Personal Blogs

Image source: Dynomapper

The following is my reflection on my contribution to the writing/setting of the context behind a team assignment as part of my master's in online and distance learning.  Our team's challenge (there are 7 teams) was to formulate an online response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  We decided to focus on higher education institutions. In particular, to aid the ongoing widespread and partial transition to online teaching, and to support both educators and learners in this. For many who are unfamiliar with this mode of teaching /learning, the transition is a huge challenge, but solutions need to be found in order to secure their short term goals and long term survival. 

Of course, the development of our website is a very long term thing and the preliminaries are still ongoing. 

The site: Higher Education Open Education Resources, H817 COVID-19 RESPONSE TEAM 

My contribution to the context

I think my contribution was substantial.  I created the first draft of the aims, the context, the target audience.  Basically, the idea was the following:

• To  help educators and learners the world over to respond to the COVID-19 epidemic by aiding the transition to online teaching  by:

  • Creating an online repository for the sourcing of the open educational resources (OER) for independent learning of various subject areas. 

  • In addition to teaching/learning materials in a range of subject areas, we will place materials that support knowledge and understanding of open educational practices (OEP), its technology, tools, and open pedagogy in all its forms.

Most challenging

The things I found most challenging were working to a deadline while working full time and applying for jobs.  Also, I learned more than anything about working with people - you have to be diplomatic and things seldom get off to a rip-roaring start when you don't know each other. I learned how to set up a website, which was important for me. Most important, perhaps, what huge incentive teamwork creates. Is it the competitive instinct? Is it the urge to please and help each other as well as learn together? A bit of everything really. 

Image: Opensource.com CC BY-SA 2.0
This week, we were asked to again practice our research skills by using them to assess how innovative a project was and how successful OER (open educational resources) had been as an innovation since its introduction.   Our task was structured around the following questions:

1.    How would you judge OpenLearn in terms of your definition of innovation?

I would judge OpenLearn to be very innovative because it incorporates many, if not all, of the features of OL, OEP, and OER in one. These include all that was envisaged since the article McAndrew and Farrow (2013) was published and those envisaged by early writers on open learning mentioned in the section entitled 'OER as the Supporter of Educational Theory', even as far back as the beginning of the previous century.  The OU was one of the pioneers of OL in practice and the OpenLearn has around for more than 20 years and OpenLearn in its current form has already been active for 14 years.   An illustration we get from the article is the use of digital badges, once looked upon as the 'future of learning' (Duncan, 2011, cited in the article).  Duncan, however, argues that 'the badge system cannot work without an open educational infrastructure'  (McAndrew and Farrow, 2013, p71).  OpenLearn provides that. 

2.    What key challenges facing the OER movement can be dealt with more quickly than others?
The article suggests that certain persistent challenges exist - copyright, technology, access.  But I think what they recognise the reality that technology, granting more and more access is advancing very quickly and that the copyright issues have been addressed significantly by Creative Commons (though there is an ongoing problem of 'theft' of ostensibly protected open resources materials).  The evidence suggests, according to the authors, that of the challenges listed on page 68, the first 3 have been addressed the quickest, to some extent, whilst solutions to the others remain in question.  

3.    How do open educational resources challenge conventional assumptions about paying for higher education modules?  
The assumption is that higher education modules are high quality, delivered by experts and that they provide essential revenue for the institutions that produce and purchase the materials and resources the modules are based on and can therefore only be made available for its registered users.  That way they can pay for the use of the resources and for their products and for the faculty to deliver them.  It seems counter-intuitive that they make these modules available free of charge.  The institutions do, however, can valuable 'PR', publicity and promotion from doing it; they also provide fee-paying services within these free programmes.  All this, along with support from the government to expand education provision go a long way to making these enterprises worthwhile.  The challenge is that the academic cultural environment has not yet fully accepted this way of working, as mention on the section entitled 'Research and Scholarship' - the implications of this non-acceptance of open publishing go beyond whether faculty produce and publish in the traditional way, but touch on the whole idea of the purpose of HEIs. 

I found this to be a good way to revise the real significance to education change OER represents and the meaning of its related terms such as OEP (open educational practice), Open Science, Open data etc. OER has gone a long way since its inception with projects started by Rice University, Carnegie Mellon and MIT (Connexions, Open Learning Initiative, and OpenCourseWare respectively, though Connexions has changed its name and is soon to retire).

I noticed I am becoming more proficient at researching. I am using keyword searches and my resources such as the OU library service, EBSCOhost, and Google scholar more efficiently and I am getting my ideas down faster in writing.  These are all benefits of my study with the OU.  I should continue to manage my time efficiently so I can continue to get the most out of my studies, as I have not even begun to make the most of the resources available to us to supplement what I discover myself and to improve my tech skills.