The Ed Techie

Understanding OER in 10 videos

A long time ago, back when we still used the phrase 'web 2.0', I proposed an idea for a tool called "9 step" which sequenced online resources together, with connecting narrative. My proposal was that you can learn anything in 9 steps. I think Orson Welles once said he learnt everything he knew about cinematography in an hour, so 9 resources should be enough.

Well, due to my inability to see things through and lack of commercial flair I never did anything with the idea. Since then similar things have been trialled, to not much success, but I won't let that deter me from declaring that it was a great idea. 

Anyway, as part of the OER Research Hub we thought it would be useful to give people an introduction to OERs. I decided resurrecting my sequenced resources idea would be appropriate, but in a less ambitious manner, so I've created a YouTube playlist of 10 videos that explain OER. This goes from a simple "isn't it great" type introduction, then sets some of the context around sharing and reuse, before looking at some examples of projects and research. It ends with a long, thoughtful piece from Gardner Campbell on what openness means. 

You can add notes to a playlist, so this provides some of the narrative, but they're quite short. Even so, I think watching this playlist would give anyone a pretty good understanding of OERs and associated issues. You can view it as a course if you like. It could be massive, it's open, and online. If only there were an acronym for such things...

Anyway, see what you think, I feel we could make better use of playlists as educational tools.

FutureLearn & the role of MOOCs

If you're working in higher ed in the UK you will no doubt have seen that FutureLearn had its beta launch last week. Some disclosure - FutureLearn is owned by the OU & I've been partially involved in its development, so I'm probably not a completely objective commentator. Needless to say, what follows is just my opinion and not an official OU/FL one.

The first thing to note about the FutureLearn launch is that it launched. This is no mean feat. To get all those partner universities to sign an agreement on something quite vague, to develop a platform from scratch and to get good quality courses created for a platform that didn't exist involves an incredible amount of negotiation, hard work and good will from all parties. My small involvement with the project is that we have a weekly one hour meeting with the lead developer where we feed in advice and research. I've found them to be very smart and willing to take stuff on board. It hasn't felt like an antagonistic or us and them relationship. And I know where I speak of here, having been involved in the UK eUniversity, which became mired in contracts and stalled development. 

So, getting FutureLearn launched in a decent state is the higher ed equivalent of hosting the Olympics successfully. We're often criticised in higher ed for not being able to deliver so we ought to recognise it when someone does.

I know some people are down on FutureLearn, and I can appreciate why. It's a backlash to all the MOOC hype. I think it is important to maintain a critical standpoint particularly when commercial interests are trying to undermine existing practice to create a market for their own solutions. But I don't want to find myself in the position where I'm arguing that making good quality, well designed learning content available for free is a bad thing. 

The MOOC hype is settling down now, and I feel that FutureLearn is really an indication of what it may well end up being. Forget the "end of universities as we know them" rhetoric, ignore the "all education will be this way one day" commercial wet dream - MOOCs will be as OERs. And that's a good thing. OERs are now available from providers all over the globe, they make a big difference to the way many people work. But they haven't really fundamentally changed what we do in education, they've allowed new models and enhanced others.

Now if you're a venture capitalist this is bad news, you've sunk millions into a MOOC company, you need it to entirely revolutionise education, so you can own a big chunk of it. But if you're a university this is good news. Martin Bean, quite rightly in my view, pitched MOOCs as a shop-window. That's a sustainable business model for universities. We've found that OpenLearn is more or less sustainable now as a recruitment channel. This talk of business models may not be as altruistic or as revolutionary as radical MOOCers would like, but I think it's a good model with benefits on both sides. If a million learners every year get to experience some good online teaching material, and a smallish percentage of these then go on to study other MOOCs, or enter formal education, that's a positive outcome for universities, society and the individual learners. It probably isn't a model that will get venture capitalists excited though.

Academics and online impact

I presented at the OU's communications conference yesterday. I was asked to talk about how you create an impact online. I'm always a bit cautious about giving advice on this, as I didn't (don't) have a plan, so it's all been trial and error and messing about. But I guess that is my advice - just get started and try stuff out, don't wait to go on the "Creating academic impact online with blogs" course, just do it.

I was lucky to share the stage with two great OU colleagues. Meg Barker is an expert in relationships, and has a good blog associated with her book Rewriting the Rules. Natalie Starkey's expertise is in comets and asteroids and does a lot of TV work and writing for the Guardian, as well as blogging. I went last, so the previous two subjects had been sex and space. I then had to follow up with... educational technology. Do you ever get the feeling you made the wrong career choice? 

Anyway, my presentation is below. I make the point that I don't really know what all the stats mean associated with blogs, but they must mean something, right? 

