Conceptualizing collaborative participation and engagement in OER communities

OER10 Conference

Dr Panagiota Alevizou

Dr Tina Wilison

Dr Patrick McAndrew

Contact: p.alevizou@open.ac.uk

Institute of Educational Techonlogy, Open University

www.olnet.org

Learning Situations

Learning by design:OER as Genres

OER typologies,& communities

Open education: resources and communities

Digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research (OECD/ CERI, 2007)

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)

key tenet of open education is that education can be improved by making educational assets visible and accessible and by harnessing the collective wisdom of a community of practice and reflection” (Iiyosh and Kumar, 2008: 10)

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

Implementation bodiesinter-governmental organisations, consortia, translation bodies, policy and funding institutions

Olnet Research: Case Studies

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

Categories of OERsInstitutional: education

Drivers: legacy, marketing, experimentation, outreach

Community & learning media: 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 operationlarge

small

Pro

vid

er

CommunityInstitution

Expanded from OECD, 2007: 46

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

CollaborationsChanging 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)

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)

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)

Communities of improvement

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)

Teaching & learning innovations• 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)

Audience in OER

Social learners

Prod-users

use inscriptions in

OER

Engagement

Prod-useRemix

content tools

objects

User augmented content

Work in progress

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

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

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

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/3209461104/

• Learning @Blunight 72*: flickr www.flickr.com/photos/blunight72/164070593/

Thank you