Approaches to releasing Open Educational Resources

We (Helen Beetham, Lou McGill, Karen Smith, Isobel Falconer and I) have been carring out the Synthesis and Evaluation for the JISC/HEA OER Programme (see press release). We are working with all projects, in institutions/ subject centres across England and Wales, on evaluation.

The projects seem to be gaining useful models for their own evaluation and progress, and have opportunities to share with other projects in a structured way, while contributing to the further development of the collective understanding of the programme. At the same time we are collating evidence of effective practice that will be made available to the wider global community at the end of the project in June2010.

Synthesis is achieved through a common evaluation framework we are evolving. The framework captures key dimensions of the programme. The framework provides a foundation and common language for collating data; offers a range of questions/issues to support evaluation and review; supports the collation of key messages, challenges, solutions and outputs; and enables the identification of key areas of interest and highlights useful approaches.

The generic framework has been compiled from three separate frameworks, which capture the specific strands of the programme (projects focused in institutional, subject or individual sharing). Strand frameworks are updated and shared with projects and other support teams on a regular basis and are continually augmented. These feed back into the generic framework to provide a programme wide overview.

Our research is surfacing a very wide range of complex issues. Three distinct approaches to releasing and sharing OERs are emerging:

Open release by institutions Institutions are more likely to release generic resources which have a high impact across subject areas, especially where there are reputational benefits for the institution. Institutions may be more reluctant to release specialist resources, particularly if they see opportunities to marketise content, though some specialist resources are released to highlight an area of teaching and learning expertise. Quality assurance is important, and institutions may also invest in ensuring content is repurposable e.g. by disaggregating and tagging it effectively.

Open release by individuals Individuals may share with the wider education community to build their personal reputation as teachers and subject specialists. They may adopt approaches that maximise the integrity rather than the reuseability of their resources. Release by individuals can have a positive impact on the institution and act as an example of good practice to encourage others, however it can be easier to leave out institutional branding if repurposing is a driver for the individual.

Sharing within tightly knit topic communities These communities already share areas of research interest and tend to have personal contact, often face-to-face. Open content may fit in well with the topic ethos, or the topic may already have a strong public interest element e.g. climate change, public health, Approaches to sharing adopted by these communities do not necessarily have impact on institutional practices. They may adopt approaches to sharing which work well among teachers and researchers in their community but are less effective for other potential users.

We also have evidence of Open release by topic communities

At this stage of evaluation it is too early to list conclusive outcomes. Helen, Lou, Karen, Isobela nd I thought it would be useful to share these emerging approaches. We presented our initial findings to the JISC and HEA at a meeting in London earlier this month and a brief report is going to HEFCE to inform the release of phase 2 funding.



More information on OERs http://www.jisc.ac.uk/oer

The OER evaluation and synthesis wiki is at http://www.caledonianacademy.net/spaces/oer/index.php?n=Main.HomePage

Caledonian debates the future of universities

On Monday 1st March 2010 the Caledonian Academy hosted an event to discuss the future of universities. The event was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of the ‘Literacy in the Digital University(LiDU)’ project.

The event included research partners from the Universities of Edinburgh, Lancaster the UK Open University and the Institute of Education in London, along with colleagues from the Caledonian Academy and the academic schools at Glasgow Caledonian University. Throughout the day there was lively debate and discussion both onsite and at remote locations via Skype and Twitter (#lidu).

The opening keynote by Helen Beetham (article)highlighted research carried out by the Caledonian Academy (Helen Beetham, Allison Littlejohn and Lou McGill) in 2009 on Learning Literacies for a Digital Age (LLiDA).

The LLiDA project was funded by JISC to explore the relation of current literacy practices to educational, societal and technological changes. The research involved:
• a review of literatures at the intersection of learning, e-learning, literacy, and 'the digital'
• a review of relevant competence frameworks (UK, European, and English-speaking education systems)
• analysis of 40+ practical examples of digital literacy support and provision from UK HEIs
• analysis of data from 16 institutional audits of digital literacy practice, including 60 institutional strategic documents

The LiDU project website is at http://lidu.open.ac.uk/home.cfm

An overview of the event is available at http://literacyinthedigitaluniversity.blogspot.com/

The LLiDA project website is at http://www.academy.gcal.ac.uk/llida/

Caledonian leads the race to share and ‘mash up’ Online Educational Resources

The Caledonian Academy is leading a project to explore how the sharing and ‘mash-up’ of online educational resources will maximise learning opportunities.

