TALL blog

Last week we ran our first workshop exploring OER use with 9 academics across a variety of institutions.  They were chosen to be practitioners with  little previous exposure to OER – reflecting the starting position for the majority of HE.  This was a very hands on session where we asked participants to look for OER with a particular teaching session in mind (although without precluding the discovery of things they might want to use elsewhere), hoping to understand processes at least somewhat close to actual practice.

It is obviously too soon to draw any firm conclusions at this point, but a few themes that emerged were:

• Everyone reuses all the time, but not necessarily OER.
• All aware of issues around copyright – but not always how best to manage them.
• There is simultaneous more and less out there than you might expect – VERY dependant on what you are looking for.
• Similarly contradictory evidence around where best to search, for somethings Google is best, others found specialist sources a revelation “why didn’t I know about JORUM before?”
• The form of OER is vital to how it is reused,  wholesale reuse most likely with video and multimedia you cannot make yourself, textual resources are often used more for inspiration than anything else.

So at the moment just impressions from the day.  We are running our second workshop on the 4th which should provide more data to explore. Image: Reuse / / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Last Wednesday I attended the latest in the very useful series of Elluminate sessions organised by the JISC Curriculum Design and Delivery programme.  Entitled “Academy/JISC OER Programme: implications for curriculum design and delivery”.  This session gave a really valuable overview of the JISC OER initiatives so far in this context.  For our study the following questions posed by Helen Beetham particularly resonated.

1. What kinds of OERs do we see being adopted and re-used, and how? What new skills/expertise are required?
2. How can OERs be integrated sustainably into curriculum processes? In what ways are curriculum processes challenged/contested/changed by use of OERs?
3. How does the use of OERs impact on (e.g.) Student engagement? Student autonomy? Student achievement? Staff workload? Pedagogies in use?
4. What kind of communities (e.g. Subject-based)benefit from OER sharing/reuse? How can OERs enhance existing open practices in learning/teaching communities?

If you want to experience this for yourself a recording is available at https://sas.elluminate.com/mr.jnlp?suid=M.73C03453269CFD3F84F16CCF8C0322&sid=2009077 .