Open models and open teaching in the bricks and mortar institution

With mostly excitement and some anxiety, I’ve been thinking ahead to the OpenEd 2009 conference this August at UBC and have been working with Stephen to think about the focus we want to take with our presentation.  Most conference time slots are frustrating in that they really only let you breeze through the surface of your presentation, and hopefully elicit some good questions from the audience who hopefully got something out of your drive-by.  But we’re at a stage with our topic on Open Models where we want to be challenged and pressed to think differently about the topic and what potential might lie with the model.  I think this requires greater articulation of the rationale for this model, and some concrete examples where it has the most potential.  If time allows, we’re going to go in this direction:

1.  In our presentation and paper at the ICDE 2009 conference I mentioned (Bourdieu’s)  notion of English (and higher ed in English) as social/cultural capital, but I think this needs more explanation in relation to the importance of allowing access for global participation (with credits) in our bricks and mortar institutions.  This is also related to a need for models where barriers such as institutional bureaucracies and TOEFL scores can be by-passed to make this happen.

2.  We made the point that the OER movement to date has largely focussed on content and distribution of this content, but needs to move into the development of new models for education that allow for greater participation (with credits) to a more global population.   We feel it is timely to be reminded that in some constructivist views of formal education, content is actually not the most important piece of the education puzzle, but the interactions and engagement that take place in the learning space (broadly defined) and the multiple perspectives that are encountered in those interactions are where learning occurs.  Therefore, a model that embraces open access needs to account for this, which is why our model creates access for global participation with credits, and doesn’t spend much time on how OER content is being used.

3.  Our model evolved out of a desire create more opportunity to bring in local (globally dispersed) perspectives into a global forum in order to provide multiple perspectives on a topic in an authentic manner.  We’ve described this in terms of making the “local knowledge global” and the “global knowledge local”).  Stephen has since come up with the term “ecology of knowledge” but we have now discovered there is a well established discipline of “knowledge ecology“.  We’re going to tie in with this idea if appropriate.

3.  Stephen has a mild horror/fascination with global pandemics (he wouldn’t agree:)) and in his last few presentations has expressed the value of the model for disciplines such as the health sciences.  Specifically, a PBL medicine course would have students from geographically dispersed locations working together on cases, again making the local global and vice versa.  The urgency and the interest that has been expressed in ensuring that the developing world has access to current medical publications and up to date information has obviously influenced this example, coupled with Stephen’s observation that with any global health crisis there is no one solution or strategy that can be applied to any local context, while at the same time there is a need for global cooperation and collaboration.  It’s an interesting tension, and obviously one that applies to other disciplines such as  international development. 

The crux of our argument is that we feel that open course models integrated into traditional bricks and mortar institutions are critical in not only expanding the internationalisation agendas of these institutions, but in expanding the boundaries that these institutions have come to place on access, pedagogy, and knowledge.  One model is admittedly a micro step, but if it succeeds in altering the current course-based paradigm that we are in, then perhaps there will be more innovation of the educational experience these institutions currently provide.

Why open is not only good, but necessary

From David Wiley, this is one of the most persuasive set of slides arguing for  institutions to consider the benefits of being more open about content. My institution needs to begin this conversation in a more coordinated way, and this presentation really nails the argument in my opinion.

Articles of relevance

After reading Stephen’s post I felt like I had to dig up this very important article by the New London Group (aka. James Gee, for example) circa 1996.  Multiliteracy is their term for “21st century literacy”,  framed within a sociocultural lens.  I might comment more later.

Quotes of relevance

I’ve been revisiting some old articles/books that I collected when I was researching autonomy, self-access and language learning. This one from Gill Sturtridge seemed to have relevance to current discussions of informal learning, and open access in general.

The information explosion, information technology and increasing student numbers may not only mean the integration and acceptance of self-access centres within the traditional classroom-based teaching institution, but also the complete re-assessment of the mode of delivery of education generally. Institutions could become total providers of self-access learning and the traditional classroom could disappear entirely in some institutions” (1997, p. 68).

Sturtridge, G. (1997). Teaching and learning in self-access centres: changing roles? in P. Benson and P.Voller (eds): Autonomy and Independence in Language Learning. London: Longman.

Workshopping

I’ve been busy over at http://testingcentre.wordpress.com, pulling a bunch of stuff together for a workshop on creating successful online learning environments. The problem with this topic is that so much good stuff has been said on the topic already, and I feel like I’m adding very little to the noise. My hope is that the participants will guide the workshop, since I’m quite prepared to go off in any direction that is needed.

