Overview  of  presenta/on:  1.  Brief  characterisa/on  of  what  is  meant  by  a  research  university,  also  called  

research-­‐intensive  university  2.  Context  of  the  project  3.  How  we  carried  out  the  research  4.  Consider  the  findings  through  lens  of  Oxford’s  situa/on  as  a  research  university  5.  Close  with  a  few  reflec/ons  and  thoughts  going  forward.    

1  

First,  a  few  words  about  what’s  claimed  to  be  dis/nc/ve  about  so-­‐called  research  universi/es…    Chirikov  (2013)  lists  three  key  features  of  research-­‐intensive  universi/es:    •  a  ‘high  concentra/on  of  talent’  among  academic  staff  and  students;  •  ‘abundant  resources’  which  are  prerequisites  to  innova/ve  research  and  the  

consequent  genera/on  of  new  knowledge;  and  •  governance  structures  that  allow  considerable  academic  autonomy,  which  fosters  a  

‘culture  of  excellence’,  among  other  things.    In  terms  of  the  educa/on  that  they  offer,  these  universi/es  are  characterised  by:    •  teaching  that  is  research-­‐informed;  •  pedagogies  that  aim  to  inspire  students  to  be  ‘curious,  driven,  responsible  and  

capable  of  academic  thinking’  in  their  capacity  as  ‘ci/zens  and  leaders  of  tomorrow’  (Mapstone  et  al)  

and  •  a  role  as  ‘ambassadors  for  educa/onal  outreach  and  innova/on’.  (Mapstone  et  al)        

2  

The  original  purpose  of  the  project  was  to  inves/gate  the  extent  to  which  teaching  staff  at  Oxford  were  using/reusing  the  online  resources  produced  within  the  University  and  made  available  primarily  for  educa/onal  outreach  purposes.    

3  

These  resources  include  several  thousand  podcasts  available  also  through  iTunes  U,  and  also  digi/sed  texts,  images,  short  academic  essays,  simula/ons,  anima/ons,  lesson  plans  and  blog  posts.    A  substan/al  propor/on  –  but  not  all  –  are  released  as  OER;  the  rest  have  more  restric/ve  (all  rights  reserved)  copyright,  but  are  otherwise  freely  available.    

4  

But  when  we  evaluated  one  of  our  OER  collec/ons  with  teaching  staff  just  before  the  project  started,  the  data  suggested  that  only  a  very  small  number  of  Oxford  academics  were  using  OER  in  their  teaching  or  even  had  any  awareness  of  the  copyright  implica/ons  of  using  third-­‐party  resources.      So,  we  changed  the  focus  of  our  research  to  explore  the  rela/onship  between  open  educa*onal  prac*ce  and  the  academic  culture  of  Oxford.    We  aimed  to  illuminate  the  factors  that  might  be  conducive  (or  otherwise)  to  greater  uptake  of  OER  in  teaching  and  learning  in  the  University.      

5  

So  these  were  our  broad  research  ques/ons…    In  full…    1.  To  what  extent  do  Oxford  academic  staff  recognise,  in  their  research  and  teaching,  values  and  prac/ces  that  are  associated  with  openness?    2.  To  what  extent  is  their  current  teaching  prac/ce  shaped  by  their  discipline,  open  prac/ces  in  research  and  Oxford’s  organisa/onal  structure  and  culture?    3.  From  the  perspec/ve  of  different  stakeholders  in  the  University,  what  cons/tutes  op/mal  engagement  with  open  educa/onal  prac/ce  at  Oxford?      

