From OER to OEP – enabling open educational practices via platform development and open course build Members : #OER17

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Public Group Active 7 years, 8 months ago

Wed, Apr 5 2017, 1:30pm – 2:50pm

Authors: Anna Page

Room: Seminar 4

Theme: Inst/Org Politics

Type: Presentations

Description

The Opening Educational Practices in Scotland (OEPS) project investigates how expert guidance, functionality and open platform availability can be used to encourage creation and remix of open educational resources (OER), enabling users to develop their open educational practices. Collaborative partnerships to build OER and widen participation in HE and FE can be transformative (Welsh Government, 2014, D’Antoni, 2013), with OEPS assisting several third sector organisations and universities make their first OER.

In addition to a growing collection of case studies on the OEPS hub website sharing real contextual instances of open education in practice, OEPS is using and further developing an open educational platform for building and hosting these OERs. This has exposed organisational practices around course creation and production to fresh scrutiny and revision as external course creators, with little previous experience of open courses, have engaged with building open materials. The limitations of creation and remix tools on existing OER platform of OpenLearn Works has been tested. These are being redeveloped to better support external use of an open platform which started as a space for Open University staff collaboration in open course and project creation (OpenLearn Labspace, 2006).

In parallel to creating OER with external partners, OEPS has built ‘Becoming an open educator’, a badged open course demonstrating open educational practices and discussing issues surrounding copyright and open licences which anyone wishing to build OER needs to understand. The course was based on existing OER, remixed and rewritten to explore open educational practices. Additionally, with contributions from OEPS, the Free learning team at The Open University created the badged course ‘How to make an open online course’ which explains processes and practical steps educators may need to take as they create OER.

This presentation will focus on the evolution and use of Labspace / OpenLearn Works which is being relaunched as OpenLearn Create in early 2017 as an open platform for hosting OER by anyone. It will examine improvements and developments which the OEPS project has identified for the platform and collaborative course production. We will discuss the extent to which collaborative open educational practices promoted by OEPS in its exemplar open courses are helping to change cultures both in education and in third sector organisations who are exploring OER as a means for wider participation in their subject expertise.

D’Antoni, S. (2013) ‘Open Educational Resources: Access to Knowledge – A Personal Reflection’ in McGreal, R., Kinuthia, W. and Marshall, S. (eds) (2013) Open Educational Resources: Innovation, Research and Practice. Vancouver: The Commonwealth of Learning and Athabasca University https://oerknowledgecloud.org/sites/oerknowledgecloud.org/files/pub_PS_OER-IRP_web.pdf#page=153

Welsh Government (2014) “Open & online: Wales higher education and emerging modes of learning”, Report of the Online Digital Learning Working Group http://gov.wales/docs/dcells/publications/140402-online-digital-learning-working-group-en.pdf

Becoming an open educator http://www.open.edu/openlearnworks/course/view.php?id=2274 (Opening Educational Practices in Scotland Project team, lead author Beck Pitt, 2016), CC BY 4.0

How to make an open online course http://www.open.edu/openlearnworks/course/view.php?id=2221 (Free Learning team at The Open University, 2016), CC BY SA NC 4.0

OEPS hub of open educational practices www.oeps.ac.uk (Opening Educational Practices in Scotland Project)

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