Unit Title: Open Educational Practice

The ultimate aim of this project is to develop a new 10 credit Open Academic Practice unit in UAL’s Continuing Professional Development Framework (CPDF).  The CPDF is a modular programme which includes PGCert (HEA accredited PSF D2), PGDip and MA exit qualifications, as well as supporting the professional development and recognition of postgraduate students with teaching responsibilities, research supervisors, part time teaching staff, technicians and others who support students’ learning.  UAL is currently pursuing HEA accreditation for parts of the CPDF at D3, in addition to the existing D2 accreditation.  The programme also attracts a number of external participants annually.

This project is a ‘capstone’ for UAL, building on UAL’s existing OER projects (ALTO and ALTO-UK), and UAL’s DIAL project, part of the JISC Digital Literacies programme.  It will make use of the existing experience and skills of UAL staff, including those of DIAL Project Manager and OU SCORE Fellow, Chris Follows.

See a working draft of the unit here (3 versions latest is is the bottom of the document) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1llO7yFnLS7f7ftifHFoyoraHM7wqcwQhswmp3zJNd6s/edit

Read more see 'Project Plan for OEP Unit' - http://oepractice.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2012/05/24/project-plan-for-oep-unit/

My notes for the PG Cert Open Educational practice Unit being developed

1. Question: Why be online?

Outcomes: - understand what ‘OEP’ means to you as a teacher?

Outcomes: - considered what ‘OEP’ means to you as a practitioner?

Outcomes: – explored what OEP means to your students?

Outcomes: – Be able to define what you understand as ‘open’ in OEP to mean

2. Question: What are the challenges, limitations and benefits of being open online?

Outcomes:  – Be able to work in groups to practically explore and develop open relational skills

Outcomes:  – create an open educational resource OER and appropriately licensed

Outcomes: Explore the technical skills required for developing or creating personal and professional online environments

Outcomes:  – Formed an open community around an interest where you have shared ideas and resources.

Outcomes:  – created and used a resource using 3rd part openly licensed content

Outcomes: awareness of types of skills involved in OEP and OER practice

Outcomes:  Identify impact of OEP on their normal schedules and personal/private boundaries

3. Question: How do you see OEP practices relating to your professional practice?

Outcomes: Explored the key OEP and identified contextual relationships to your own professional practice  (copy, reuse, copyright, collaboration etc)

Outcomes: Better awareness of yours and others open identities  

4. Question: (Big picture, short paper) what are the current trends and developments in open practices and how could this impact on your future and practice?

Outcomes: Debate and consider future challenges for OEP

Notes:

Do they have to be class discussions be good to award relevant open debate beyond the group as well

Yes, maybe part of this course is for students to find their home online and this is where they 'present' their final work

This could be part of their and our early identifying and self identifying stages of the course as I predict we’ll have many levels of experience, some will know what their doing, some will be able to use Lynda and some will need full on support, this could slow down or be less relevant to the digital competent and they could skip much of this? The technical skills or (hard skills) for developing or creating our personal and professional online environments can be achieved or learnt through various courses or online resources, although keeping pace with new and evolving applications and systems demands constant engagement.  As teachers and students we are socialised into a restricted, uncreative, unfamiliar and closed mode of being online, the VLE or institutional repository is built to conform to ‘old and closed’ conventional academic structures and processes. There is a huge leap to be made from the formal closed VLE into the ‘new’ open online ‘edusocial’ (educational social networked) open space, a leap into the unknown. There are currently no rules in this new open educational space and it’s something we are not being socialised into, we need to learn it ourselves and learn by doing.

Drivers: Look at the idea/notion of OER and OEP involvement as a valuable personal asset that defines your practice and is not tied to an institution but is something you take with you.

Less Tec talk and more talk about 'real' OER/OEP in practice, 'OER community building'   OEP case studies

The open educational movement presents a challenge to all sectors and expand beyond the ‘conventional’ HE practice; we have the opportunity to define new ‘non institutionalised’ modes of educational practice, how are we defining the language of OEP ? Are we reinventing creating a new language for OEP and education or just trying to squeeze, replicate and reproduce old conventional academic practice into the new?

Open source and OER coming together [CF]How can we make better use of the open source community and collaborate together?   

Sustainable communities, how can true open source software and OER environments be created, developed and managed sustainably. Student/participant developers – e.g. OER platforms built on easy (not perl) and accessible open source platforms that can build/attract a non-specialist development community. 

A participatory website would be good and ‘open’ submission to allow public feedback

Maybe there should but more emphasis on peer review, open review of others OER (informal/social)