6  

The  research  was  designed  as  a  qualita/ve,  exploratory  study.    We  conducted  14  semi-­‐structured  interviews  with  members  of  teaching  staff  at  the  University  in  summer  and  autumn  2013.      These  included  departmental  lecturers  and  tutorial  fellows  who  were  teaching  undergraduates  or  postgraduates  on  Master’s  programmes  and  were  known  to  have  been  involved  in  ‘open’  ac/vi/es  in  the  University.  These  ac/vi/es  included  •  contribu/ng  OER  to  Oxford’s  collec/ons  •  prac/sing  open  science;  •  par/cipa/on  in  in  our  Jisc-­‐funded  OER  Impact  Study  of  2011;    We  couldn’t  get  enough  interviewees  who  had  been  involved  in  open  ac/vi/es,  so  we  also  interviewed  teaching  staff  who  had  been  recognised  for  excellence  in  their  teaching  by  the  students’  union.    We  also  interviewed  representa/ves  of  three  other  stakeholder  groups:    •  an  educa/onal  developer  involved  in  the  training  of  early-­‐career  lecturers  and  in  

CPD;  •  a  librarian  who  had  been  involved  in  the  development  of  one  of  Oxford’s  

collec/ons  of  OER;  •  a  learning  technologist  experienced  in  the  technical  aspects  of  producing  online  

resources  and  helping  teaching  staff      

7  

The  interview  schedules  for  the  academics  were  based  on  a  conceptual  framework  of  open  educa/onal  prac/ces  which  we  had  constructed  from  an  extensive  literature  survey.      There  are  a  number  of  defini/ons  of  OEP,  but  this  one  by  Ehlers  is  one  of  the  most  succinct.    These  were  the  areas  on  which  the  interviews  focused.    •  Obviously,  in  talking  about  sharing  and  reusing  resources,  we  had  to  include  non-­‐

OER.  

•  I’ll  come  back  to  the  open  pedagogic  models  in  the  next  slide.  

•  Learning  in  an  open  world  is  about  students’  learning,  so  we  just  asked  a  single  ques/on:  what  kinds  of  learning  outcome  would  be  served  if  students  were  to  create  an  open  educa/onal  resource  as  the  output  from  a  regular  learning  ac/vity.  

•  Open  educa/onal  knowledge  relates  to  teachers’  professional  knowledge  about  teaching  and  learning.  We  asked  interviewees  about  the  extent  to  which    •  looking  at  other  people’s  materials  can  them  to  improve  their  own  teaching  

prac/ce,  and    •  sharing  ideas  about  teaching  can  help  them  to  develop  their  own  prac/ce.    

•  We  included  openness  in  research  because  at  the  /me  the  University  was  running  an  awareness-­‐raising  programme  about  the  Research  Councils’  UK  mandate  on  open  access  publishing,  and  we  wanted  to  see  whether  there  was  any  cross-­‐over  between  openness  in  research  and  openness  in  teaching.  As  it  turned  out,  there  wasn’t  any  evidence.  

8  

So,  focusing  on  open  pedagogic  models…    We  synthesised  this  set  of  statements  from  the  literature  and  asked  our  interviewees  who  were  teaching  staff  to  comment  on  how  each  statement  relates  to      a)  their  own  view  of  the  teacher-­‐student  rela/onship  and  the  nature  of  learning  and    b)  how  it  relates  to  undergraduate  teaching  and  learning  at  Oxford.    Taken  together,  these  statements  aren’t  meant  to  form  a  holis/c  repertoire  of  prac/ces  currently  observable  in  the  field.      They  were  constructed  from  disparate  sources:  specula/ve  ‘thought-­‐pieces’  as  well  as  findings  from  empirical  research,  some  of  which  may  be  methodologically  conten/ous.      But  as  well  as  providing  a  framework  for  our  discussions  with  interviewees,  these  statements  gave  us  an  opportunity  to  interrogate  some  of  the  claims  of  the  open  educa/on  movement  from  the  evidence  of  exis/ng  prac/ce.    

9  

So,  going  back  to  the  slide  where  we  defined  the  characteris/cs  of  research  universi/es,  I’ll  now  interpret  the  findings  of  our  research  through  the  lens  of  three  of  them:    •  Governance  •  research-­‐informed  teaching  And  •  educa/onal  outreach    And  because  this  presenta/on  is  sub/tled  ‘prospects  and  challenges’  I’ll  take  them  in  order  of  the  ease  with  which  they  can  be  tackled:  outreach,  teaching  and  then  governance.        

