Sharing is very powerful. In Leigh’s circle, people have sought to develop stuff, posted it as a work in progress to find other people working on similar things just down the road. Bingo: collaboration, synergy, time saving and dare I say it, saving time and feeling better about things. Oh and doing a better job.

What is an OER (Open Educational Resource)?

Open educational resources are educational materials and resources offered freely and openly for anyone to use and under some licenses to re-mix, improve and redistribute. Open educational resources include:

* Learning content: full courses, course materials, content modules, learning objects, collections, and journals.
* Tools: Software to support the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content including searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities.
* Implementation resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources

The term comes from a UNESCO conference in 2002.

There is a LOT of work in developing countries at the moment, building synergy between institutions. Resoures currently being used are worked up and improved. or new resources created. Often funded by some group.

Some think this is a new form of colonialism. http://leighblackall.blogspot.com/2009/08/looking-into-sky-open-ed-oh-nine.html

A quick history of Open Education (from one perspective)

Norman Freisen: wikieducator.org/Open_Education:_Precursors

I presented on day one: http://openedconference.org/program/program-schedule-at-a-glance
I’ve summarised some of the material in some posts here and here.

OK, of what value was this conference?

1. Conversations. I learned a lot about processes for dialogue and moving on thinking. I’m convinced of the unconference model. We just don’t get it in New Zealand. We have a great opportunity at the next e-fest conference, with an unconference day, based on open space approaches. But what are we doing? Starting it with a keynote.
2. Personal. This has been quite remarkable. There was the inner core of mainly guys, but they were generally very approachable. (I’m not sure I’d go so far as the post here: …  to come when I find it)
3. University back home: there is a lot I have learned. I think this whole open ed idea is a thing of the heart. You need to have some sense of connections. Once you do this, things become quite different.
   OK then: how to engage in this at an institutional level? or a department level? or a team level?
4. Global. Still thinking.
   I’d like to go to China or Bangladesh.  I have a proposal.
5. Local. New Zealand wide? Christchurch wide? Too much competition.  But it may be possible on a micro level.

That’s it for now.  If you want to meet: Friday 28th, 12.00pm at Okover house.  But check in with me in case the venue changes.

Afterthoughts

Used the wrong title for my session: it’s really all about the power of micronetworks.  Maybe the key factor in the way ahead.  The benefits to the participants that are benefits of the heart, the morale.  As well as efficiency and focus.  And quality.  And learning.

I’ve rarely felt quite so nervous before in a presentation. First, I was way out of my comfort zone.  My expertise in OER and is very embryonic, my track record is small and my approach chaotic.  PLUS:  Microblogging.  I could see at any given time 5 or 6 typing.  Including Stephen Downes. There were 400 new tweets in 45 minutes:

A few of these were about my session, from the audience.

Can entities like ccLearn OpenEd REALLY provide the technology for the communities to support? Will it be easy enough?  They have some small communities.  Will the system work?

One question was about the micro-network vs the organisation.

Stephen Downes tweeted: Downes #opened09 – role of micronetworks (community of communities) in OER… vs. large nets, broadcasts… small nets propagate, large nets grow

Jon Mott: jonmott @Downes: micronetworks are consistent with Shirky’s discussion of barriers to organization & coordination.

kiyanwang RT @boonebgorges Chirnside: The prospect of further audience heightens sensitivity to the quality of one’s own work #opened09

jonmott Chirnside: Little, informal networks for sharing & making personal recs=effective OER adoption strategy. #opened09

kiyanwang RT @boonebgorges Chirnside: Resistance to releasing teaching resources result of disproportionate attention on research v teaching #opened09

As usual, I learned more anyone I suspect, what with the thinking, the writing, the paring down to 17 minutes.  My methodology is a little chaotic, pragmatic and local.  How much do I also need to pay attention to the bigger issues of the Global, the International, the BIG repositories.  I was please to follow Arash.

Edited Phillipas 40min exam programme, slept in, laundry, cabbage rolls for breakfast, (Chitako is an awesome cook), bus, library, missed Randy sadly.

Then off to the afternoon session with Downes and Wiley.  Two guys talking for 3.5 hours. I had little awareness of the breadth of the issues around commercialisation, not in theory, but in practice, and being faced now.  I’ll try to find something more concise than the audio stream.  I have a lot to learn.

Things to check out; connexions, ccLearn.

From David Wiley: If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plan.

Home, snack, out to man the Chilli Wagon at a local park with the guys I met on Sunday.  Served up 120 pieces of Banana Loaf to accompany chilli and buns.  Fascinating, and an interesting experieince.

Home, just feeling a little nervous about tomorrow, phone call to Christchurch, skype with Raewyn.

Wandered along another part of Commercial Drive.  Supposed to be a carless day, but no, commercialism and realism  has won.

The cars were back on Commercial Drive yesterday, after four weekends of street closings, and Ed Wilkerson of Magnet Hardware is thrilled and relieved.

So is the owner of Café Abruzzo two blocks away and the staff at Caffé Roma across the street. And they’re all hoping that the remainder of the experimental city Summer Spaces program on their street gets cancelled so their business can get back to normal on what is usually one of the city’s liveliest streets.

“It’s just not working,” said Mr. Wilkerson, who lost a quarter of his normal 300 customers the last four Sundays, during the program that banned cars for the day. “Basically it’s a waste of time.”

The problems: walking three blocks from car parks, diverting the buses, not advertising (the romantic view, this was supposed to be a local event) . . .

