29.1 Systems for supportive open teaching  (Page 6/6)

In effect this is an emerging gift economy played out on the internet and is of a nature not previously seen, slowly changing the relationships between teachers and learners and others in numerous ways in all countries, not just the rich ones.

What are the OU doing about it? We are experimenting and innovating in as many spaces as we can. OpenLearn is content led, SocialLearn which Martin Weller talked about is technology led. Both are trying to understand what people want to do about learning throughout their lives and in different contexts. We aim to do things at scale but still be personal - mass customisation - whether on our own or in partnership with others.

7. ken udas - december 13th, 2008 at 1:03 am

Andy,

Thank you. I suppose that it seems natural that “simpler” activities such as posting and improving ones own content would happen before more complex activities such as revision, reuse, and sharing of others work. It would seem to me that aside from reducing barriers to editing, reuse, and sharing on the part of OER projects, it would be important for universities to incentivize these activities for their faculty. Do you know of a list of practices that address incentives that can be used within an organization?

I am going to change direction a bit, just to get your (or anybody else’s) thoughts. I am currently attending an interesting meeting titled “Rethinking the university after Bologna: New concepts and practices beyond tradition and the market”, and a majority of the meeting sessions have either directly addressed or have referred to some aspect of Open Access (OA). In many cases it has been in reference to OA journals and research. Over lunch though, a colleague from a French NGO pointed out that for most American and British faculty all scientific journals seem open because their universities subscribe heavily to journal database services. This individual’s conclusion is that because there appears to be no access issue (to Journals in most US and UK universities), it is not considered an issue that ought to be addressed. That is, when the problem is out of sight, it is also out of mind.

My question is if you find that American and British OER related projects are working closely enough with OA journal and research efforts? If not, do you think it matters from an impact point of view, particularly for learners interested in self-study outside of a formal university setting or at universities that do not subscribe to journal databases? I would guess that these two groups represent a relatively large part of the population that we would like to benefit from OER efforts.

Thank You, Ken

8. summary: systems for supportive open teaching | terra incognita - a penn state world campus blog - december 30th, 2008 at 7:19 pm

[...] “Systems for Supportive Open Teaching,” the 26th installment of the Impact of Open Source Software Series, was posted on November 26, 2008, by Andy Lane. Andy has been at The Open University since 1983 and, in addition to serving as a Professor of Environmental Systems, has held various offices in the former Technology Faculty (now Faculty of Maths, Computing and Technology) including being Head of the Systems Department and Dean of the Technology Faculty. [...]

9. matt - february 22nd, 2009 at 5:57 am

Interesting post! There is clearly incredible value to be found in co-creating educational resources — and moving away from the lone teacher developing their course. healing remedies At Smarthistory.org — an art history resource I am developing with Dr. Steven Zucker (we recently won an award from Avicom — the multimedia wing of the International Council of Museums — the “gold award” in the web category), we believe that audio and video conversations can be a powerful teaching tool — and the feedback from our students supports this. Students listen to learning taking place — through social interaction — and by opening up our classrooms, we can only become better teachers. And the question is — as Andy points out — how can we best expand this across institutional and international boundaries.