10  

Research  universi/es  take  their  outreach  mission  very  seriously,  in  part  from  a  sense  that  their  academic  work  should  result  in  closer  connec/ons  with  the  world  outside,  but  also  to  counteract  an  eli/st  image.      Releasing  OER  and  MOOCs  enables  these  universi/es  to  spread  online  learning  to  a  wider  global  audience.      This  is  reflected  in  Oxford’s  Strategic  Plan  for  2013–18  (University  of  Oxford,  nd),  which  specifically  refers  to  ‘[developing]  our  globally  available  teaching  resources  and  collec/ons  for  our  own  community,  for  our  distance-­‐taught  students  across  the  world,  and  for  learners  everywhere.’      I  think  the  use  of  the  term  ‘globally  available  ..  resources’  in  place  of  ‘open  …  resources’  (which  one  might  expect),  is  significant,  and  I’ll  come  back  to  it  later.      

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All  interviewees  believed  that  knowledge  should  be  open  and  shared  for  the  public  good,  and  that  sharing  of  knowledge  should  lie  at  the  heart  of  the  academic  process.      However,  they  also  felt  that  this  is  an  ideal.    Although  openness  may  be  the  preferred  or  an  ul/mate  way  of  prac/ce,  there  was  some  cau/on  about  how  it  can  operate  within  a  compe//ve  academic  world  and,  indeed,  within  a  capitalist  system.    In  addi/on  to  releasing  OER  for  Oxford’s  collec/ons,  we  found  evidence  that  individual  departments  had  put  learning  resources  on  publicly  accessible  websites.    Par/cipants  gave  a  number  of  reasons  for  sharing  their  educa/onal  resources,  including:  •  altruism;  •  s/mula/ng  debate  in  the  wider  community;  We  also  found  evidence  of  knowledge  self-­‐efficacy,  which  Van  Acker  and  colleagues  have  iden/fied  as  a  key  predictor  for  sharing.  This  is  the  belief  that  one’s  educa/onal  materials  can  have  added  value  for  others.    The  barriers  to  sharing  iden/fied  by  interviewees  included  the  lack  of  reward  for  good  teaching,  as  opposed  to  research.  One  could  argue  from  the  literature  that  the  obstacles  to  sharing  are  greater  in  research  universi/es,  because  of  the  tensions  between  research  and  teaching  that  almost  always  result  in  the  favouring  of  the  former  over  the  laoer.      Viewed  in  this  light,  the  release  as  OER  of  podcasts  from  research  seminars  can  be  seen  as  a  quick  and  easy  way  to  further  the  ins/tu/onal  priority  for  global  outreach.    A  problem  is  that  many  of  the  podcast-­‐OERs  released  in  this  way  are  in  fact  talks  given  at  esoteric  research  seminars  and  therefore  could  be  of  limited  educa/onal  value  even  to  undergraduates  at  Oxford,  quite  apart  from  informal  learners  in  far-­‐flung  corners  of  the  world.      Some  interviewees  felt  that  teaching  at  Oxford  is  personalised  to  one’s  students,  and  so  may  not  be  readily  shareable  with  the  wider  community.  

