We are delighted to welcome Martin Tasker as our Open Content Curator intern, working with the EDE team for twelve weeks over the summer. Martin will be primarily focusing on taking the fantastic Open Educational Resources created by students on the Geoscience Outreach and Engagement course, and those created by students for LGBT health within the MBChB curriculum, and sharing these on relevant repositories and platforms across the web.

Open Content Creator

Martin Tasker

For the last fortnight, I’ve been working as an Open Content Curator intern for the team at EDE, working helping to create and distribute educational resources created by both students and staff at the university. It’s been a swift and slightly brutal introduction to a field of which I have only been peripherally aware until recently: Open Education.

It’s a fascinating prospect: having openly shared resources, used by thousands of teachers and students across the country (and potentially the world), that can be remixed, cut up and re-shared. It allows us to not only carry out the University’s goal of “[making] a significant, sustainable and socially responsible contribution to Scotland, the UK and the world, promoting health and economic and cultural wellbeing”, but also spread the University’s brand. It’s a strategy that undoubtedly works – the reason I am here, studying mathematical physics, is because of MIT’s fantastic OpenCourseWare.

But developing OERs is not the only reason I’m here. The Careers Service’s Employ.ed scheme has both given me this opportunity and also given me a chance to develop personally. This is my first ‘office job’: much of the world of work is still a mystery to me, so this internship will hopefully allow me to develop both my confidence in a new environment and to begin networking: something that simply doesn’t happen in cold, dead lecture theatres and stuffy tutorial rooms. Building practical experience, well outside my own discipline, is something that I hope will serve me well in years to come.

And finally, a note about my colleagues. Despite this all being very new and slightly confusing to me, they have been wonderfully patient, friendly and encouraging: I couldn’t have asked for better workmates with whom to spend what I’m sure will be a frantic but incredibly fun summer.

Learn more about the Geoscience Outreach and Engagement course

Learn more about the OERs created on LGBT health within the MBChB curriculum

Learn more about the Employ.Ed on-campus internships

Welcoming our Open Content Curator intern / Educational Design and Engagement by is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0

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