#ReclaimOpen Learning Symposium

Thursday, September 26th, 2013 | MARK MCGUIRE | No Comments

"Open" by Jessica Duensing (CC-BY-SA)

Free streaming of the Reclaim Open Learning Symposium begins at 5:00PM on Saturday 26 Sept. Pacific time (that’s 12:00 noon on Friday 27 Sept. in New Zealand) at UC Irvine, with a conversation with John Seely Brown and Amin Saberi, moderated by Anya Kamenetz. The event (and stream) continues the next day (Sat. 5:00AM-12:00PM NZ time) with Howard Rheingold and the winners of the Reclaim Open Learning Innovation Challenge, who are

transforming higher education toward connected and creative learning, open in content and access, participatory, and building on a growing range of experiments and innovations in networked learning.

These are innovative project worth hearing about from dedicated, creative people who are worth following. Speakers include Jim Groom, Martha Buris and Alan Levine, from the University of Mary Washington (USA). They are behind ds106, an online community as much as a course, that focuses on Digital Storytelling and online identity. Jonathan Worth, Matt Johnston, Shaun Hides and Jonathan Shaw (from Coventry University, UK) won for #Phonar (Photography and Narrative), which they teach to a place-based class linked via blogs, websites and social media to the world. Susanna Ferrell and Jade Ulrich (Scripps College, United States) have put together a DOCC (Distributed Open Collaborative Course), “DOCC 2013: Dialogues on Feminism and Technology“, which looks very promising. I am less familiar with the other winning projects, but I’m sure they are all worthy of our time and attention.

These initiatives challenge the dominant MOOC narrative, which has been captured by large (mostly private, for-profit) internet startups and elite universities, and they demonstrate how we can all innovate now, where we are, in our current institutions of higher education. Check out the winners’ websites and follow the symposium on Twitter (#ReclaimOpen, @DMLResearchHub). I assume the talks will be archived after the streaming of the presentations, so check the symposium website following the event.

Glue jar: “give books to the world”

Link

Reply

Gluejar is an innovative approach to digital publishing that uses Crowdfunding to “unglue” in-copyright books for distribution under a creative commons license.

This is a model that ensures that creators are still financially rewarded for their efforts, while releasing a free, legal digital edition of their book that can be read and shared worldwide.

In Beta at:
https://unglue.it/

For more information, go to:
http://www.gluejar.com/

Open Access, Academic Publishing, Creative Commons.

Wednesday, July 24th, 2013 | Bill Anderson | No Comments

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.

2013 NZ Report into the Declaration on Open and Transparent Government

Friday, June 21st, 2013 | MARK MCGUIRE | 2 Comments

From “An Opal Dream Cave” by Jem Yoshioka CC-BY-SA (reusing Katherine Mansfield’s poem)

As the Press Release says, “Open data benefits public and economy“. The “2013 report on adoption of the Declaration on Open and Transparent Government” was released by the Honourable Chris Tremain on June 17. It documents how well government agencies in New Zealand are adapting the declaration, which encourages the release of high value public data for reuse. Twenty six (84%) of government departments now include the Declaration in their core business plan or intend to do so next year (up from 72% in 2012). The Cabinet approved the New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing (NZGOAL) framework on 5 July 2010 to provide guidelines for agencies to follow when releasing material under a licence that enables it to be reused by others. Since that time, progress has been very good. A directory of publicly-available, non-personal New Zealand government held datasets can be found at data.govt.nz. A list of open data case studies shows the wide variety of ways in which others have made good use of data that the government has made available. These include the Wellington Interactive Map Viewer, the Tongariro Pocket Ranger and CamperMate smart phone applications, and many other innovative products and services that effectively and productively reuse data that has been collected by the New Zealand government and released under an open licence. The New Zealand Creative Commons Website also has an excellent set of case studies that describe how Creative Commons licences have been applied to a wide range of government material. One good role model is the The Ministry for Culture and Heritage, which has published a wealth of public resources online using a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence. As Matthew Oliver, the manager of the Ministry’s Web team says:

The more we could get our content used, the more we justify our work. By making our content available for reuse, we show that our content is important, that there is a need.

It is worth keeping this quote in mind as we engage in the important work that we do in higher education.

 

 

Open Scholarship Community of Practice – Inaugural meeting Monday, 10 June

Friday, June 7th, 2013 | Richard White | No Comments

As previously  blogged, the Open Scholarship Community of Practice will have its first meeting on Monday 10 June. There will be audio-conference for those who can’t make it in person (see details below). The first session will focus on MOOCs – developments, challenges, opportunities.

OSCoP is a forum for anyone with an interest in openness in higher education to share experiences and ask questions about open research, open publishing, open data, open courses, open educational resources – basically put open in front of it and you can come and talk with others about it. Meetings will be every two months.

  • 10 June, 1 – 2pm, University of Otago Central Library Conference Room 3
  • Our topic will be MOOCs, developments, challenges, opportunities
  • Audio-conference: call 083044; enter PIN 136363 then press # (dial 1 before 083044 if calling from an internal line).