The Open Educational Resources (OER) Programme, a multi-million pound initiative funded by the UK Joint Information Systems Committees (JISC), Higher Education funding council HEFCE and the UK Higher Education Academy, aims to make a wide range of on-line learning resources freely available, easily discovered and routinely re-used by both educators and learners.

By releasing a wide range of new course materials online, including complete modules, notes, videos, assessments, tests, simulations, worked examples, software, and other tools, and by exploring the lessons learned, the programme aims to discover what approaches to resource sharing are successful and sustainable long-term.

Glasgow Caledonian University was selected to lead the evaluation and synthesis of the programme through The Caledonian Academy which specialises in the research and development of innovative forms of learning and teaching for a wide range of students. In 2003 Academy Director and technology enhanced learning expert Professor Allison Littlejohn published the first international text on Reusing Online Resources and has since led a range of national and international projects in this area. She will lead a keynote address at a national conference on Open Educational Resources at te University of Cambridge this month [March 2010 http://www.ucel.ac.uk/oer10/keynotes.html].

She said: “The concept of sharing and reusing educational resources isn’t new – learning and teaching has always involved practitioners sharing resources, but growing access to freely available Web2.0 technologies such as Facebook and YouTube means we can now share information in ways that were not previously possible, breaking barriers to access and enabling people to adapt, reuse and ‘mash up’ existing course content with all sorts of other resources, including student generated materials.”

“GCU’s role in the OER Programme is to identify barriers and enablers to effective release and reuse of materials, aiming towards significant amounts of high quality resources being openly released and effectively used in the long term.”

“The ultimate goal is to kick-start a change in the way we all think about educational resources. In the future we hope students and lecturers will play an equal part in the creation and sharing of learning resources. Universities such as MIT and the UK Open University have already invested time and funding into making their resources freely available to anyone in the world who wants to use them and there are benefits for every university – and for society – in doing so”.

“GCU has just released a range of open educational resources for mathematics. The resources were released under an intellectual property license, called Creative Commons, which permits open use and adaptation. This move has been viewed by colleagues in the maths community as a milestone in moving forward how students and lecturers access and use maths resources.”

David Kernohan of JISC said: “The Funding Councils have identified the innovative use of digital technologies to maintain the UK's position as a global leader in education as having high importance and this is the first time a single country has taken forward OER release on this scale. GCU's role is analysing how the information can be released in the most helpful, user-friendly and sustainable way so is absolutely key to our success. If we get this right, the impact it can have is potentially phenomenal”.

The JISC OER programme comprises 29 projects, most based at universities and colleges in institutions across England and Wales, some involving the Higher Education Academy subject centres, all working towards open content release. Central to the programme is achieving sustainable change in educational culture, moving away from a focus on content ownership and towards openly shared content. Learning resources created by the programme will be released into Jorum Open (JISC supported national repository), using the Creative Commons licence.

The final evaluation and synthesis report will be available by June 2010.

More information on OERs http://www.jisc.ac.uk/oer The OER evaluation and synthesis wiki is at http://www.caledonianacademy.net/spaces/oer/index.php?n=Main.HomePage

Developer Help Required

Do you have an interest in how social tools may be used to support informal learning, and have experience developing with AJAX, Google APIs Netvibes or other widget architectures?

We have some funding from a previous project which needs to be used up by the end of July 2010 and would like to use it to undertake some development work to move our "Charting" ideas forward.

Charting is the mechanism by which an individual manages their interaction with the people and knowledge which contribute to their learning and development.

Whilst a short-term, full-time post based in Glasgow would be preferable, we are flexible about how the money might be used and would be open to creative suggestions. A key determinant is the short-time scale, so someone who can get started on the project as soon as possible would be particularly desirable.

The aims of the project are:

• To analyse use cases, mockups and existing scenarios, and identify appropriate platform(s) for development. Although a number of platform options should be assessed, use of Google tools/APIs would be the preferred option should they prove suitable.


• Development of proof of concept mini applications/widgets constituting a prototype charting system.

We expect the developer would have skills in the following:

• a range of potential technical solutions. Web2.0 widgets, Web APIs such as Google, Netvibes UWA, Adobe Air/Flex, AJAX, Rich Internet Applications.


