Following on from the meeting about MOOCs, the Open Scholarship group has got another Opening to exploit!

Matt McGregor from Creative Commons (NZ) will be at the University on August 12 and we’ve invited him along to join in a discussion about…

Open Access, Academic Publishing and Creative Commons.

Our invitation to Matt signalled that it would be good if he would speak for a short time to begin, but the focus of the session was to be on discussion amongst participants about open access, academic publishing, creative commons and international developments in the area. Howard Amos, University Librarian, will be chairing the session.

Some resources you might find useful to get you started:

http://librelloph.com/ojs/index.php/politicsandgovernance/article/view/PaG.1.2.102

http://www.sparc.arl.org/

Come along and join in the discussion.

August 12, 1pm

Central Library Conference Room 3.

The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (an open access journal) has published an issue that focuses on OERs (see below).

Also, recently published online on the Learning, Media and Technology journal site is an article entitled “Self-directed learning and guidance in non-formal open courses”. It’s an interesting look at how OERs were used in two non-formal courses. Could be worth a read if you are thinking of using OERs in any teaching you do.

Vol 14, No 2 (2013): Open Educational Resources: Opening Access to Knowledge

Table of Contents

Editorial

Research Articles

From the Commonwealth of Learning … a new publication about OERs
…

 Perspectives on Open and Distance Learning:
Open Educational Resources: Innovation, Research and Practice

Rory McGreal, Wanjira Kinuthia and Stewart Marshall, Eds. May 2013

Published jointly by the Commonwealth of Learning and Athabasca University, Canada (UNESCO/COL Chair in OER) as CC-BY-SA and freely available to all: www.col.org/psOERIRP. Available in PDF and epub formats.

This book is one in a series of OER resources published by COL. It describes the OER movement in detail, providing readers with insight into OER’s significant benefits, its theory and practice, and its achievements and challenges. The 16 chapters, written by some of the leading international experts on the subject, are organised into four parts by theme:

• OER in Academia: describes how OER are widening the international community of scholars, following MIT’s lead in sharing its resources and looking to the model set by the OpenCourseWare Consortium

• OER in Practice: presents case studies and descriptions of OER initiatives underway on three continents

• Diffusion of OER: discusses various approaches to releasing and “opening” content, from building communities of users that support lifelong learning to harnessing new mobile technologies that enhance OER access on the Internet

• Producing, Sharing and Using OER: examines the pedagogical, organisational, personal and technical issues that producing organisations and institutions need to address in designing, sharing and using OER

Instructional designers, curriculum developers, educational technologists, teachers, researchers, students, others involved in creating, studying or using OER: all will find this timely resource informative and inspiring.

Published today, an interesting article in IRRODL looking at the impact of OpenCourseWare (or more broadly Open Educational Resources) involvement on some of the OCW institutions and on learners.

Broadly speaking, OCW publication has helped learners decide on and prepare for courses prior to enrolment, and has had some positive impacts on recruitment and outcomes for institutions.

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1238/2336

The blurb on the Commonwealth of learning site (http://www.col.org/resources/publications/Pages/detail.aspx?PID=412) says that 28 contributors to a new book on “OERs and change in higher education” answer such questions as:

How do institutions, in both developed and developing countries, reposition themselves meaningfully within the new information-rich world in which information is accessible as never before? …. and …

How might proponents of OER garner greater governmental, institutional and educator “buy-in” to the principles of open educational practices, and to the policies and programs necessary to realise and sustain OER?

Download the book today from that link (above) and find out what the answers are might be …

There’s a useful article about the move toward Open Educational Practices (OEPs) in a recent issue of the Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society. The authors discuss the ways in which there is a shift in focus from OERs, which have mainly engaged educators, to a wider focus on OEPs which also require the engagement of administrators, managers and even politicians.

The recent DEANZ conference (April 11-13) had several keynotes which drew attention to the changes that are occurring in the (tertiary) educational landscape as a result of the move to open-ness in education. The OER aspect challenges some notions of how and when learners will choose to study and the concept of ‘digital badges’ seems to be emerging as a potential alternative informal accreditation mechanism… where do Universities fit and how can they engage with these changes?

The OERu model provides one answer, and there are others…  a quote from the article …. ” …many other new models may well lead to a de-institutionalization of education (Bates, 2008, 2011/10/25) whereby students are able to build up e-portfolios of work from various institutions and informal learning and then apply for certification at the university of choice.”   which brings us back to the need to be much more willing to be open and to develop a greater sense of OEPs…. read the article …