OER@UCT

During our monthly tea we officially celebrated the completion of the OER UCT Project. Fortunately, the project shall continue on its trajectory, supporting and advising academics on sharing open educational resources, as we have funding to continue our work to ensure UCT can contribute to the growing global knowledge commons. 

Everyone from the Centre for Educational Technology wore their OpenContent t-shirt.  Look at those lovely t-shirts!!  Wouldn't you love one?  You can get one by being the next contributor to the OpenContent directory!  You will also receive a fancy coffee mug!

The OER UCT project team; from left, David Horwitz, Stephen Marquard, Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams, Michael Paskevicius, Shihaam Donnelly, Michelle Willmers, Roger Brown, and Haley McEwen, who miraculously made an appearance on her lunch break whilst teaching in the Eastern Cape.  ;)

Well it’s been two weeks since we launched the new UCT OpenContent website.  We have had numerous visits and have generated quite a bit of buzz in the UCT community as well as around the world. We are still tweaking the site to provide the best experience possible and welcome any constructive feedback the community may have.  

I often wonder how the site appears and is interpreted by the visitors.  I am most wary of the UCT student, who can visit the site and log in, but is not able to contribute be default. 

Here is my call to students, if you want to share teaching and learning resources please get in touch with us via the feedback form and let us know.  We can find a way for you to contribute as well. 

Particularly student groups such as SHAWCO which certainly have a wealth of community based learning resources.  Use the feedback form on the site to reach us.

While many additional UCT academics have expressed an interest to share their teaching and learning resources, we are faced with the challenge of intellectual property and ownership of teaching materials.  Please know that while the OER UCT team believes these to be real and challenging issues, we do not believe them insurmountable.  We will work with you to ensure that your material can be shared using an open license.  We are actively engaging with the Innovation and Intellectual Property Management unit at UCT and they have been very supportive of open educational resources at UCT!

T-Shirt says: I gave away intellectual property at UCT and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!!!  A collectors item for the original OER UCT contributors. 

 

The Centre for Educational Technology is pleased to announce the launch of the OpenContent open educational resource directory at the University of Cape Town.  The directory is the culmination of a years worth of project work, funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation, with aims to help UCT academics share their teaching and learning resources on a grander scale. 

The OpenContent directory is a place for UCT staff and students to share their teaching resources with the rest of the world. Often teaching material resides on our computer hard drives, or on our local learning management system-Vula where it is only available to select members of the UCT community. The OpenContent directory provides a space in which to share resources beyond UCT, so that others can use them in their own teaching and learning environments.

Open content is also referred to as 'open courseware' or 'open educational resources' (OER). They are openly licensed educational materials (usually digital) that can be used by anyone, shared freely and adapted to suit a particular educational purpose. 

The global nature of the internet and its ever-increasing culture of sharing have enabled the growth of the OER movement. Teaching and learning resources that were once only shared within departments and communities of practice, or at a cost, can now be made freely available to educators and students worldwide. Furthermore, in this age of abundance where it can be difficult to find suitable high quality resources for teaching and learning, OER offers educators and students access to top quality materials that can be adapted to suit their specific needs.

We are thrilled to share this new website with the UCT community and the world at large.

Visit the OpenContent website! 

 

A Creative Commons Image by Stuck in Customs

The University of Cape Town's Centre for Educational Technology takes great pleasure in announcing the launch of UCT's OpenContent directory, a new portal for accessing the university's collection of open educational resources.

Funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation and developed as part of the Open Educational Resources Project in the Centre for Educational Technology, the directory will showcase the UCT Collection of teaching resources shared freely on the internet.

The launch of the OpenContent directory is part of a greater OpenUCT initiative to increase the institutions participation in the global open research, teaching and social responsiveness environment. We are pleased to be able to align the event with the efforts of the University of the Western Cape and the Open CourseWare Consortium, who are hosting a full day of activities to support open educational resources in South African higher education.

The launch of the OpenContent Directory and the Open UCT initiative will be followed by a cocktail party. Guest speakers will be CET Director Assoc. Prof Laura Czerniewicz, OpenCourseWare Consortium President Steve Carson, and Deputy Vice Chancellor Prof Jo Beall.

The even will be held on Friday the 12th of February 2010 on UCT's middle campus. Please contact Michelle Willmers (michelle.willmers [AT] uct.ac.za) if you would like any additional information or wish to join us at the event.

I had the great opportunity to represent the OER UCT project at the recent GeekRetreat held in the beautiful Stanford Valley.  The retreat was an opportunity to network with some of South Africa’s great thinkers and key players in the tech industry.  Venture capitalists, software programmers, entrepreneurs, journalists, educators, and management types all gathered around the weekend’s main theme, How to make South African online education better.   

The schedule was quiet informal and participants signed up for skill shares, talking heads, and presentations as the weekend progressed.  I managed to garner some great feedback and curiosity about the OER UCT project through a talking head session.  The developers were able to give me excellent advice around optimizing the discoverability of the site and its associated content.  The social media gurus were able to offer advice on attracting and maintaining users in the system.  The management folks were able to advise me on institutionalizing the creation of OER.  The educators were able to present their concerns and reservations, which is usually the most valuable information I get!  I hope to continue engaging with a number of the participants as we launch next month.  