Great journal issue. Open Educational Resources: Opening Access to Knowledge

Tuesday, June 4th, 2013 | Bill Anderson | No Comments

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

Editorial: Volume 14, Number 2 HTML PDF MP3 EPUB
Rory McGreal, Wanjira Kinuthia, Stewart Marshall i-iv

Research Articles

Moving to open educational resources at Athabasca University: A case study HTML PDF MP3 EPUB
Cindy Ives, Mary Margaret Pringle 1-13

 

Open education resources and mobile technology to narrow the learning divide HTML PDF MP3 EPUB
Mohamed Ally, Mohammed Samaka 14-27

 

Mobile authoring of open educational resources as reusable learning objects HTML PDF MP3 EPUB
Dr Kinshuk, Ryan Jesse 28-52

 

Strategies for sustainable business models for open educational resources HTML PDF MP3 EPUB
F.H.T de Langen 53-66

 

Government support for open educational resources: Policy, funding, and strategies HTML PDF MP3 EPUB
Paul Stacey 67-80

 

Open access scholarly publications as OER HTML PDF MP3 EPUB
Terry Anderson 81-95

 

The logic of national policies and strategies for open educational resources HTML PDF MP3 EPUB
Fred Mulder 96-105

 

Exploration of open educational resources in non-English speaking communities HTML PDF MP3 EPUB
Cristobal Cobo 106-128

 

Visualization mapping approaches for developing and understanding OER HTML PDF MP3 EPUB
Teresa Connolly 129-155

Invitation… Challenges, opportunities with MOOCs in Higher Education

Wednesday, May 29th, 2013 | Bill Anderson | No Comments

Following on from the successful Open Minds Seminar series in 2012, a Community of Practice has been established for Otago staff to share experiences and ask questions about what it means to be an ‘open scholar’. Over the course of our two-monthly meetings we might debate questions like:

  • Are MOOCs the greatest opening up of education ever or just an ivy league branding exercise?
  • Could I run my own class like a MOOC or use one within mine?
  • What does open access publishing mean for me?
  • What’s all this about governments decreeing that research outcomes must be made open?
  • What happens if I put my data ‘out there’?

In the first meeting we will be exploring the opportunities and challenges for higher education presented by MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Together we will discuss the principles of MOOCs, share experiences and look at the possibilities MOOCs present for Otago in more depth.

June 10, 1pm

University of Otago Central Library Conference Room 3

Some resources you might find useful to get you started:

Feel free to bring your lunch and come along with any ideas for future topic.

New OER Resource

Thursday, May 9th, 2013 | Bill Anderson | No Comments

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.

Tasman Declaration on Open Research

Friday, April 19th, 2013 | Richard White | 68 Comments

The Tasman Declaration came out of the Open Research Conference (mentioned previously on this blog) held in Auckland in February, representing the collective voice of the diverse group of participants, including researchers, lawyers, librarians, research infrastructure providers, technology consultants and software developers from NZ, Australia, the US and the UK. The declaration calls on Australian and New Zealand research communities, institutions, policy makers and funders to make publicly-funded research open:

Publicly funded research should be openly available to maximise return on investments into research, and to increase participation in research and its translation beyond the traditional research sector.

“Open Research” is about removing barriers for society to benefit from research, by ensuring open access to and reuse of research papers, data, materials, metadata and code, and by developing the supporting practices and policies.

In the absence of a good reason, research outputs should be made available with as few restrictions as possible and as soon as possible.

Read more about the story behind the declaration or read the declaration itself in full.

Add your voice by signing it.

 

Everybody’s doing it (except us)

Wednesday, February 27th, 2013 | Richard White | No Comments

They’re doing it in the UK. In Australia too. And in the US, they’re going to be doing it more than they already were. I’m talking about open access publication of research.

In 2012 a public petition was made to the Whitehouse proposing that the public should have free access to the outcomes of scientific research that they have funded. Over 65000 people signed and this week the Obama administration has responded with a resounding, “Yes, we can.” While the US National Institutes of Health has had a public access policy for years (which “requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication“), the announcement this week goes much further. Any research with a budget of over $100m will be expected to be made publicly available within 12 months of original publication. “The logic behind this is plain,” says the statement, to provide access to taxpayer-funded research to innovators in industry, science and the public generally. It cites the “great success” of the NIH policy, which is to be used as a guide to other agencies now coming under this new one.

The discussion that has ensued has centred on the fact that 12 months after publication is hardly lightening fast and the level of budget threshold  (which sounds like a lot to NZers). Nevertheless, it is generally being hailed as a landmark announcement in the adoption of Open Access as the default.

A key reason for this is that the statement also “requires that agencies start to address the need to improve upon the management and sharing of scientific data produced with Federal funding.” This goes further than the UK’s Finch report and the announcements by Australia’s funding bodies in recent times.

In any case, from a NZ perspective, it is becoming clear that everybody is going OA except us – but the question is no longer if but when. While the NZ government has established NZGOAL and issued its Declaration on Open and Transparent Government, it has so far been silent on research by organisations like Otago. It can only be a matter of time before this changes, given developments around the rest of the world.

 
 
 

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