This part of town is fascinating.  I spent some time trying to buy a copy of the Cook the ‘Hood recipe book.  One store that features in it did not even know the book existed and that it said on the door the book was for sale.  Cookbooks are a bit out of fashion, but this is a little different.

Morning: Vancouver Eastside Vineyard.  Really cool little church.  How many places have the Sallys, Baptists & Vineyard in the same building, sharing facilities and advertising.

Afternoon: Found the Chinese restaurants I noticed were missing on Commercial Drive in Upper E Hastings.

Bought 8 CD’s for $16, all local artists, no-one at the Co-op radio stall had heard of most of them, got them on gut instinct.  Bought a cheap camera from London Drugs.  (“Any colour you like as long as it’s pink”). Pizza.  Walked & sat in cafes for four hours.

Evening: thinking about my contribution ot the OpenEd conference on Wednesday.  The conference list is here.  The sessions here.  I’m going to learn a lot I can see.  How do you REALLY explain Open Education?  I’ve tried several times when people ask “Why are you here?”  I’m really a beginner, a good basis to come to a conference.

I’m sharing a session with Arash from ccLearn.  While we have not talked in detail yet, things will I think be OK.  I think what I am saying is probably pretty basic for others coming.  I wonder what part of my life and thinking OER will assume?

Here is my handout/summary. Summary Notes (Word format)

An Approach to the Problems of Personalisation and Context Dependency in Open Educational Resources

We had some initial conversations: how are we going to move ahead in our programme, that developed into a set of interview questions.  Some roadblocks were clear. Two interesting problems emerged from those keen to share more: resources that were less useful because they were highly personalised and contextualised.

Some things were actually working. Even in a very small scale way.  There were identifiable pockets of success, and small leaps forward.  What were some of the features that contributed?  A few comments.

1. The power of the tiny network

In this tiny informal study, most of the success occurred in small groups.  Not in the larger scale.  No doublt there are some good reasons for this: scalability, networks of relationships becoming more complex, trust, synergy etc.

There is the reports from quite a large scale project where small informal networks seemed to work better than the big mother ship, described in the first post in this series.

Another story: a lecturer is teaching in a subject and course unique to the University. In other words, there are no others doing this. This lecturer has established a personal network with two other staff, one each at two other universities. Even in the initial stages it is showing good promise. The proposal is to put material online, which is sharable.

2. The power of a further audience of one

This was an observation that emerged several times quite spontaneously from those interviewed.  It seems that at the development stage, writing with even one other person/context in mind can see the product becoming more generic and more reusable, more transferrable.

It may even become easier to do the writing/creating with this added element.  Maybe as one person suggested it helps “provide focus”.  “I’m learning to make my work more generic, less time bound and less limited to use in just one course/level.”

3. The power of feedback

Quite obvious really, and may seem like a no-brainer.  However some teachers see asking for feedback as being an imposition.  My view is that they can perceive their work as being siloed.

It was unclear of the exact parameters and features of this attitude, to suggest more detail would require some more unpicking of the themes. There are a wide range of factors involved: security and confidence of the lecturers, the lack of competition for jobs, and interestingly, just plain personal organisation.

Sharing ideas and outlines with others, the reports say, has been hugely beneficial. This may be stating an obvious fact but such sharing has been proved to be not very common, or easy for some.

I revisited a few of my initial contacts to ask about this. They report pressures of time, lecturers preparing material quite late, often a day before it’s due to be used in class.  Also a feeling of not wanting to worry someone else who was also very busy.

As a corollary there was mention of the desirability of tweaking resources soon shortly after an initial use as being desirable but it rarely happens in practice.  There is a little more in the handout.

These are some of the roadblocks put forward as real or perceived issues by teachers who expressed a keeness to share and to collaborate or work together on resources – or at least being open to the idea.

The main issue was finding the stuff that they really wanted when they wanted it.  Several repositories were mentioned.

There were at least two issues in this respect.

Personalisation.

With some resources there is a perception that style issues, idiosyncrasies and personal preferences of the writer mean they can’t easily be used by other teachers.  “The effort to fix this is often too great”

“Style can get embedded and is hard to alter”

Context

Similarly with context: there was a perception that many resources were just too context dependent.

One example: grammar exercises became quite differently expressed if they were part of an ESOL course, journalism course or an essay writing support package. You’d expect that.  But there was a feeling that some resources were developed in such a way that meant they were still too context dependent.  Worksheets with several questions unusable (maybe with a curriculum difference, or a grammar point not yet taught) in PDF format could not be edited.

“Tagging has helped – (But we are not there yet)”

Even so, there were some teachers quite positive towards the idea.  It just had not quite worked itself into a solution for them yet.

Others however felt that there was some good progress in their area.  It is here that I am particularly interested: what factors tend towards success?  What can be done to promote this?  I think there are three aspects to this that I can point to in the data.

The plan:

7-11th August: interviews, cycling, Simon Fraser University, University of Britich Columbia
12-15th Conference
15-20th visits to sum sustainability education inititives
21-22nd, Seattle, then home.  Maybe Gnomedex.

TYPE 1 “Oh, I hear you are going away, enjoy yourself . .   (followed by random comments like Vancouver is great, Good conference, coffee when you get back, keep in touch, stay well etc etc)”
TYPE 2 “Oh I hear you are going away, I’ve been meaning to ask you to do this, can you do it now or before you go away?  Will you be on e-mail?  Who do I go to for problems?”
“This little job won’t take too long” (We have a saying “Yeah Right”)

And as I said elsewhere.  I’m interested in particular to meet up with Educational Designers.