I was particularly interested in the development of the P2P University which is about to launch a new set of courses on their exciting new website which launches February 1st.  P2PU, now referred to as the “social wrapper” for open educational resources, have a unique approach and I am looking forward to the new ‘semester’ and the research surrounding the successes and challenges.  P2PU is open to people moderating courses, so if you have an interest in online education and social learning via the internet you should make contact with them.  

Without a doubt there were some excellent conversations started over the weekend which have the potential to lead to remarkable interdisciplinary projects.  What shone most brightly was the enthusiasm shared amongst the group in pushing the boundaries of traditional education.  

Thanks to the event organizers and sponsers specifically Old Mutual, Yola, Seacom, IS, Skyrove, Orca, econsultancy, Jackie Scala, White Wall Web, and the Birkenhead Brewery for the great tour!

 

Creative Commons image by fd

 
Stephen Carson from MIT has released some impressive statistics from their open educational resource website.  In the year 2009 the site received:

• 15+ million visits
• 9+ million visitors
• 100+ million page views (not counting PDF views)

That is staggering traffic for an open educational resource website!!  MIT has also reported receiving 1 million visits directed from the MIT community site (the mit.edu domain) since the launch.  This seems to indicate that the MIT main sites are becoming major referrers to the MIT OER material.  I think it is safe to say that MIT OCW has lended itself tremendously to the marketing and branding of MIT. Congratulations! 

 

 

In case you missed our recent presentation at the annual Teaching with Technology Miniconference here is the presentation and audio paired using Slideshare. Thanks to all those who attended and engaged in the issues and debates.  

Click the image below to go to the presentation which includes the audio podcast.

 

 

On Thursday, November 5, 2009, Creative Commons founding board member Lawrence Lessig addressed a general session at the EDUCAUSE 2009 Conference in Denver.

“It Is About Time: Getting Our Values Around Copyright Right.”

In this talk, Lawrence Lessig will review the progress of the “open access” movement in education. He will make a call for educators to finally resolve this issue in a way that enables the potential of technology for education.

I found this presentation so compelling and relevant that I wanted to share it with the UCT community.  I have downloaded it and am hosting it locally on Vula.  So you should not have to worry about bandwidth and long download times.  The file is about 200mb and the presentation lasts one hour. 

Love to hear your comments regarding the video below.  If anyone is having trouble seeing the video please leave a comment and I will get in touch with you.  

Locally hosted video (200mb - Right-click save as)

Also available online at http://blip.tv/file/2827842

 

 

20 October 2009  The OER UCT project run from the Centre for Educational Technology in collaboration with Creative Commons South Africa recently hosted a high-level workshop on institutional engagement with alternative licensing and open educational resources. The event – attended by representatives from the UCT’s Research Office, UCT Libraries, Research Contracts and Intellectual Property Services, and other academics active in the area of OER – was addressed by Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research), Prof. Daniel Visser, who described the OER UCT initiative as ‘one of the most exciting things happening at UCT’.

      

Other presenters in the three-hour workshop included Prof. Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams, who provided an overview of the ideological, technological, financial and legal aspects of OER, and Tobias Schonwetter and Andrew Rens of Creative Commons South Africa. Schonwetter provided a practical overview of the CC licensing process, while Rens engaged with the history and place of institutions in influencing access to intellectual property.

             

The level of engagement and agreement around the need to participate in rapidly evolving electronic research and teaching environments exemplified UCT’s commitment to remaining a leading presence in the global knowledge economy.

             

The OER UCT project thanks everyone who attended and looks forward to continued contact and discussion around open sharing of research and teaching resources at UCT.

Click this link to download Prof. Hodgkinson-Williams presentation, On Common Ground.

Click this link to download a pdf of Tobias Schonwetter’s Creative Commons / Legal presentation.

The OER UCT team has just returned from an exciting and engaging colloquium at the Granger Bay Hotel School in Cape Town.  Hosted by the Higher Education Learning, Teaching and Assessement Association of Southern Africa (HELTASA), the event featured speakers from around the Western Cape speaking on innovative pedagogical practice using new technologies at their institutions. 

Thanks to all for the great discussions and presentations.  As promised you can find our presentation and podcast at the links below. 

 

PowerPoint Presentation  1.8mb (Right click 'save as')

Audio Podcast  22.9mb (Right click 'save as')

 

We are having our second round of seminars on using and creating open educational resources (OER) at the University of Cape Town.  Looking back on our first seminar is an interesting way to gauge how far we have come and how much has changed in terms of our own understanding of the OER movement and how we share it with our colleagues.  

The digital age has rung in profound changes for the higher education endeavour – not least of which has been a revolution in the way teaching materials are generated, shared and re-appropriated by means of alternative licensing on the internet.

The OER movement is a worldwide community effort providing a framework for sharing teaching materials via the internet. The term ‘OER’ refers to all learning materials offered freely and openly, and includes learning content (from full courses to lecture notes) as well as learning tools (such as software).

