OER13 audio recording EGO, OER and LSP (Lego Serious Play)

Audio recording OER13 talking EGO, OER and LSP (Lego Serious Play) also view on Youtube.

OER13 Abstract: In this presentation Chris Follows with discuss the benefits and challenges of developing an open practice identity (OPI). Chris will draw from his experiences of supporting the development of open educational practice in his work at University of the Arts London. Since 2003 Chris has been researching and developing open educational practice and OER content communities and recently completed a SCORE fellowship at the Open University and is the initiator of http://process.arts.ac.uk. Chris is the DIAL project manager 'Digital Integration Into Arts Learning' part of the JISC UK Developing digital literacies programme.

Chris will discuss and reflect on his own experiences of creating an open practice identity and supporting others in the process. Chris is currently carrying out a number of DIAL ‘identity work’ projects including ‘Professional Online Identities’.

Presenting your professional profile online is becoming increasingly important. What is the best way to develop your open practice identity? Do we improve or hinder our career prospects by being open?

Challenges:

Ego and ownership: to attribute or not attribute?               

Does retaining ownership through licence attribution help or hinder our open practice development, why do we want to be attributed, why not use a zero licence? By having a strong open online identity could we assume a zero licence open by default position unless stated otherwise?

Digital citizenship: maintaining an open practice identity.         

Maintaining and open practice identity can be difficult, understanding what your OPI is may become increasingly important.

Where are you in thinking about your open practice identity?

• Unaware – of your open practice identities.
• Aware – thought about your open practice identity, but very unsure?
• Starter – Starting to develop your open professional identity?
• OER practitioner – developing your open identity daily?

Presenting and communicating practice: what you do?

We may be managing multiple professional and personal identities; do we see them as separate or connected? How does our teaching practice relate to our professional practice and how much of our personal identity should we integrate into this mix?

Managing capacity, aligning and embedding OEP into everyday jobs.  


Developing OEP communities of interest.   

Institutions may need to support and develop a more active and sustainable eco systems and support networks for open practice, which includes all the OEP key players unaware, aware, visitor and residents and these key players need to be identified and be involved in the agile development of the community. Through process.arts we aim to develop a system and culture prototype to support network/area for a sustainable OEP eco system.

Within open education practice and the development of open practice identities, active community of interest involvement can help us maintain and develop our OEP digital literacies, hard skills (Web making, presentation skills) and OEP digital literacies, soft skills (Relational identity, online refection).

Benefits:

• Demonstrate and communicate specialism and professionalism.
• Content management, openly connecting and maintaining ideas.
• Demonstrate progressive practice and best practice.
• Enhance career prospects.
• Create and participate in specialist networks and communities.

EGOER and open practice identities

Full Paper: Chris Follows

Our first steps into open practice can provide a new and exciting chapter in our careers although for some it also brings a great deal of anxiety and fear. As rewarding as open practice can be, putting our personal/professional ‘self’ online can be a long and arduous process where daily practice, trial and error are essential ingredients. Being open online can raise some personal and professional issues we’d prefer not to visit, including: confidence, self-image/reflection/criticism, digital skill sets/competencies and the blurring of personal/professional boundaries, whilst all the time we’re trying to manage and understand how our personal/professional online public representations are being received.

Unfortunately the only realistic means of testing or overcoming these anxieties and fears is to get online and try it out, these first steps into open practice can be critical. For those who just don't want to be online for whatever the reason, open practice can be a step too far and being open is not an option.  

Current OER production and participation can be seen as the domain of the open enthusiasts, those who are voluntary experimenting with open practice and are initiating funding programmes to encourage, train and support people who are not aware, interested or who are ‘digitally scared’ of trying open practice. This could be perceived as a mainly top down approach, where people are siting and waiting to be told when and how to be open?

Without the open advocates and their mostly voluntary enthusiasm/belief for open education they’d be no true future for open education and open experimentation. We really need more open advocates and experimental spaces to make open work on the most basic of levels; the problem this paper aims to address is how we motivate others to adopt open education and open identities in the same way as the open evangelists are doing? 

