Open Learning Network

Present: Simon, Doug, Gráinne, Canan, Ann, Anna, Andreia, Kasia, Elpida, Liam, Janet, Tina, Giota, Karen, Patrick, Michelle, Eileen, Will

Cameras on, being recorded - six cameras capturing us talking in the JLB Ambient Lab. For research purposes.

Broad objective is for us to have a better understanding of what we're doing with the project, greater clarity of everyone's activity, as a foundation for building on. And to have a nice time.

Patrick

Simon, Karen and Patrick went to Yale - New Haven - for the Hewlett Foundation grantees meeting. Significant things to say on OER, and impact it's having in the US and potentially for us. Barbara Chow, leads education area for Hewlett. Interested in K-12, schools, rather than HE. Hal Plotkin, recently joined Obama government - significant change, now a strong link between the Government and Hewlett, to change thinking about how education works in the US. Deliberate shift. Press release from Hewlett on this. $500m-$2bn flowing in, per year, through riders on other things. One is as part of the health bill. Invested in the school system and how it works, with OER as the driver. $2bn under a reskilling program in to lifelong learning. Patrick (and others) made notes in Cloudworks. Suddenly the profile of OER has shot up, and the demand for evidence to support it has also increased. So there needs to be more research (good news for us), but their interest is moving down the sector (to schools) and they're not really using us as a reference point, but think we should be going on. Need to make sure we make things available that way. Kathy Nicholson, our contact point. Also point Candace made - OER is not a movement in itself, it's change in order to achieve other ends - need to stress. OER and Deeper Learning - announcements coming. Goal: a sustainably-funded and contiuously-growing adaptive ecosystem. Very much not funding content for its own sake. Deeper learning is very much 21st century learning skills stuff - standoff between core numeracy/literacy/science vs learning to learn etc. Vic Vuchic leading OER, but seconded to Government.

Elpida

Strand one - design and support revised OLnet.org - social sites research (300+) fed in; also wireframe and design, active involvement.

Strand 2 - main activity area: Social sites survey (3000 sites, 50 in detail, 250 user paths); Participatory (Fairy Rings) Model building on Preece & Schneiderman's Reader to Leader Framework and Engestrom's wildfire activities and mycorrhyzia - paper to Networked Learning this May;  Content Elements Model (6 elements) - based on Alexa toolbar/stats on the different sites. Also work on iSpot, then SmartHistory/ccMixter; testing approaches.

Workshops too - learning design and patterns with Yannis. Video resources and learning.

Building links with collective intelligence - putting in to Compendium. Also designing/developing OERopoly.

Linking with OER projects - SmartHistory, HESTIA, TwHistory (which got funding from Talis on 8 April!)

Tina

Professional educator role, and the ICS (Information and Computer Science) discipline.

Exploring the professional educator in the process of OER creation, use and reuse, building on previous work on other projects. How they're being reused for teaching & learning, and key stakeholder opinions on OER. Barrier to reuse (technical, support, design); communication tools and community sense.

Projects - OpenER (EU funded with Robert Schuwer); OER in Turkey (with Engin Kursun); Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA, Hewlett funded). POCKET. CAPITAL. OpenLearn/SCORE.

ICS discipline - disciplinary base is important. Looking at reuse with students.

Projects - Using OER and Web 2.0 Tools to support Ethical Reasoning in ICS Project-Based Learning (HEA ICS funded project with Giselle Ferreira). Open SE (EU funded), ICS Open Educational Resources project (JISC/HEAcademy).

Giota

Umbrella project Collaboration and context in Open Educational Resources: International Perspectives - engaging with international skateholders, communities, projects - details at http://olnet.org/node/103

Doubly-articulated theoretically - media/communications framework and Activity Theory. Informed by Participatory Learning and Learning Design strands of OLnet.

Map OER activities on two axes - scale (small/large) vs provider (institution/community). Explore discourse of community/connectedness, and what that means in practice. Communities of improvement, pedagogical wrappers, tc.

Plan: 1. In-depth case studies - one is P2PU, and copyright for educators course. 2. Pearls in the Clouds - synthesis of evidence on Web 2.0 in HE (to be released soon, open review on Cloudworks), and evaluative case studies on use of Cloudworks by OER communities.

Next: move from content to context - political and pedagogical on iSpot/EOL, and participatory and critical literacies. And other case studies.

Andreia

Focus on research questions.

Work on communities - especially the Virtual Workshops. Aim to promote dicussion, incubate new communities, and contribute to a virtual research environment, gather evidence of OER design, use, re-use.

Pilot workshop already happened. Planned: 10th-21st May for Portuguese speakers (Brazil, Portugal, Mozambique, Angola, Macau). Multiple platforms, possibly Cloudworks. English. Others.

UnisulVirtual - widening participation through OER. Second phase Programme Winter + JUNE. Have translated many courses on OpenLearn LabSpace. Linked with their institutional VLE, so direct students to it. Mostly transnational reuse of content. Run a Winter course, will open it to the community - 'bring a friend or family member to the course'.

H800 - IET Masters course. Unit on OER, encourage them to repurpose something from OER content in OpenLearn LabSpace. Also available itself in LearningSpace.