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Following  on  from  the  previous  point  about  teaching  at  Oxford  being  personalised  to  one’s  students…    One  of  the  problems  we’ve  had  in  the  project  has  been  to  make  the  data  more  relevant  to  other  universi/es  as  well,  so  that  the  discussion  can  be  opened  up  beyond  Oxford.  However,  a  stumbling  block  is  the  tutorial  model  of  individual  and  small-­‐group  teaching  and  learning  in  the  University  which  it  shares  with  very  few  other  ins/tu/ons.    The  broad  dynamic  is  that  the  tutor  sets  the  student  an  essay  or,  in  maths  and  the  sciences,  a  set  of  problems  to  write  or  solve  over  the  course  of  the  week,  as  well  as  a  reading  list.  At  the  next  tutorial,  tutor  and  student  discuss  the  work  –  or,  as  one  interviewee  put  it:      ‘The  tutorial  is  about  guiding  [the  student]  through  the  knowledge  that  they  have  spent  the  preceding  week  aoemp/ng  to  tease  apart  for  themselves’  and  maybe  dismantling  the  student’s  way  of  thinking  so  that  ‘the  student  leaves  the  tutorial  with  a  different  perspec/ve  on  the  essay  which  they  brought  to  it.’    So,  it  seemed  that  the  most  appropriate  way  to  tackle  the  problem  was  to  ‘think  big’  –  aper  all,  students  learn  in  other  ways  at  Oxford  too  –  and  to  locate  these  ways  of  learning  within  the  broader  framework  of  research-­‐informed  teaching  –  that  is,  teaching  by  academics  who  are  ac/ve  in  research  themselves.  

13  

The  prac/ce  of  research-­‐informed  teaching  has  been  characterised  in  a  number  of  ways.  Spronken-­‐Smith  and  colleagues  list  four  approaches  to  curriculum  design  intended  to  involve  undergraduates  in  research,  drawing  from  earlier  work  by  Healey  &  Jenkins.    •  Research-­‐led:  the  curriculum  is  structured  around  content  drawn  directly  from  

research,  open  the  lecturer’s  own;  

•  Research-­‐oriented:  the  curriculum  emphasises  teaching  the  processes  of  knowledge  construc/on  in  the  subject;  for  example,  how  to  think  like  a  historian,  chemist  etc.;  

•  Research-­‐based:  students  carry  out  inquiry-­‐based  learning  or  other  ac/vi/es  involving  research.    This  might  also  involve  learning  research  skills  and  methods;  

•  Research-­‐tutored:  learning  is  focused  on  students  wri/ng  and  discussing  papers  or  essays,  as  in  the  Oxford  tutorial  model.  

14  

The  interview  data  suggest  that  it  is  common  prac/ce  in  Oxford  to  reuse  materials  created  by  others.      But  we  uncovered  liole  evidence  of  people  ac/vely  seeking  out  OER.  Indeed,  the  majority  of  interviewees  were  unable  to  iden/fy  the  characteris/c  that  dis/nguishes  OER  from  other  freely  available  online  resources:  ie  the  Crea/ve  Commons  (or  similar)  licence.    The  data  also  indicate  a  fairly  low  awareness  among  academics  of  the  existence  of  Oxford’s  OER  collec/ons.      In  addi/on  to  commonly  cited  barriers  such  as  quality  and  ease  of  discovery,  interviewees  iden/fied  Oxford-­‐specific  constraints  on  the  reuse  of  resources:    •  Oxford  courses  are  generally  at  a  higher  level  than  at  other  universi/es,  which  can  

restrict  the  pedagogic  relevance  of  resources;  and  •  the  personal  nature  of  teaching  in  the  Oxford  tutorial  system  of  teaching;  there  is  

not  much  scope  for  reusing  resources  since  the  focus  is  on  students’  work.    So,  while  the  fact  of  reuse  is  a  prospect  for  mainstreaming  OEP  in  the  University,  the  consciousness-­‐raising  effort  needed  to  get  academics  to  engage  is  a  challenge  –  par/cularly  given  the  lack  of  conversa/ons  about  teaching  and  learning  that  go  on,  according  to  interviewees.    

