Open Education at UAL
Communities of Practice Practice UAL
University of the arts London Medium Term Strategy 2010-15 identifies the development of communities of practice in one of its aims: To increase our institutional impact by encouraging and supporting the development of communities of practice, fostering a culture of inclusivity both across the university and within the creative sector.
UAL led open educational and digital literacies projects:
- The DIAL, Digital Integration into Arts Learning project seeks to Develop Digital Literacies in the arts through open communities of practice. Open Practice Unit is a 20 credit validated unit is part of the Academic Practice Provision offered through the Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design.
- process.arts.ac.uk is an Open Online Community, Sharing Global Innovation in Arts Practice.
- Filestore is the name for the University’s open educational resources file sharing and storage tool.
- UAL Research Online is the online showcase of the research produced at UAL ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk.
- The ALTO Arts learning and teaching online project was initiated by supported cultural change and awareness across the UAL, in relation to the benefits of creating, sharing and using OERs.
- ALTO UAL was a project supporting participation in the rapidly developing open educational community movement.
- Taking Care of Business? The Political Economy of MOOCs and Open Education:http://alto.arts.ac.uk/1024
- SCORE Report - Exploring collaborative use and re-use of OER rich media resources in art and design http://goo.gl/0CkMw0
DIAL
The DIAL project, partially funded by JISC Developing Digital Literacies Programme, is a two-year project (ending December 2013) at the university of Arts London. The DIAL project set out with the key aim of exploring cultural change and improving graduate employability 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.
Over the project lifetime, processes, resources and toolkits will be developed and made openly available so the communities can be increasingly autonomous in their development programmes and continue to develop confidence and capability in the adoption and integration of digital technologies and practice. DIAL supports open educational practice at UAL and all content and resources are openly licensed online, please see a full list of DIAL resources and activities.
FileStore
Filestore is the name for the University’s open educational resources file sharing and storage tool.
The filestore is integrated with the learning management system which allows staff to make their digital resources available as open educational resources (OERs) at the time of upload or access existing OERs for inclusion in their teaching and learning activity. Visit the filestore site for more information.
Process.Arts
http://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. The site offers a rich media/social media experience to sharing arts practice, users are encouraged to openly share and use creative commons licensed content and support others in doing the same.
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.
UAL Research Online
UAL Research Online is the online showcase of the research produced at UAL - http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk
Collaborative Platforms
UAL’s Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design works proactively with staff and students throughout UAL to develop and support a range of collaborative open source platforms to encourage and enable Open Educational Practice.
Two of these initiatives are: a teaching and learning blogging community at http://myblog.arts.ac.uk; a Mahara based ePortfolio platform athttp://workflow.arts.ac.uk. Both of these resources facilitate collaboration within and without UAL, community building and OEP with much content open to the world.
Research
Taking Care of Business? The Political Economy of MOOCs and Open Education:http://alto.arts.ac.uk/1024
A discussion document
In this article John Casey, Open Education Project Manager at CLTAD, reflects on the massive changes underway in open education around the world. Driven by a mix of new technology, idealism, politics and venture capital in a time of increasing economic austerity, the movement has plenty contradictions as well as exciting opportunities. The university sector is changing rapidly and open education is increasingly in the mix as a force to be reckoned with as a change agent. This article provides a wide-ranging and rapid introduction to this exciting field and outlines the implications for changes in our practice as well as the role of Design in providing viable solutions for the future of open education in the arts.
SCORE Fellowship (2011-2012)
The aims of the SCORE Fellowship were to explore relationships between traditional arts practice and OER practice: Including use and reuse of OER, best processes and practices, OER communities, inter-college collaborations and the development of an open Arts-UKOER community of practice.
Past projects
ALTO UK (2011-2012)
The project was initiated by and based in the UAL Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design with the express aim of helping to drive cultural change and awareness across the UAL and its partner institutions, in relation to the benefits of creating, sharing and using OERs and developing associated Open Educational Practice (OEP). In this respect it has achieved success in acting as a lightening rod around which a number of diverse discussions have begun in areas including IPR policy and awareness, digital literacy, developing staff skills in instructional design, bridging the gap between managing learning resources (as OERs) and research data and outputs in HE, and exploring personal and disciplinary differences in educational philosophy.
Additional project information can be found here and the final project report here.
ALTO UAL (2010-2011)
ALTO was a project funded by HEFCE to develop the capacity of the UAL to participate in the rapidly developing open educational community movement. ALTO focused on developing institutional infrastructure and capacity to engage in open educational practice. The online tools and websites that compose the ALTO infrastructure can be found at http://alto.arts.ac.uk.
Additional project information and the final report can be found here.
| Attachment | Size |
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| existing_ual_ip_policy_2004.pdf | 2.25 MB |
To the extent possible under law, cfollows has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this Work, Open Education at UAL.
Comments
Been having an interesting conversation on linked in about Open on the Open Education Challenge community page .....
What do you mean by the word “Open” in the Open Education?
CF: A good point ... and we (at DIAL UAL) found having a simple glossary of Terms & Acronyms helpful for communicating what we (our project) meant by terms such as Open and Open Education, Open Practice etc. - Please see http://process.arts.ac.uk/content/dial-glossary-terms-acronyms-digital-literacies-ual-draft
......... if "Open" really does mean educational content "available online to view or download without the need to login or join.", then, how does this relate to closed commercial login environments like second life etc.
What about Open to those who have to login first...?
Thank you, yes the 'login' in the definition of open in terms of our project was seen as a potential barrier and not seen as truly open education e.g (open should mean open to anyone online, no obligation) ...... content which is only 'Open' to those who have created accounts could be considered free education?
CF: I think there's a fine line between Open (truly-open) and Free (Closed then Open) which we should be clear about when promoting the term 'Open Education' especially if we are considering new commercial opportunities in 'Open Education '. I think finding the right balance of two is the fundamental goal of any new open education business.