and contribute to the conference. Remote participants will only be required to register their details if they wish to comment on the main conference platform hosted by ALT, although registration will be required, this facility is still free of charge, all other remote participation channels are both free and open, and yes, that really is open as in open.


Radio #EDUtalk is going to #OER16⤴

from @ John's World Wide Wall Display

IMG_0040-2.png

I am really excited about this one.
Radio #EDUtalk will be at #oer16

OER16: Open Culture
19th & 20th April 2016, University of Edinburgh, UK
The 7th Open Educational Resources Conference, OER16: Open Culture, will be held on the 19th-20th April 2016 at the University of Edinburgh.

OER16 will focus on:

  •    The strategic advantage of open and creating a culture of openness.
  •    Converging and competing cultures of open knowledge, open source, open content, open practice, open data and open access.
  •    Hacking, making and sharing.
  •    The reputational challenges of openwashing.
  •    Openness and public engagement.
  •    Innovative approaches to opening up cultural heritage collections for education.

from: OER16

I am not sure what we will be broadcasting but I hope it might include conversations between various speakers and attendees.

Thoughts on Amazon Inspire⤴

from @ Open World

Earlier this week EdWeek Market Brief reported that Amazon is developing a platform to “allow schools to upload, manage, share, and discover open education resources”.  Amazon Inspire, which appears to be aimed squarely at the US K-12 education sector / market (you decide) will enable users to

“to add ratings and reviews, and to receive recommendations based on their previous selections. Educators will be able to curate open resources, self-publish material they have developed, and put a school’s entire digital library that is open and freely available online.”

Although Amazon admit they haven’t nailed down a business model to ensure the platform’s financial sustainability, harnessing the company’s formidable recommender system to sell products that complement lessons and resources, is likely to feature prominently somewhere along the line. Amazon are sufficiently confident that they can guarantee the platform’s sustainability that Andrew Joseph, vice president of strategic relations for Amazon Education stated

“We’ve made a commitment that we will never charge for this,” Joseph said, noting it will be “a completely free, open platform for free resources.”

I’m tempted to say “we’ve heard that before”, but that would be cynical of me.  And of course “free” and “open” aren’t quite the same thing, but lets come back to that in a minute.

Of course Joseph doesn’t miss an opportunity to take a pot shot at Google

“teachers spend 12 hours a week on content creation and sharing on their own,” said Joseph, using Google Drive or shared folders within a district. “If you think about those resources, they’re not all that discoverable or sharable.”

Quite.

Unsurprisingly, this announcement has already sparked considerable discussion online.  Stephen Downes was one of the first to comment on this development, noting that Amazon already has a significant presence in the education sector, providing access to tools, a grant programme and cloud services. Matt Reed of Inside Higher Ed was generally enthusiastic about the development, speculating that Amazon Inspire could do for OER what iTunes did for podcasts. He does add a note of caution though, asking

“Are they trying to kill commercial publishers? Harvest student data? Commission hagiographic treatments of the life of Jeff Bezos? Amazon isn’t known for philanthropy.”

Like many commentators Reed focuses on the potential ability of OER to reduce the astronomical cost of textbooks in the US.  While I agree that reducing the cost of textbooks is undoubtedly a Good Thing, (though of considerably less benefit to education in the UK), focusing on this as the primary benefit of OER, rather misses the much wider potential of open education. Replacing a paid thing with a free thing, is certainly good, but does little to challenge the commercialisation of the education, particularly if the free thing is being provided by a commercial behemoth. This is a point that Jim Groom raised on twitter.

And then there’s the whole issue of open and free. Will the resources hosted on Amazon Inspire really be open?  Or will they be free?  The EdWeek report makes no mention of whether resources will carry a CC licence, in fact there is no mention of licensing at all. If they don’t use CC licences can Amazon really market this as OER ? Pat Lockley thinks they can.

Whatever Amazon Inspire transpires to be, it’s certainly an interesting development at a time when the sustainability of open educational resources and OER repositories, or lack thereof, is an increasingly pressing topic.  This is an issue that Viv Rolfe, David Kernohan, Leo Havemann, Pat Lockley, Simon Thomson and I will be exploring in a panel session at OER16 called Web Today, Gone Tomorrow: How can we ensure continuing access to OERs? and I suspect it’s an issue that will surface repeatedly during the conference.  If sharing OER through web platforms such as YouTube and Flickr is already common practice, would sharing them through Amazon really be problematic?  I don’t know. Without knowing more about the platform and the business model it’s too early to judge.

One final point…I was very interested to note that Amazon Inspire will be partially based on the Learning Registry, but that’s a topic for another blog post.