15  

But  using  the  framework  on  the  previous  slide,  and  looking  at  the  data  we  gathered  on  academics’  readiness  to  engage  with  third-­‐party  resources,  we  can  envisage  poten/al  roles  for  OER  in  research-­‐informed  teaching.  For  example:    Research-­‐led:    •  students  read  open  access  journal  ar/cles  and  openly  licensed  project  reports.    Research-­‐oriented:    •  students  gain  insights  into  the  research  process  through  ‘work  in  progress’  shared  

by  digital  scholars  through  social  media,  including  blogs;    •  students  are  given  opportuni/es  to  work  with  the  open  source  tools  used  for  

research  in  the  domain  (eg  NetLogo  for  modelling).    Research-­‐based:    •  students  have  access  to  OER  collec/ons  containing  digi/sed  texts  and  digital  

surrogates  of  artefacts;    •  students  are  recommended  to  take  openly  licensed  courses  (including  MOOCs)  for  

learning  research  skills;    •  students  receive  coaching  in  open  science  methodologies.    Research-­‐tutored:    •  students  are  recommended  to  take  openly  licensed  courses  (including  MOOCs)  on  

academic  wri/ng  and  related  skills;    •  students  produce  blog  posts  as  alterna/ves  to  conven/onal  essays,  thereby  

extending  the  possibili/es  for  discussion  beyond  the  tutorial  in  terms  of  /me  and  place.  

 These  methods  could  actually  help  to  bring  research-­‐informed  teaching  more  into  line  with  emergent  open  prac/ces  in  research.  Moreover,  their  use  could  help  students  to  understand  that  knowledge  is  ‘something  shared,  not  something  owned’  (to  quote  an  interviewee).    

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Our  final  –  and  most  challenging  –  lens  is  the  issue  of  governance,  which  in  research  universi/es  can  allow  a  high  degree  of  academic  autonomy.    But  to  implement  pedagogic  innova/on  and  promote  global  outreach  on  a  whole-­‐ins/tu/on  level,  rather  than  relying  on  grass-­‐roots  ini/a/ves  by  individuals  and  groups,  depends  on  a  recogni/on  of  their  importance  at  a  strategic  level.      In  this  respect,  releasing  OER  as  a  part  of  an  ins/tu/onal  belief  in  the  importance  of  outreach  seems  to  be  less  problema/c  than  deploying  open  resources  and  open  approaches  to  pedagogy,  which  could  be  seen  to  impinge  on  academic  autonomy.    

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Autonomy  in  governance  at  Oxford  is  enshrined  in  the  principle  of  subsidiarity:  ‘deciding  what  to  research  is  a  maoer  for  individuals  and,  where  relevant,  research  groups.  It  becomes  a  maoer  for  departments  and  facul/es,  divisions  and  the  University  as  a  whole  only  when  support  is  required,  most  obviously  through  the  alloca/on  of  resources’  (University  of  Oxford,  2005).      Implemen/ng  the  mandate  of  the  Research  Councils  UK  on  open  access  publishing  in  2013  is  a  clear  example  of  where  a  decision  is  a  maoer  at  the  highest  level.      But  some  of  our  interviewees  felt  that  the  principle  of  subsidiarity  doesn’t  always  work  to  the  benefit  either  of  teaching  staff  or  of  University-­‐led  innova/ons.    •  Some  felt  that  devolved  responsibili/es  and  expecta/ons  can  leave  teaching  staff  

feeling  unsupported,  while    •  devolving  decisions  down  to  individual  academics  may  cause  resistance  to  

ini/a/ves  from  higher  levels.      But  they  thought  that  being  ‘open’  as  an  ins/tu/on  is  in  keeping  •  with  the  core  philosophy  of  knowledge  as  a  public  good,    •  with  Oxford’s  global  responsibility  as  a  world-­‐leading  university  that  holds  an  

extensive  archive  of  resources,  and    •  with  its  status  as  a  charitable  ins/tu/on.    So,  Oxford’s  devolved  structure  and  the  principle  of  subsidiarity  could  militate  against  the  implementa/on  of  ins/tu/onally  defined  guidelines  on  open  prac/ces  in  teaching  and  learning.      

