Transcript IET’s Knowledge Network

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OU Knowledge Network
Enabling OU staff to explore, share and build
knowledge & experience of teaching & learning
OU Teaching Awards
23 June 2003
James Aczel, on behalf of the Knowledge Network team
Finding what’s known about
teaching and learning
• How to keep up-to-date with the latest
innovations and research findings?
• How to apply this work to your own
practice?
• How to contribute? Where to discuss?
http://kn.open.ac.uk
Supporting teaching
• A strategy of distributed knowledge sharing
– easy publishing
– powerful searching
– online collaboration
• Web-based application and database
• Helping colleagues to share research and
reflections on teaching and learning issues
http://kn.open.ac.uk
KN Development Team
Core Team
Josie Taylor
Doug Clow
Alex Little
Will Woods
Patrick McAndrew
James Aczel
Hassan Sheikh
Mariano Rico
Former members of the core team
Signy Johnson
Adrian Mabbott-Athique
http://kn.open.ac.uk
Research, briefings & CPD
• Institutional statistics & Courses Survey
• Evaluations of teaching innovations
• Case studies from course teams and regions
• Educational research
• Outputs from teaching development projects
• Overviews of key educational issues
• News from the world of HE teaching
• CPD discussions and activities
http://kn.open.ac.uk
VPE website
A “Community Tool”
• Search the full-text of multiple data sources
– comment; subscribe; see what’s related
• Publish to Web, OU Intranet or project team
– documents, presentations, media clips, websites
– cross-referencing; access statistics; commenting;
subscriptions
• Build collaborative websites
– control the “look” of the site
– discussions, news and questionnaires
http://kn.open.ac.uk
KN Topics
Course models
Accessibility
Online tutoring
Versioning
Media mix
Student demographics
Usability
Synchronous communication
Retention
Computer-mediated communication
Assessment
Workload
http://kn.open.ac.uk
Synchronous
communication
“… Lyceum is a synchronous groupware
communication tool that has been
developed by the Open University. It
supports interactions between tutors and
students and between students and
students in a variety of capacities such as
tutoring, group work, negotiation,
collaborative writing and peer-to-peer
communication…”
http://kn.open.ac.uk
Who uses it?
• 40% of OU staff
• Research partners
– Finalist in the European Academic
Software Awards
• Practitioners outside the OU
http://kn.open.ac.uk
Two quick appeals for help
1. Please share with us what you know!
2. Become a pedagogic activist in your faculty.
Institutional Research
Evaluations & Case Studies
Educational Research
CPD
http://kn.open.ac.uk
Special thanks to…
• Helen Maltby for the graphics
• Peter Twining for the evaluation
• Carol Rowland & Chloe Roberts for the news service
• Lynda Davies for secretarial support
• The teams we work with: PLUM, APDP, ITLO,
CURVE, SoURCE/RESL, Student Statistics, ICDL,
Electronic Interactive Assessment Project
• Our reflective friends: Robin Goodfellow, Simon Rae,
Jo Tait, John Pettit, Mick Jones, Keir Thorpe,
Alexander Muir, Nick Farnes, Megan Crawford,
Simon Atkinson
• Mary Thorpe, and the IET management committee
http://kn.open.ac.uk