Step up to Postgraduate Study in Arts, v 3.0

The third and latest iteration of the summer blended module Step up to Postgraduate Study in Arts is drawing to a close (today is the second deadline or as we like to say, 'assessment opportunity', for students to submit the assessments, so there will still be marking to do). This year we signed up over 70 students, so the module continues to grow year on year, though of course as it is a free and non-credit bearing module, some people sign up but don't really get engaged with it. And on one level that's fine, because nothing about this is compulsory, but on another, it's a shame, because the feedback we are getting from the students who do work their way through the module, whether they complete everything, or just have a go at certain topics, is that they are gaining insights into academic skills and gaining confidence to begin their new chapter as postgrad students. 

It would have been great to have had a module like this available when I was starting my MA (back in the mid 90s!). But then, reflecting on that makes me think how much higher education has changed in the intervening decades - for example, as part of Step Up we encourage students to evaluate and develop their information and digital literacies, and to interrogate the concept of plagiarism by deliberately plagiarizing, as well as writing an unplagiarized version, and submitting both versions to Turnitin. And of course, the module is studied almost completely online (though supported by two engaging face-to-face events). For these reasons the module has been recognized by Jisc as an exemplar in preparing and supporting students to study successfully with digital technologies (see: http://digitalstudent.jiscinvolve.org/wp/exemplars). 

Open Data as OER update

A few months ago (and yet, somehow, only a couple of posts ago, 'here'!), I posted the link to a piece I co-wrote for the Open Education Working Group blog with Javiera Atenas and Ernesto Priego considering the potential of open data to be used as open educational resources. We shared a survey and we got some responses.

Javiera and I spoke at the 7th Open Education Working Group call on the topic and introduced our proposal to gather case studies of pedagogic practice in this area.

Open Data as Open Educational Resources 

See also:
Minutes and recording from the call
Reflections on the call from Lorna Campbell

Crowdsourcing Quality in Open Education

How can we assure quality in the context of Open Education? This question lies at the heart of the challenge of gaining mainstream acceptance of open content. It perhaps brings to mind the idea of some kind of gatekeeping process that would vet content before it is released for 'consumption' - sort of the way academic peer review is supposed to work. But there are questions over the efficacy and sustainability of the traditional peer review model, even for research publications. 

Traditional peer review is labour intensive, relying on a donation of free labour/time from reviewers (and academic time seems to become an ever scarcer resource). Crucially, it also operates in a 'closed' space, where authors and reviewers are anonymised, and editors pass messages back and forth, eventually resulting in a finished product which may later be cited, and possibly (but not necessarily!) freely distributed, but most likely never revised or updated. 

It appears inadvisable to transplant this model into an open space, where open licenses encourage reuse and modification (rather than simply consumption). Never mind the question of who exactly would be sourcing and providing the labour to peer review these open learning resources. Instead Javiera Atenas and I, in a new post for Open Education Europa, suggest that we must leverage openness itself, taking advantage of open educational practices to improve the quality of open content.

Our post about this is here: 

Crowdsourcing Quality (Or, Why Openness Matters)

Open Data as OER: Blog Post and Survey

Recently in conjunction with Open Education Week, the Open Education blog over at Open Knowledge featured a guest post by Javiera Atenas, Ernesto Priego and me, in which we propose that Open Data is under-explored as an educational resource. See:

• THE 21ST CENTURY’S RAW MATERIAL: USING OPEN DATA AS OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

The piece ends with a link to a very short survey, through which we are trying to capture examples of OD as OER use. Many thanks to everyone who already completed the survey - please do/share if you haven't!