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To  sum  up,  what  are  the  prospects  and  challenges  in  bringing  open  educa/onal  prac/ces  into  the  mainstream  at  a  research  university:  that  is,  to  make  OEP  an  idea,  astude,  or  ac/vity  that  is  regarded  as  normal  or  conven/onal?    Sharing  OER  for  outreach  remains  the  greatest  prospect,  as  it  fits  in  with  an  exis/ng  longstanding  core  value.      However,  I’d  like  to  go  back  to  the  University’s  strategic  plan,  which  refers  to  ‘globally  available  resources’,  not  OER.  On  the  one  hand,  this  could  be  seen  to  reflect  the  ‘commonsense’  no/on  of  openness.  On  the  other  hand,  while  this  more  cau/ous  approach  might  be  inimical  to  openness  ‘purists’,  it  can  be  seen  as  enabling.  That  is,  it  may  give  confidence  to  academics  who  may  espouse  the  view  of  knowledge  as  a  common  good  but  be  reluctant  (ini/ally  at  least)  to  make  their  material  available  for  others  to  modify,  and  for  whom  even  the  University’s  default  open  licence,  CC  BY-­‐NC-­‐SA,  may  be  a  step  too  far.      But  I  think  it  is  not  enough  for  a  university  to  be  a  producer  of  OER  and  not  a  consumer.  A  number  of  authors  have  cri/qued  OER  inita/ves  for  the  power  rela/ons  that  underlie  them.  Here’s  dos  Santos  (2008):    ‘most  OER  ini/a/ves  so  far  …  s/ll  pursue  it  in  a  posi/on  of  dominance:  it  is  the  provider  offering  the  content  to  the  user;  it  is  the  most  knowledgeable  ins/tu/on  offering  guidelines  to  the  novice  ones’      And  I’m    also  not  sure  that  releasing  OER  as  a  marke/ng  exercise,  as  some  so,  can  be  counted  as  an  open  prac/ce,  so  there  may  even  be  some  ‘open  washing’  going  on.    So  I  think  that  producer  ins/tu/ons  have  responsibility,  morally  as  well  as  philosophically  and  pragma/cally,  to  engage  in  open  educa/onal  prac/ce  in  a  more  reciprocal  manner.  And  that  doesn’t  just  mean  reusing  their  home-­‐produced  OER  in  their  students’  learning,  it  means  recognising  the  value  of  OER  ‘not  invented  here’  and  ac/ng  accordingly.    

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In  terms  of  pedagogy  –  research-­‐informed  teaching  –  the  seeds  of  open  prac/ce  are  already  present  in  the  reuse  of  third-­‐party  resources  and  resonances  between  the  open  pedagogic  model  that  I  described  earlier  and  current  approaches  to  teaching  and  learning.    To  take  this  further  entails  a  two-­‐pronged  approach:  •  Pragma/cally,  promo/ng  among  staff  and  students  an  understanding  of  licensing  

and  what  cons/tutes  the  legi/mate  use  of  3rd-­‐party  resources.  •  Pedagogically,  promo/ng  the  use  of  OER  in  accordance  with  the  University’s  

objec/ve  to  develop  students  as  ‘ci/zens  of  tomorrow’  in  an  open  world,  and/or  to  prepare  them  for  academic  prac/ce  in  an  open  world.  

 Governance  underpins  the  other  two  but  with  the  principle  of  academic  autonomy  it’s  also  the  most  challenging  –  more  so  with  introducing  OER  into  teaching  and  learning  than  with  releasing  them    for  educa/onal  outreach.    Going  back  to  the  concept  of  subsidiarity  and  devolved  decision-­‐making  at  Oxford  and  our  example  of  open  access  publishing,  the  key  issue  is:    whether,  and  how,  the  deployment  of  OER  as  a  means  to  enhance  the  forms  and  further  the  objec/ves  of  research-­‐informed  teaching  prac/sed  at  the  University  should  become  a  maoer  for  decision-­‐making  and  support  at  the  highest  level.        

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Thank  you.  

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