• web programming experience, including client side scripting capabilities, web programming and experience with relational databases. Experience with web-centric technologies such as Universal Widget Architecture and AJAX, and Google APIs.

If you are interested in being involved, contact colin.milligan@gcal.ac.uk summarising your background and indicating your availability over the next 4 months.

EU FP7 STREP proposal

Isobel Falconer, Allison Littlejohn, Anoush Margaryan and Colin Milligan of the Caledonian Academy have been partners within a European Consortium led by the Frauenhofer Society developing a proposal for a Medium-Scale Focused Research project proposal on Architectural Distributed Design Studios (ARDIDES).

The proposal was successfully submitted on October 27, 2009, under the 5th FP7 ICT-TEL call.

If funded, the project will last for 3 years, and will include development of a novel learning approach and a technological environment (Distributed Design Studio) to harness the power of collective intelligence in supporting professionals (architects, engineers, designers) in creative design.

The Caledonian Academy team will lead a workpackage on pedagogic conceptualisation and evaluation, building an understanding of the pedagogic and design processes in the Distributed Design Studio (DDS) and to analyse the impact of DDSs on design processes in real-world testbeds.

Other partners in the consotrium include: Fundació Privada Universitat i Tecnologia (Spain), Humance (Germany), ILT Solutions (Germany/UK), Fachhochschule Potsdam (Germany), Universitat Politècnica Catalunya (Spain), Open University Netherlands, Katholike Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), University IUAV of Venice (Italy), Università Politecnica delle Marche (Italy), Netherlands Organisation for Applied Research, TNO (Netherlands), Baufritz (Germany), Hormigones prefabricados de Catalunya (Spain), realities:united GmbH, studio for art and architecture (Germany).

EU FP7 IP proposal submitted

In the past few months Colin Milligan, Allison Littlejohn and Anoush Margaryan of the Caledonian Academy have been collaborating as partners within a European Consortium led by the Open University of the Netherlands developing a proposal for a Large-Scale Integrated Project on Networked Innovation in Collaborative Environments.

The proposal was successfully submitted on October 27, 2009, under the 5th FP7 ICT-TEL call.

If funded, the project will last for 4 years, and will include an investigation, development, evaluation and deployment of a social and technical infrastructure
to enhance informal learning and networked innovation by professionals in the workplace. The Caledonian Academy team will lead a workpackage on the development of a Learning Framework as well as a set of charting tools to support collective learning in the process of open networked innovation.

Other partners in the consotrium include: Center for Social Innovation (Austria), Aalborg University (Denmark), RealityLab (Austria), Siemens (Germany), Audiovisual Technologies, Informatics and Telecommunications (Belgium), Logica (Netherlands), Politehnica University of Bucharest National Centre for Information Technology (Romania), and T6 ECO (Italy).

New member of the Caledonian Academy Team

Clemens Wieser will join the Caledonian Academy team on August 3, 2009. Clemens will conduct a PhD study on the role of social networks in enhancing students’ transition from education to the workplace.

Clemens obtained his Magister rer. nat. degree (equivalent to MSc) in Geography (major) and Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology (minors) at the University of Vienna in 2008. He passed his Master’s thesis titled “Student-centred teaching and its transfer problems into reallife geography teaching” with highest distinction and completed his Graduating Exam „mit Auszeichnung bestanden“ (equivalent to starred first degree).

Clemens’s research interests are in the intersection of imparting and acquisition of information. He has experience in qualitative research in teaching and didactics (Grounded Theory; hermeneutical text and data analysis) and evaluation of school pilot projects. His recent research projects included: Evaluation of a modular course system in a Viennese upper secondary school (AHS Rahlgasse, 2007); study on the impact of self-regulated and collective learning in geography school courses following Kilpatrick´s project method (2007); application of concepts of life world and everyday life in social science teaching (2008); reconstruction of teachers perceptions and strategies in „student-oriented teaching“ (2008). His further interests include Critical Theory and Frankfurt school of thought; Philosophy of education.

We warmly welcome Clemens to the Caledonian Academy and look forward to the fruitful collaboration ahead.

This 3-year study is funded by the Caledonian Academy and will be co-supervised by Dr. Isobel Falconer and Dr. Anoush Margaryan, with Prof. Allison Littlejohn as a member of the supervisory team.