In 2008, UCT joined the move towards openness in education by becoming a signatory to the Cape Town Open Education Declaration. The initiative to cement UCT’s place in this global sharing community has been furthered by the establishment of the OER UCT Project in the Centre for Educational Technology.

Supported by the Shuttleworth Foundation, the OER UCT Project aims to showcase the teaching efforts of UCT academics by encouraging the publication of teaching materials as OER and establishing a directory listing the UCT Collection of OER.

If you would like to know more about this realm or are interested in attending an introductory seminar on OER please leave a comment on this blog and we will contact you.

The seminar will run this Thursday September 29 at 1pm.  Refreshements will be served.

Open Teaching in a Digital Age
Hoerikwaggo 3A, 13h00 - 14h00
Sign up: http://teaching.cet.uct.ac.za/events/signup/222

Creative Commons Image by frozenchipmunk

Recently I mused upon the differences between OER and e-learning.  I found that many of my colleagues had blurred the lines between the two which can present challenges in motivating and understanding one from the other.  

Certainly e-learning has any number of different explicit definitions depending on who you ask.  From learning online, to learning with electronic resources, to an online learning pedagogy … e-learning is a term rife with meaning.  My understanding of e-learning is learning which is meant to occur while interacting with a computer.  

OER should not replace e-learning as a term similarly rife with ambiguity.  It is tempting to create electronic resources and label them OER, but in fact OER extends well beyond the realm of simply ‘electronic’ resources.  The key components of OER are that they are shareable online and freely available to use, reuse, and adapt.  Whereas they must be shareable online, they do not necessarily have to be made use of online.  They could be materials that need to be printed out for a class activity.  

OER must be made shareable through open licenses such as Creative Commons.  This ensures that others will know what can be done with your teaching and learning material (Attribution Always!)  E-learning material does not necessarily get licensed in the same way and is therefore definable from OER.

Currently we are seeing a great deal of e-learning material coming at us, which authors want to designate OER.  This requires us going back and looking at the material, checking for licensing conflicts. (e.g. copy written pictures used within, etc) This process of vetting the material and replacing copy written material clears the material for sharing as OER.    

There are however great similarities between OER and e-learning.  Both should be driven by a pedagogical need or driven by the needs of curriculum.  We aim to have people design electronic teaching and learning materials with “open” in mind, which will lead to it becoming an OER as well as an e-learning resource in its most basic sense: an electronic learning object which helps a students come to a better understanding of some aspect of our world.

A creative commons image by ryancr

Our team met yesterday to discuss the progress on the project and our next steps.  We have identified a wide array of resources throughout our institution.  Some of which were designed to be shared and are ready to go, and some which were designed for practical use in the classroom or beyond and will need to go through the process of copyright clearance.  The creation of these resources has been driven by a teaching and learning need.  

A question that came up was how we can create value in the process of creating and using OER for academics?  Our system of publishing and sharing must not simply exist but also must address a teaching and learning purpose.  

By making teaching and learning materials discoverable online we are sharing the tools which enable higher order intelligence at our institution.  The tools we use to enable learners to grasp abstract concepts are culturally and socially defined in form and use.  Surely in sharing our particular use of teaching and learning materials and presenting opportunities to adapt or localize these materials at other institutions we are creating avenues for tool development as well as research.  [Since I have been engrossed in Vygotskian theory lately I had to apply some of his principles]

The OER movement in many ways is about addressing the misconceptions people have about sharing in the realm of teaching and learning materials.  Institutions around the world are attempting to bestow the knowledge that we as a civilization have accumulated.  We all use various means and methods to bring the student to an understanding of a subject.  Wouldn’t it be interesting for academics in similar disciplines to share their methods and tools?   

We know we can not force anyone to share.  From what we have seen very few OER movements have been successful in forcing the idea upon the academic community.  An organic proliferation of the “culture of sharing” is what we intend to grow.

We hope that academics will begin sharing in stories of collaboration, translation, adaptation, and a new awareness of how ICT can influence their teaching practices will bloom.  We so often do not know what our colleagues are up to just down the hall.  Perhaps the ability to create an online network of like minded people and a platform for sharing online will provide some of the value we are seeking.  

A creative commons image by scott361

On July 14th, 2009 President Barack Obama announced his commitment to the global OER movement.  The proposed 'Online Skills Laboratory' will provide freely available open and online courses to the nation and presumably the entire world.

"Online educational software has the potential to help students learn more in less time than they would with traditional classroom instruction alone.  Interactive software can tailor instruction to individual students like human tutors do, while simulations and multimedia software offer experiential learning. Online instruction can also be a powerful tool for extending learning opportunities to rural areas or working adults who need to fit their coursework around families and jobs. New open online courses will create new routes for students to gain knowledge, skills and credentials. They will be developed by teams of experts in content knowledge, pedagogy, and technology and made available for modification, adaptation and sharing."  (Obama, 2009)

This will create a massive repository of knowledge available to the entire world and freely available to remix and adapt to local contexts.   

Read the entire script of Obama's speech which includes a number of fundamental shifts to the US education system.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Excerpts-of-the-Presidents-remarks-in-Warren-Michigan-and-fact-sheet-on-the-American-Graduation-Initiative/

 

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