How do we address these collective fears, anxieties and resistance to being open?

At the University of the Arts London the DIAL project (Digital Integration into Arts Learning), partially funded by JISC Developing Digital Literacies Programme, set out to explore digital literacies (DLs) in the arts. DIAL supports a number of self-identifying and mutually supportive communities of staff and students within the university (based on courses, disciplines or other naturally occurring communities) who identify goals for improving their collective digital literacies. Staff and students approach DIAL with proposals of what they would like to do to address their DLs needs rather than the deficit model of waiting to be sent on specific DL training courses for what someone else thinks they need. Early evaluation observations of the DIAL pilot projects noted that:  

There was an affective dimension to all the projects that was related to the particular kind of digital literacy that they sought to develop.  The relationship between the affective and the technological varied from project to project.  For example, online reflection dealt with teachers’ fear of learning in public, open access resources touched on the discomfort of making curricular resources public, and presentation skills development addressed anxieties relating to presenting oneself. (DIAL Evaluation Report, D. Sabri, 2012)

It’s clear, that moods, feelings and attitudes are a fundamental part of dealing with DLs and attempting to define common or generic meanings and definitions for some DLs is going to be difficult. DIAL began to look at DLs as being less generic in characteristic and more subject, course and individual specific, including how we develop our open online identities, at college, course level or as an individual member of staff or a student.

The DIAL project are carrying out a number of ‘identity work’ projects including working with staff and students as part of the Professional Online Identities (POI) project. The aim of the project is to identify and develop specific digital literacies hard and soft skills, presentation and relational skills (see image) in maintaining professional online identities with the aim of enhancing student/graduate employability and industry readiness. The project will focus on developing independence and confidence in web development, online professional practice, open source use, participatory online communities and digital citizenship.

How we engage, add and contribute to our Professional Online Identities?

We are using various methods of exploring online identities of staff and students, including the Lego Serious Play workshops and more formal technical training and workshops. Which of the below statements do you think applies to your position?  

1. I don't want to be online in anyway, don't want to engage.
2. I don't have the skills to engage or create a POI, so wont bother.
3. I’m too busy to be online, happy to let others write about or represent me or create my POI e.g. (the my employer, public, agents, collectors, employers, fans, media, galleries etc.)
4. Willing to give it a go but I want to be anonymous!
5. Willing to give it a go and see what happens, I want to learn more.
6. Actively engaged in creating your POI daily.

Early in the project 1^{st -} 2^nd and 3^rd year students were asked to, ‘Identify which one of the 4 self-selecting groups (below) they felt related to them best’

• 9) Said they were – UNAWARE: Not familiar with professional online identities. I am interested to find out more or I don’t want online identities.
   
• 14) Said they were – AWARE: Familiar with professional online identities but not in professional practice and/or not sure about its relevance.
   
• 24) Said they were – STARTER: Starting to practice with professional online identities, still lots to learn, would like to learn more.
   
• 1) Said they were a - CONFIDENT PRACTITIONER: Developing professional online identities daily and supporting others.

Along with the students we aim to engage members of staff along side the students in the same journey, please see ‘No Name’ which explores the course identity, ‘this is the real me fredmeller’ explores staff identity and ‘Using video for messages, information and personal tutorials’ which explores different forms of course communication.

When and how are open practice identities being embedded into the curriculum?

University of the arts London, have been exploring alternative methods of OER production and participation, below are some of the approaches, processes and tools we’ve been using to integrate a sustainable approach to embedding and supporting open practice identities.

Compulsory open approach:

Academics and technical staff participating in ‘CLTAD Teaching Development Projects’ are asked to upload a 2 minute self reflective video piece of their research problem, the videos are peer assessed and therefore a required output of the course. As with many student ‘educational’ online activities they are either tied into compulsory course requirement or aligned with assessment or reward of some sort, does the compulsory approach to openness influence open motivations in a positive or negative way?