Links


OER16 Registration Open!⤴

from @ Open World

I’m delighted to announce that registration for the the OER16 Open Culture Conference is now open! The conference, which is being co chaired by Melissa Highton and I, is coordinated by ALT, and will take place at the University fo Edinburgh on the 19th and 20th April 2016.

Register for OER16

The conference schedule will be announced shortly and it promises to be an eclectic and international programme.  Over 130 papers, panels and poster proposals were submitted in response to the conference call and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the OER16 Programme Committee for their efforts in reviewing the submissions over the Christmas period.  In particular I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our emergency reviewers who stepped in at the last minute – you know who you are, and our indefatigable Submissions Review Team who coordinated the entire process so efficiently; Frances Bell, Kirstie Whitaker, Ken Baur and Anna Davidge. Thank you all!

oer16_logo


OER16 Submissions Open⤴

from @ Open World

oer16_logoI’m delighted to announce that OER16 Open Culture is now accepting submissions for the conference which will take place at the University of Edinburgh on the 19th and 20th April 2016. The call for proposals was launched at the ALT Conference in Manchester at the beginning of September and the submissions site is now open.

Submissions are invited for presentations, lightning talks, posters, and panels and workshops on the themes of:

  • The strategic advantage of open, creating a culture of openness, and the reputational challenges of openwashing.
  • Converging and competing cultures of open knowledge, open source, open content, open practice, open data and open access.
  • Hacking, making and sharing.
  • Openness and public engagement.
  • Innovative approaches to opening up cultural heritage collections for education.

If you have any queries about the conference themes feel free to contact me at lorna.m.campbell@ed.ac.uk / lorna.m.campbell@icloud.com or on twitter @lornamcampbell. Any queries regarding the submission process should be directed to Anna Davidge at ALT, anna.davidge@alt.ac.uk.

Further information about the conference is available here oer16.oerconf.org and you can follow @oerconf and #oer16 on twitter. Look forward to seeing you in Edinburgh in the Spring!

 


OER16 Submissions Open⤴

from @ Open World

oer16_logoI’m delighted to announce that OER16 Open Culture is now accepting submissions for the conference which will take place at the University of Edinburgh on the 19th and 20th April 2016. The call for proposals was launched at the ALT Conference in Manchester at the beginning of September and the submissions site is now open.

Submissions are invited for presentations, lightning talks, posters, and panels and workshops on the themes of:

  • The strategic advantage of open, creating a culture of openness, and the reputational challenges of openwashing.
  • Converging and competing cultures of open knowledge, open source, open content, open practice, open data and open access.
  • Hacking, making and sharing.
  • Openness and public engagement.
  • Innovative approaches to opening up cultural heritage collections for education.

If you have any queries about the conference themes feel free to contact me at lorna.m.campbell@ed.ac.uk / lorna.m.campbell@icloud.com or on twitter @lornamcampbell. Any queries regarding the submission process should be directed to Anna Davidge at ALT, anna.davidge@alt.ac.uk.

Further information about the conference is available here oer16.oerconf.org and you can follow @oerconf and #oer16 on twitter. Look forward to seeing you in Edinburgh in the Spring!

 


A new string for my bow: OER Liaison – Open Scotland⤴

from @ Open World

burghead_saltire_cropped

CC BY Lorna M. Campbell

(Cross posted to openscot.net)

I’m very pleased to have added a new string to my bow! As of the beginning of this month I will be working one day a week as OER Liaison – Open Scotland within the Learning, Teaching and Web division at the University of Edinburgh, where I’ll be working with LTW Director and OER16 co-chair, Melissa Highton. I’ll also continue working in my main role as Digital Education Manager at EDINA, while still doing some consultancy work with former Cetis colleagues, so I’m certainly going to be busy!

Edinburgh already has a world class reputation for encouraging innovation in open education and a forward looking vision for sharing open educational materials, so I’m very pleased indeed that the University has chosen to support Open Scotland in this way.

The main activities I’ll be concentrating on over the coming months are planning next year’s OER16 conference, revitalising the Open Scotland initiative, promoting the Scottish Open Education Declaration, and continuing to participate in the Open Policy Network.  The Open Scotland blog has been sadly neglected for some time now so hopefully I’ll be able to start updating it again with open education news and developments from across Scotland and beyond, so if you’re involved in an any kind of open education initiative that you’d like to see featured on Open Scotland please feel free to get in touch. You can drop me a mail at lorna.m.campbell@icloud.com or contact me on twitter @lornamcampbell.

I’ll also be at ALT-C next week so if you’ve got any thoughts or ideas either for OER16 or for Open Scotland, please do come and find me for a chat.