Academics & online impact from Martin Weller

Better bums on seats

<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikelegend/4879039847/ >

During the expansion of higher education in the 90s & 00s it was all about getting more bums on seats. In the UK the Labour government set a target of 50% of 19-22 year olds going in to higher education. The aim then was just to attract as many students as you could.

But now we're in a period of reduction in student numbers, the drive is less for pure numbers but for students who will stay the course. It is very costly to universities to go through the enrollment process and for a student to then drop out. And it's often a damaging experience for the student as well, so it's in the interests of both parties to ensure that learners are really ready and suited to the course they want to study. We want bums on seats still, but we need to make sure they're the right bums on the right seats.

This is one of the hidden benefits of OERs and MOOCs I think. For instance on the OER Research Hub project we found that lots of users of OER are using them as tasters before committing to formal education. So they're seeing if they're ready for the level of study, and also the subject area they are interested in. And once they're in study, lots of learners are then using OER to complement their formal study to help them get through a course.

The OU backed FutureLearn MOOC platform launched today, and our Vice Chancellor Martin Bean has suggested that MOOCs act as a shop window for universities. I think this is a sound model - if learners get something for free and then some sign up for formal study, both parties win. This makes it a sustainable model, without the need to make a profit for venture capitalists.

But what I think may be as interesting as its recruitment function is the filtering function of OERs and MOOCs. If as a result of having studied open content the subsequent students you get into formal education are then less likely to drop out then it represents a huge benefit for both unis and learners. It would be a difficult figure to quantify, but I think improved retention savings would be worth looking at.

Innovating Pedagogy report 2013

Last year a few of us at the OU produced the Innovating Pedagogy report. This listed some topics in educational technology we thought were going to be significant. No-one warned me but it was an annual event, so here is the Innovating Pedagogy report 2013.

My colleague Mike Sharples (of FutureLearn fame) does an excellent job of cajoling us into contributing and putting it all together. He operates a process similar to that used in the creation of the Horizon reports, so a bunch of us suggest topics, we vote on these, then get assigned to write a summary for the selected topics. These are then reviewed, and then we write the main section, which goes through another round of review. It's a good process and hopefully it produces a good quality output.

So this year the topics we've chosen are: 

• Badges to accredit learning
• Citizen inquiry
• Crowd Learning
• Digital scholarship
• Geo-learning
• Learning analytics
• Learning from gaming
• Maker culture
• MOOCs
• Seamless learning

Some of the list are obvious (badges) and others less so (seamless learning), so I think it's got something for everyone. Some topics (eg MOOCs) have been repeated from last year, mainly where there has been significant developments in the past year, it seemed appropriate to include them again. Next year, no bloody MOOCs ok?

If you think there are subjects missing, you're probably right. This is just our take on the current landscape, which we think others may find interesting, we're not proposing it as a definitive list. Actually, it'd be nice to see a similar report from other unis and groups. Anyway, hope you find something in it that's useful. Here's that link again: Innovating Pedagogy 2013

Teaching as 'punishment'

In looking at issues around digital scholarship and promotion, I examined some of the work on academic tenure. There are usually three strands to tenure: research, teaching and admin/service. These are supposed to count equally, but there is a general feeling that researchers walk taller. There have been many attempts to raise the profile of teaching in the academic community, but a recent article in the Times Higher unintentionally reveals how little success they've had.

The piece is about Swansea university and its plans to move "management academics" "to teaching-only roles if they do not have four papers deemed to be of at least 3* quality." The article reveals several attitudes towards teaching in higher education. For a start it is entitled "Swansea’s tough REF plans provoke disquiet" which suggest a general agreement that teaching-only is harsh. 

If academics have not submitted four papers of the required standard they will be required to do 18 hours contact teaching a week instead of the 6 hours for 'research-active'. Teaching only is described as a threat.

Now, the problem is that if teaching isn't as widely recognised as research then being on a teaching only contract may make promotion harder. It is perceived by many as creating a two-tier system of academics in the university. I'm not going to go into that here. One could argue that if in four years you haven't produced four 3* papers, maybe you aren't research active and teaching might be a better focus. But what I want to highlight is that the language and assumptions in the piece reveal the research bias that exists in higher ed, despite the fact that the vast majority of a university's income is derived from teaching.

If you don't believe me, try reversing "teaching" and "research" in the piece. It quickly becomes amusing, so for examples here are sentences you will never see:

• "Staff complain over ‘arbitrary’ yardstick and research-only threat"
• "management academics at Swansea University typically will be moved to research-only roles if they do not score well in the NSS".
• "academics who do not have the requisite student satisfaction score will be obliged to research for up to 18 hours a week"

Teaching is frequently treated as a punishment - how does that make students paying hefty fees feel?