David began by running out of the room (to jump in the chilly outside pool) only to be followed on camera in a segue that led to a video documentary (‘The Avalanche That Never Happened’) about the ‘deliverology’ which vexes … Continue reading
This presentation began with a general discussion – informed by Audrey’s background as a folklore scholar – of apocalyptic prediction. Apocalypse and crisis are motifs that are common in contemporary discourse around education and educational technology, often accompanied by the … Continue reading
Rory spoke about some of the initiatives which UNESCO are involved with. These include POERUP which is looking at governmental OER policies around the world. They are also expanding the UNESCO OER chairs project into new and developing countries. The … Continue reading
Andrew Ng – co-founder of Coursera – joined us by Skype for this presentation since he couldn’t be with us in person. His presentation focused on the ‘revolutionary’ aspects of Coursera’s MOOC platform. Most people, he noted, could never take … Continue reading
Open Fellow Sara Frank Bristow (4th from right) with members of OERRH team
There’s positively nothing like the OU as a research environment for someone with my background: an online education researcher and analyst since 2002, first in the UK, then Canada, then my native US, my interests cover nearly every intersection between education and technology – so you could basically call me a kid in a candy shop on the Milton Keynes campus. Everything is about e-learning! And it’s quiet, empty, and clean, because – get this – that distance learning thing means that there are no students (a joke which never seems to get old).
In between fascinating meetings across each of the Research Hub’s four sectors (K-12, college, university and informal), I met with representatives from The Institute of Educational Technology, the Computers and Learning Research Group (CALRG), the Open Media Unit, the OpenLearn repository and more. I left two weeks later having barely scratched the surface of my own study (drat!), but carrying a solid overview of the OU’s longstanding (and ongoing) work in this and related areas – plus a renewed sense of urgency to make a valuable contribution to the Evidence Hub.
I leave today for the Open Education conference in Utah, and where I will continue my quest for evidence in support of, or in contrast to, the Hub’s hypothesis concerning the interplay between policy and practice. I’d encourage fellow conference attendees to approach the Hub’s team members with their own their own stories about the use of OER. We’re at a critical juncture in the trajectory of open education, and I believe that developing this evidence base for the benefit of educators, technologists, policymakers and others is critical to this movement’s success. We’re all in this ship together, after all!
Now back to that study…
Feel free to share your musings on the interactions between OER policy and practice with me directly: sara at salientresearch.net.
Photo credit: Leigh-Anne Perryman CC-BY
October to November 2013 sees the OER Research Hub team, variously, on tour. In my previous blog post I reported on my trip to Paris to present at the EADTU 2013 conference. The temperature was mild during my stay, indeed quite warm at times. Not so in Park City, Utah, where myself, Rob Farrow, Bea de los Arcos, Beck Pitt, Claire Walker and Gary Elliott-Cirigottis are attending and presenting papers at Open Ed 2013. In fact, as I write this, there’s a steady fall of snow coating the surrounding mountains and nearby resort hotels.
The OER Research Hub presentations at Open Ed cover a representative spread of our research and project activities to date. I’m presenting a paper on the opportunities for and barriers to OER use in India’s teacher education system, Rob Farrow is showcasing our just-launched evidence hub, Beck Pitt is presenting a paper on the NGLC-funded Bridge to Success OER project and Bea de los Arcos is reporting on her research with educators using the Flipped Classroom method and working on the Vital Signs project. We’ll also be launching a suite of OER surveys whilst at Open Ed 2013 and a further blog post will follow with the details.
If you’re attending Open Ed 2013, especially if you’ve time to spare before the conference gets going, do get in touch by email or twitter (@laperryman @philosopher1978 @BeckPitt @CWalk1379 @celTatis @GJECirigottis) to talk all things open (and perhaps play a little OERchery).
OK… things aren’t that bad! But I was sad to leave Houston after a great week with the Connexions conference team and attendees. Thanks to everyone for making me feel so welcome and for taking time out to chat. I’ve been back … Continue reading
Tuesday’s Connexions conference (see here for the full programme) and the content and coding sprint days which followed were a fantastic experience: there was some great talks (both the keynote, Susan Badger, and the session on “Impact: Faculty and Student … Continue reading
Pictures from yesterday’s workshop are available here.
Greetings from Houston! The First Personalized Learning Workshop at Rice University is underway… I’ve been tweeting from the conference (check out @Beck Pitt), but also wrote a blog post to cover the first of the morning sessions. So (better late … Continue reading
Current activity within open education can be characterised as having reached a beta phase of maturity. In much the same way that software progresses through a release life cycle, beta is the penultimate testing phase, after the initial alpha-testing phase, … Continue reading
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