In the Open: Creating an OER from a Closed Source
In the Open: Creating an OER from a Closed Source
Intro
Teaching ‘in the open’ is spectrum of practices for making your teaching publicly available.
Here’s how the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada (Open UBC) define teaching ‘in the open’, please read this page:
https://open.ubc.ca/teaching-in-the-open/ (link)
Note that Open UBC state that:
openness isn’t a single expression and exists on a spectrum
As a means of starting to find your way through this spectrum of possibilities, today, you will complete this short workshop.
It’s important that you understand what an OER is since you are all going to produce an open learning project for the BarCamp in Week 11.
Beyond your peers, your open learning project must be published as an OER that is open to the public.
So, to start with, you need to know what an OER is.
What you will be doing
Today you will attempt to find out what an OER is through a process of collaborative inquiry (link)
You will each work with two of your peers to achieve this goal.
We will use the jigsaw classroom (link) technique for this.
You will start by allocating members of your Basho to examine different definitions of OERs from CC.org:
LINK: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/What_is_OER%3F
Form a ‘triad’
Each Basho will be broken into triads (groups of 3), using the first three letters of the Alphabet:
(A)
(B)
(C)
NB: If you can’t establish a triad, set up a dyad (two people).
Each member then will spend up to 20 minutes working on their own focusing on just one of the definitions of OERs from CC.org
Allocation: how to distribution your labour:
(A) investigates:
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation “At Hewlett, we use the term “open education” to encompass the myriad of learning resources, teaching practices and education policies that use the flexibility of OER to provide learners with high quality educational experiences. Creative Commons defines OER as teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities– retaining, remixing, revising, reusing and redistributing the resources.” [1]
(B) investigates:
OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) “digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students, and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research. OER includes learning content, software tools to develop, use, and distribute content, and implementation resources such as open licences.”
(C) investigates:
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation) (link) “Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.”
What do you need to focus on?
Your peers are going to interview you about what you’ve found out. They are going to ask you what you know about OERs based on the specific definition you have investigated. You need to prepare to answer their questions.
Remember to make your notes on paper or electronically so that you can use them to respond to the questions your peers will ask you.
Diagnostic Interview (‘Triad Crits’)
The ‘triad’:
Once you’ve spent at least 20 minutes investigating the defintions, you can move on to conduct a diagnostic interview by following a simple process. This involves having two interviewer interview the other person in their Crit group. For this to work most effectively, you need to make use of the fact that you have already formed a triad (i.e. three people).
NB: If you can’t establish a triad, set up a dyad (two people).
A triad can then pursue the following diagnostic interview format:
(A) and (B) interview > (C) on what they now know about OERs
(A) and (C) interview > (B) on what they now know about OERs
(B) and (C) interview > (A) on what they now know about OERs
For example, we could form the following triad:
Questions & Answers: rules for conducting your diagnostic interviews
It’s vitally important that you stick to these golden rules:
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- The interviewers can only ask questions.
- The inverviewee can only give answers.
- The interviewers must take it in turns to ask questions (one question at a time).
- You need to allow a full 10 minutes for each interview. Set a timer. At 10mins, the interview is over.
- You each must take your turn being interviewed for a full 10 minutes.
- You all must take on the role of both interviewer and interviewee during this crit.
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Break
The process described above will take at least 50mins.
We will take a break once the timed interviews are over.
Closed Forms
Working on your own for 10mins: identify forms of artistic learning that you consider to be “closed”
Brainstorm to collect a series of examples that you can share within your triad.
What to focus on>
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- Think about some of the educational methods you’ve experienced directly in your life
- List your thoughts on what might make art education “closed”
- Think of a few examples that you’ve either experienced or have learned about second-hand
‘Triad’ Interview:
Once you’ve spent at least 10 minutes thinking of a few closed forms to discuss, return to your triad to conduct a diagnostic interview using the same process you used earlier. This time we will set a timer for 5mins:
The interviewers can only ask questions.
The inverviewee can only give answers.
The interviewers must take it in turns to ask questions (one question at a time).
You need to allow a full 5 minutes for each interview. Set a timer. At 5mins, the interview is over.
You each must take your turn being interviewed for a full 5 minutes.
You all must take on the role of both interviewer and interviewee during this crit.
The process described above will take at least 25 mins.
Creating an OER from a ‘Closed’ Source
You will continue to work with your triad to examine a course that is taught in the School of Art as part of the BA (Hons) Art programme.
This is a 20 Credit Level 8 course called: Drawn from the City ARTX08058 (link)
We will work only with the information we can find about this course in PATH (the UoE’s course repository).
In your triad, attempt to answer the following questions.
You should work thoughth each question sequentially.
– If you were not enrolled as a student of UoE, what information about Drawn from the City ARTX08058 (link) could you openly access?
– If you were not enrolled as a student of UoE, how much of Drawn from the City ARTX08058 (link) could you follow on your own / in a group?
– Can you identify which components of Drawn from the City ARTX08058 (link) are closed?
– Having done so, can you figure how you might make Drawn from the City ARTX08058 (link)‘s closed components open?
Working in your triad, devise a plan to make Drawn from the City ARTX08058 (link) “open”
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- List the different ways in which the example you’ve chosen is “closed”
- Work on each of the ways that the example is “closed” to make it “open”; consider
- How would you need to re-model the example to make it openly accessible?
- Who would benefit from this? Would any new ‘publics that result from the circulation of these objects’. (Boshears 2013: 617)
- What sort of resources would be required? (e.g. do you only need to change the example or, also, the institutions that support it?)
- What kind of curriculum design process would you need to pursue?
- How could you codify this example work in such a way that it could be CC licenced and distributed as free culture?
- Can this example be modded? If not, can you make it modifiable?
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Present your triad’s plan in a format that will enable others in your Basho to follow it.
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- The plan should enable your peers to follow it without you intervening
- Use text, diagrams, images, whatever works to open up what you are presenting to make it intelligible.
- Make sure that you clearly list all the resources that are required (no matter how big or small!!!)
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Post the plan in your Basho’s MS Teams Channel.
What next?
As a Basho, you should now have collected a diverse set of ideas defining what an OER might be and a range of ‘in the open’ examples.
Your Basho will next begin to decide collectively how you wish to define ‘openness’ for your group.
You may wish to consider ‘openness’ as set of probing questions to ask about what you will each devise for the BarCamp.
Learning Sprint 2: Open Toolkits