Copyright - is big issue outside the UK (Brazil, Turkey, African countries); perceived barrier. Discussion about policy, law, copyright blocks discussion about pedagogy, reuse, etc.

Also - OPAL and iTunesU for dissemination.

Anna

Research project aims to understand what collective intelligence (CI) means, for OER. Using collective intelligence infrastructure to structure and evaluate the platform and the evidence.

Two strands: gathering collective intelligence; and developing the collective intelligence/OER interface.

Activity: using Moneterey 2009 meeting, mapping clouds from the Cloudworks discussion in Cohere with semantic connections (participates, say/raises, about). Can filter, display in multiple ways.

Next steps: small examples of e.g. OLnet fellows using Cohere to annotate resources as part of their research, or to use Cohere to summarise key results of research.

Another strand doing technical work developing the CI infrastructure. Have a mockup/storyboard (on OLnet website) of how the infrastructure could be integrated - Cohere and OLnet/OpenLearn.

Discussion

Karen: Many things not heard; useful overview to see it all together.

Patrick: There is so much here. We could stop now and just get the messages out that are in our heads and still be in a good position. The desire for evidence - we want to be the route through to who knows about this. Different stakeholders, sectors, subject areas, cases where we've looked at lots of data. Good to relate back to original RQs. We all need to be able to tell the overall story of what OLnet is doing. Our technologies need to support this. We must invest the time in collective intelligence activities to show the collective view. The OLnet fellows need to be drawn in too.

May 19th for collective intelligence workshop.

Eileen: Couldn't give an OLnet position on OER; could not yet put hands on evidence to answer the RQs. But is a good rallying call for us - how far have we got? In providing evidence-based answers.

Patrick: Fresh pressure to give succinct positions, messages on OER, especially for policymakers. There will be questions about any position, but want to be able to say things - especially success stories (Hewlett are advocates) - but we as researchers want to also track failures. Not sure is OLnet position, or something to enable others to come in. The CI tools would allow others to challenge. Evidence that answers the RQs - came out from the presentations, see what we're starting to do.

Simon: Hewlett would like to point to us - and say go to OLnet knowledge base because that's where the answers to these questions. We need to pithily summarise what we know (with qualifiers - we are academics - with links to more detail). Need to structure it round the questions that policymakers might come with. Our infrastructure has to allow multiple pathways in.

Gráinne: Need to be able to present a clearer picture, how the whole thing fits together. Good start mapping to the RQs. The OPAL work has a clear vision being pushed hard as a central catalyst; it'd be worth us coming up with clearer soundbites.

Patrick: Need longevity for the work. What activity would create the food for collective intelligence?

Simon: If written a paper - 3-step annotation: (a) put on the web, (b) give a question it answers, (c) summarise what the answer is. Might not be the same as the abstract. Key connections between your findings and others - consistent with other things or otherwise. Move from richness of a piece of prose to something that lifts out the key insights and messages. Example of CI practice adding a layer above the rich media we produce anyway.

Anna: Would be good if Anna works with fellows on team to facilitate the process, especially at the beginning. Technical work to move things across automatically from OLnet site to a Cohere database. As well as the social interaction with Anna.

Karen: For people to participate in a collective project, need to see individual benefit. Need to think about that. Also need to get the headline ideas widely known. So everyone can give a summary form of what everybody is up to.

Andreia: We never saw OLnet as a one-stop shop. We don't want to be The Place people come to for answers. We don't have a feature-rich website to offer people.

Simon: What are the services that OLnet offers back to the community?

Andreia: Could be helping people over the initial bump in getting involved so they can move on themselves.

Patrick: The Chasm (or Gulf, or Gap) - classic innovation curve shows early adopters, fast followers, mainstream (then laggards). OER has reached the gap between the group they can reach and the mass that they need. Big concern for them - will it ever become part of the mainstream?

Simon: We could help people over the chasm.

Karen: Could help through the evidence. Also are offering tools - the CI infrastructure.

Simon: It is a research project on the tools front.

Eileen: Evaluation toolkit is another thing we could do, need to do.

Gráinne: Evaluation important across the piece, in other projects and contexts too. Collating what's there - Cloudscape on Evaluation Toolbox, harvesting existing resources incl Jen Harvey/Patrick McAndrew on Evaluation Cookbook. Will build on.

Patrick: Constrained role for experts (us!) to give three bullet points to get stuff out. Doesn't depend on Cohere or anything else; it's on us and the points we want to make. This is a task for us to do, a piece of work.

Doug: OLnet presentation for CALRG could be the spur to do this - move from the OLnet Y1 report (not quite right) to more bullet-point. Will be skewed for researchers rather than policymakers. But might help. A narrative, a story, a framework for what we're doing.

Canan: Many OU people don't know about what's going on in large projects, including OLnet. Deadline is 29 April for abstract (500 words), 24-25th May for presentation.

Karen: Patrick will do the abstract. Next step: review June/July time.

Patrick: In parallel will be developing a year 2 plan. Clarity issue important. First is getting the message clear, second establishing whether it's the message people want to hear.