Conceptualizing collaborative participation and engagement in OER communities OER10 Conference Dr Panagiota Alevizou Dr Tina Wilison Dr Patrick McAndrew Contact: [email protected]

Institute of Educational Techonlogy, Open University www.olnet.org

OER typologies & communities Learning Situations Learning by design: OER as Genres

OER typologies, & communities

Open education: resources and communities

The open provision of educational

resources

, enabled by ICTs, for consultation, use and adaptation by a

community

of users for non-commercial purposes (Unesco, 2002) Digitised 2007)

materials

offered freely

educators, students and self-learners for teaching, learning and research

and to openly for

use and reuse

(OECD/ CERI, key tenet of open education is that education can be

improved

by making educational assets visible and accessible and by harnessing the

community

of practice and

collective wisdom

of a reflection” (Iiyosh and Kumar, 2008: 10)

Tools

OSS for development and delivery Conceptual map of OER

Content

Materials for learning and reference

Implementation Resources Content Managemen t Systems

Educommon s

Social Software

Wikis H20

LD Modeling Tools Guided Instruction Tools Dev. tools

Connexions

Learning Manage ment Systems

Moodle Sakai

Learning Resources Courseware and Curricular resources

- MIT OCW - OpenLearn -OpenER Curriki

Learning Objects Repositories

- MERLOT -ARIADNE Connexions

Community platforms

- Wikieducator - Connexions - Deviant Art

Search Engines

OER Commons

Experimental course delivery platforms

P2PU U of the people

Reference & Media Collections

Internet Archive Wikipedia Flickr Youtube Slideshare Open Access journals and library reoisutirues -

Licensing tools

Creative Commons - GNU Free Documentatio n License

Interoperability

IMS SCORM OKI -

Best Practices

- CMU Design Principels - OU Olnet - OU LD

Implementation bodies

inter-governmental organisations, consortia, translation bodies, policy and funding institutions

Expanded from Marguliers’ (2005) conceptual mapping of OERs ( see also OECD, 2007, Conole and Weller, 2008)

Olnet Research: Case Studies

Insights from interviews with stakeholders, user perspectives More info: http://olnet.org/node/103

Categories of OERs Institutional

: education

Drivers

: legacy, marketing, experimentation, outreach

Community

: reference, self improvement

Networks of improvement and peer support; Increased Access, large small operation

Blurred boundaries Tensions

: awareness and granularity, Quality, Accreditation, Mentorship Sustainability, volunteerism Participatory expertise and literacies Scale of operation

MIT OCW OpenLearn CMU ELI

Institution

OpenER OpenExeter ParisTech U of Western Cape

large

Wikipedia MERLOT Connexions

Community

CommonContent Wikiversity Wikieducator P2PU Expanded from OECD, 2007: 46

small

Community/connectedness

Collaboration in development

• • • Stakeholders (internal or external) Expanding diversity and building cross-institutional collaborations, knowledge transfer and exchange Social engagement around open access content/OER

Faculty, Tutors & learners

• • • Disciplinary/subject engagement & exposure Experimental pedagogies & engagement in learning De-schooling society?

Collaborations

Collaborations

Changing Mindsets

• •

[…] OER Africa acts as a mediator for changing the mentality of an old educational system that was top down and authoritative

(Interview: CN: OER Africa)

Community support services

•

We focus on existing CoP to facilitate support in online engagement and evaluation of content and in particular learning situations

(Interview: RF, Wikieducator) • • •

Knowledge exchange & student engagement

MIT OCW & MIT Science and Tech initiative & MINSKY programmes (engagement with content) TESSA ‘

Connect scholars and practitioners within a bounded discipline or professional community. Cultural bias is addressed when different type(s) of knowledge are exchanged transparently in the platform’

(Interview: CN on OER Africa & U Michigan Public Health: tropical diseases unit) •

Crowdsourcing

Cultural and ed. institutions (Wikimedia foundation)

Communities of improvement

Teaching & learning innovations

• •

Dialogue on pedagogical wrappers

Build OER content in service of existing educational problems…(i.e. teaching practice)…this is the content I used with my students, these are the challenges I faced and these are the LO I achieved or didn’t, can someone help me improve my practice?

(Interview: JW, Wikimedia)

If you can form these network- improvement communities so that they can help teachers in their practice, and generate evidence of what works…and if the success rates are higher, then I get empowred and tell my peers and they tell their peers and so we begin the viral effect

(Interview: KC, Carnegie) • •

Exposure, Reflection, Reputation

– ‘

about 1/3 of faculty tell us that publishing courseware openly has improved both their standing in the field and their teaching

’ (Interv: SC: MIT OCW) – ‘

Teachers tells us that they improve their practices and enjoy notoriety by publishing openly

(Interv.Connexions)

Collaborative pedagogies & engagement in peer learning

– Ad hoc learning communities organising

Wikiversity

resources specifically to meet their learning goals –

Capture the leisure power – the wisdom of the crowds, the passion of people interested in content domains

(KC, Carnegie)

Learning Situations

surfers Single & self regulated learners Prod-users

Audience in OER

Autodidacts Social learners Volunteer students/teachers

Education Inquiry

Prod-use Remix

use inscriptions in OER

Engagement

Improvement Access

content tools objects

User augmented content

Work in progress Learning by design: Genre

Genre describes

content

,

form

and

communicative purpose

. It describes not only the form of the written artifact itself —“novel,” “lab report” “memo” ‘lecture notes’, ‘quizzes’— but also the demands of a particular rhetorical situation. Genres are kinds of texts, but also, kinds of

social actions

within a particular community (Flower 1994; Miller 1984, Bereiter and Scardamilia, 2002).

Genre model

Genre can address the circuit of cultural production of, and engagement with, OER

• Interaction of genre context and action (Devitt, 2004: 30)

Genres and situations are intertwined; they act on each other and, paradoxically, each emerges from the other A recognition of other genres co-implicated (or intersubjective, co-constitutive) in any other genre.

Concluding remarks

OER is the dictionary of our time; the platform to

share a common language and build knowledge. We need to look at the political implications of the choices we make around OER development: the content, the learning the innovation trajectories, the communities

(DC, U of PEI, OpenEd Community)

credits

• Education/collaboration: @psd http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/1805374441/ • • Mediation: Flickr @ hyperscholar My Communities @Steven w: flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevenwarburton/32094611 04/ • Learning @Blunight 72*: flickr www.flickr.com/photos/blunight72/164070593/

Thank you