OER@UCT

A Creative Commons Image by Superkimbo

A recent report from the MacArthur foundation and published by MIT Press underscores the changing landscape in which higher education institutions around the world are currently finding themselves.  This publication will likely reach many people due to the stature of its source.  I connected to the resource via George Siemens' site where he also celebrates the book but criticizes it for building on ideas which may have come out of informal channels such as websites, blogs, forums, wikis, etc  

Education 3.0 and other new models of online artefacts are still new to many of us and often finding ways to cite and give credit is difficult.  Many institutions still condemn the use of these informal sources of information which educational futurists are beginning to embrace as valuable sources of collaborative intelligence.  This may potentially be a major pitfall for our slowly changing institutions - My colleague likens changing a university to moving a cemetery!  

I am looking for a guide to properly citing collaborative intelligence which we review daily online.  Leave a comment with your suggestion.  

Check out the new pdf version of the book from MIT Press, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.  

The book identifies Ten Principles for the Future of Learning:

    * Self Learning
    * Horizontal Structures
    * From Presumed Authority to Collective Credibility
    * A De-Centered Pedagogy
    * Networked Learning
    * Open Source Education
    * Learning as Connectivity and Interactivity
    * Lifelong Learning
    * Learning Institutions as Mobilizing Networks

The OER UCT initiative is in the process of conducting an audit of all teaching and learning materials that could be OER-published by UCT academics.

This audit is intended to provide the OER UCT team with a better understanding of WHO would be interested in sharing their teaching materials, WHAT type of materials these are (for example power presentation, lecture notes, software, simulations and WHERE they are currently stored. Also, the audit will help us plan the technical specifications of what we invisage being a online directory of OERs from UCT.

Initially, we sent out a questionairre to nearly 100 potential OER contributors.  These potential contributors were selected according to three criteria.  Either they had

a)  Signed the Cape Town Open Educational Declaration,

b)  Received one of CET's Teaching with Technology Grants, or

c)  Convened a block release course at UCT

Of the survey's sent out, we received only 13 responses (of which we are very thankful for!), many of which were sent by staff members who we have already liasing with.  It appeared that the survey had an inherent bias, in the sense that only people who were already familiar with, and in support of, OERs responded.  This bias became strinkingly clear as I began follow up calling those who did not respond to the survey.  While there were a few notable exceptions, the majority of the twenty people I was able to contact either had absolutely no knowledge of OERs, or had decided that they were not interested in publishing any of their teaching materials as OERs.  

In attempts to get additional feedback from UCT staff, I created a survey that can be accessed by clicking the OER survey link on the right side of this site.  

This survey was created as a Google Form.  As I have quickly learned (as it only takes a few moments to create one), Google Foms are a brilliant tool for anyone who wants to create an online survey.  

Now one can begin creating the survey or form.  New questions can be added by simply selecting "add question" at the top left side of the page.  

 

Upon completing the creation of the survey or form, it can then be distributed via email.  When a recipient opens the survey, they will see it in its final, polished form...looking very professional!

Even better, when respondents complete the survey, their responses are automatically logged in a user friendly spreadsheet. As you can see below, my "test" answers to the survey are stored in the spreadsheet.

To see how a completed form or survey looks, try taking the one that I created that is available on this blog!  

One of the questions which keeps coming up throughout our project is; “how do we get our document to contain the Creative Commons (CC) license?”  Although trivial for some, it can be a challenge depending on what type of media the person is working with and levels of experience.  We have seen diverse material ranging from documents to sets of webpages to podcasts.  

Often we are presented with a PDF version of a file which is intended for a CC license.  We then need to request that the author find the original files which they used to create the PDF, ie. Word Document, Adobe InDesign.  We need the source document to be able to insert the CC logo into the document so it can be shared.  
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