On Wednesday I attended the CETIS 2008 Conference: Technology for Learning, Teaching and the Institution, which took place at Aston University. I was very keen to attend this conference because the work CETIS do on interoperability standards is very relevant to POCKET and I have been in regular communication with Wilbert Kraan on this issue regarding the POCKET materials. Myself and Dave O’Hare from POCKET were also very keen to attend the OER Programme Scoping session as this concerned the upcoming JISC OER Programme call which will hopefully be a way to carry on POCKET when the project finishes in March.
To begin the OER Programme Scoping Session David Kernohan from JISC gave an overview of the JISC Open Educational Content Programme. David spoke about the reasons behind this programme: how universities used to be the font of all knowledge but now the Internet has changed this. He also spoke about the cost of creating learning materials from scratch each time and how this time and money could be spend if material was reused. This would also lead to an improved quality of teaching resources. Other benefits mentioned included how releasing content can benefit institutions by enhancing their reputation and therefore their financial situation. The programme will provide funding not just to create content but to develop institutional processes regarding OER.
The RepRODUCE (Re-purposing and Re-use of Digital University-Level Content and Evaluation) project was mentioned and the lessons that they had learned through this project were discussed. Certain needs were highlighted, including a need to work with current academic practice (not against it) and a need for high quality, free to use materials.
Amber Thomas from JISC then delivered a presentation on Technical Infrastructure for Open Educational Content, which covered the technical requirements that JISC are proposing for projects under the OER Programme. Requirements included:
- Content must be stored and available in JorumOpen: It is hoped that JorumOpen will act as a showcase for current practices in the UK.
- Content should be released under a Creative Commons license
The final presentation was given by Li Yuan from CETIS on Open Educational Resources Opportunities and Challenges for HE. Li talked about the different meanings of open in different domains: open access (social); open standard (technical); and open licensed (legal). She also showed some examples of OER initiatives such as: MIT (relies on paid staff, costs £2m per year); Utah State (learners can gain credit); Rice University (material provided by volunteers - community driven OER initiative); Open Michigan (student centred OER initiative); OpenLearn (uses web 2.0 services and social networks); Stanford University (has more than 500 lectures on YouTube).
Li also mentioned: individual OER initiatives (such as David Wiley’s Introduction to Open Education and Russell Stannard’s multimedia training videos); pubic initiatives (such as Wikipedia); and national initiatives (such as ParisTech OCW and JorumOpen).
Li spoke about the issues and challenges involved in OER initiatives, including sustainability, IPR and copyright, quality and interoperability.
After the scheduled presentations there was then plenty of time for discussion and debate around the OER programme. Questions raised included:
Where was the content going to come from?
What will success look like?
Patrick McAndrew from the Open University also spoke of the experiences of OpenLearn where 7000 registrations on OU courses have come from OpenLearn - this works out to be worth about £4 million! OpenLearn brings a high quality of interest in OU courses. OU Cloudworks was also mentioned, which is a popular site for finding, sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas, experiences and issues.
Overall the two main aims of the OER programme emerged as being:
1. Changing practice
2. Getting content out there
I found this session very useful and interesting to see how JISC were planning the OER programme and what it aimed to achieve. I was a bit disappointed (and surprised) at the lack of priority placed on the issue of interoperability as I believe that this must be a priority if content is going to be truly open. My experience of interoperability on POCKET has also taught me that interoperability is not an easy/straightforward issue and it is one that should be considered at the beginning of any OER initiative (not as an afterthought at the end).
I greatly enjoyed the end keynote given by Dr Stuart Lee, Director of Oxford University Computer Services. I also was interested to hear about how Oxford University are in the process of migrating their VLE to the open source Sakai.
Stuart Lee spoke about how there was no wow factor anymore when it comes to e-learning (except when something goes wrong!). The main focus of his talk was the importance of engaging, not only with learners, but with academics for successful e-learning projects. I found this really useful and as I work so closely with academics on POCKET I could really relate to the points Stuart was raising.
Stuart argued that lectures are always going to exist as they are cost effective and students and practitioners both want them. He went on to say that the language of e-learning is not always the language of the practitioner and that it is important to understand the problems and barriers that lecturers face. Practitioners will use something if they think it will be helpful, so it is important to show them something that will meet their needs in an area they can contextualise. In this way visualisation is important: lecturers will ask ‘can I see myself doing that?’.
Stuart ended his keynote by describing most e-learning tools as Chindogu: things that cannot be for real use. He also highlighted the fundamental interoperability issue - people.