Of course, in preparation for the workshop I found a couple of good new tools to add to the mix: PollDaddy  for quick student polls and Tangler , a non-US hosted discussion board.

some updates

I’ve begun uploading copies of articles and presentations to the Publications and Presentations part of this site.  It’s a great relief to pull them off my collection of drives, discs, etc, and get them into one place, although I still haven’t located a digital copy of my MA.  Almost all of the articles and presentations are co-authored and co-presented (dissertation excepted, obviously) since I generally prefer the collaboration part of the process.  I’ve also posted drafts of stuff published in locked-down journals, which I have unofficially vowed to avoid in the future.  It really makes no sense to publish in a subscription only journal on so many levels, so I’m not sure why anybody bothers to go that route anymore.  My first publication was published in a journal that doesn’t even exist online (obviously very obscure), so I’m not even sure how I would even go about getting a copy at this point.  

Anyhow, comments or questions about any of the stuff on that page are always welcome.

Easy multimedia

A quick trip over at one of my favourite sites, Interactive Narratives, lead me to VuVox, a Web 2.0 multimedia authoring tool that stole my attention for about a half an hour.  There could be lots of useful applications of  tools like this in higher ed, in particular where multimedia development resources might be stretched, or where there is a desire for students to tell a story, explain, show understanding, or even synthesize in a multi-layered, dynamic way.  Robin Good provides a nice overview/how to on the tool

Why haven’t I tried this yet?

Found this review of Calameo buried in my bookmarks, and am wondering why I haven’t used it yet?  Has anybody used Calameo as a tool for creating OERs?  Or even as a type of online course manual?

The OER project has its own home…

…and it’s over here, in case you want to follow it.

The OER project

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

originally uploaded by semaphoria

Today is the day that I’m launching a personal project that I’ve been brewing for a while.  My interest in what is happening in the OER world right now has extended to a desire to try and understand what the self-directed student experience would actually be in attempting to use OERs to learn a topic area that would normally be measured as a degree level course.  

I’m having a bit of deja vu right now, since for my MA thesis in 2001, I spent 2 months documenting and journaling my attempt to use only freely available internet resources and tools to learn Spanish, using a free 56k internet connection (remember those?).  At the time, there were a lot of Spanish grammar exercises for the beginner, grammar resources, some really interesting Latin American webzines, and I was even able to catch the odd telenovela from Venezuela from some television streaming sites.  I was able to stream CNN en Espanol all day long (which I don’t think they let you do anymore), so I had a steady news stream in Spanish as background noise.  I attempted a few chat rooms to interact with some ‘real’ Spanish speakers, and spent some time sending emails to a Spanish friend.  I felt I had a lot more fun learning a language this way than sitting in a language class (which I’ve done a lot of in the past), but I’m by nature pretty self-directed so it wasn’t a big leap.  However, I also learned that I spent a lot of time looking for the appropriate resources and cobbling together some sort of course.  I clocked all of my time spent in ‘learning’ mode, and at the end of approximately 40 hours, I signed up for the DELE ( the TOEFL equivalent in Spanish) and found that I had progressed from beginner to low intermediate level, which is line with what would have been expected from a typical Spanish language course at UBC.  

Fast forward to 2008, where I’ve had a nagging desire to get on top of basic quantitative research methods and the statistics that go along with those, but no desire or time to sign up for a class.  Therefore, I’m launching myself into this project, which consists of using OERs to learn undergraduate level statistics appropriate to quantitative research methods in education.  I’d love to be able to find the perfect course package waiting for me through a search at the OpenCoursewareFinder, but I suspect I’ll be doing some patchwork between OER Commons, the OpenCourseWareFinder, and ItunesU.  I’ll be on a high speed connection this time, but I won’t be purchasing any textbooks or software in order to keep costs down and accessibility high. Since I’m interested in language and translation issues around OERs, I also plan on searching for courseware in all of the 3 languages I can actually read (English, French, and Spanish). I’ll document it on this blog somehow, and follow the same methodology as I did in 2001.  

Obviously, I hope to be successful in learning statistics (and not for the purpose of obtaining credits or credentials), but I really hope to learn more about OERs, searching OERs, and engaging with them as student in some meaningful way.  Specifically, what advantage will the OER initiatives provide that Google couldn’t provide in my 2001 experiment?  Will it speed up the assembly of course materials into some meaningful learning package? Will it provide me with a more structured learning plan?  Will I be seeking networks of experts to help me out in the absence of an instructor?  Will I know when I’ve been successful?  Will I wish I just went out and bought Statistics for Dummies?