The aim of the DIAL supported Online Reflective Practice group was to focus on increasing capacity for learning openly and in collaboration with others. Specific objectives identified were the development of:

1. Familiarity with tools that enable online reflection and the documentation of process
2. An appreciation of the benefits and challenges of open (online) reflection
3. Experience in online collaborative reflection
4. Skills and knowledge for the building of personal reflective learning networks

Lindsay Jordan the project leader found many staff/students participating were against the idea of being online, exposing their true identity and had expressed a fear of being seen as learning in public. Many staff used elaborate and creative methods of hiding their true identity (see this example). Lindsay later observed that these initial fears were less of a concern as the technical issues of creating and publishing the videos became the primary concern.  

CLTAD Teaching Development Projects This group contains a collection of outputs from Teaching Development Projects completed in partnership with CLTAD through courses, secondments and Fellowships.

Online Reflective Practice blog:
http://dial.myblog.arts.ac.uk/category/online-reflective-practice/

Voluntary open approach:

Process.arts.ac.uk is an open practice platform for sharing art, design and media practice based learning and teaching, the site is open to anyone to encourage open communities of practice between individuals, groups, and institutions worldwide. Project groups on process.arts provide individuals, project teams, courses, conference groups or communities of interest a place to cluster groups of user generated OER content together. Users outside UAL can create accounts and fully contribute. Groups require primary initiator/s to help set up and steward (support and build) a community of practice or interest, the more active groups and participants the more they are featured and promoted. Process.arts relies on a small network of voluntary open practice stewards to support the OER and OEP development for staff and students and the communities of practice on the site.

The Open Practice Unit This 20 credit validated unit is part of the Academic Practice Provision offered through the Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design. The unit aims to explore definitions of what Open Education might mean and the implications of moving towards open online social spaces to support learning. Participants explore existing and create new OERs that stem from teaching practice and may include learning content and software tools that can be freely and openly shared on the web using a Creative Commons Licence.

Best ways to keep developing your open practice identity?

Challenges:

Ownership: to attribute or not attribute?               

Does retaining ownership through licence attribution help or hinder our open practice development, why do we want to be attributed, why not use a zero licence? By having a strong open online identity could we assume a zero licence open by default position unless stated otherwise?

Digital citizenship: maintaining an open practice identity.             

Maintaining and open practice identity can be difficult, understanding what your OPI is may become increasingly important.

Presenting and communicating practice: what you do?

We may be managing multiple professional and personal identities; do we see them as separate or connected? How does our teaching practice relate to our professional practice and how much of our personal identity should we integrate into this mix?

Managing capacity, aligning and embedding OEP into everyday jobs. 
In an increasingly time poor environment practicing ‘open’ can be a long way down the priority list, how do we fit it in, also how do we turn it on and off?

School of Open Practice
There are no or very few courses which teach staff and students open practice or the online skills necessary to develop a OPI.   


Developing OEP communities of interest.   

Institutions may need to support and develop a more active and sustainable eco systems and support networks for open practice, which includes all the OEP key players unaware, aware, visitor and residents and these key players need to be identified and be involved in the agile development of the community. Through process.arts we aim to develop a system and culture prototype to support network/area for a sustainable OEP eco system.

Within open education practice and the development of open practice identities, active community of interest involvement can help us maintain and develop our OEP digital literacies, hard skills (Web making, presentation skills) and OEP digital literacies, soft skills (Relational identity, online refection).

Open addiction

Once you do start practicing, you need to know how to handle it, open practice can be seriously addictive, as addictive as thinking.  


Benefits:

• Demonstrate and communicate specialism and professionalism.
• Content management, openly connecting and maintaining ideas.
• Demonstrate progressive practice and best practice.
• Enhance career prospects.
• Create and participate in specialist networks and communities.
• It can be enjoyable work.
• And many more ....