Let's go MOOC again

The second iteration of the TESS-India MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), ‘Enhancing Teacher Education through OER’, opened yesterday (23rd November 2015). Again we have again seen a significant number of registrations from all over the globe, with almost 50% of participants coming from India as is the focus of the project. This global perspective of the educational landscape has proved a positive experience for learners, which we hope to see repeated.

“I would like to state the fact that despite being so far away from one country to another, India’s teaching –learning experience is so similar to Honduras’ experience or probably so universal that I love revisiting and learning about your experience”

MOOC participant, Honduras (from the first version of the MOOC)

The MOOC is being run in an ‘open boundary’ style format, meaning that, in addition to the online interactions in which the majority of participants engage, there are regular face-to-face sessions  for a selected group of participants nominated in each of the 7 states the project is focusing on.

So what is different this time?

In terms of the content of the MOOC there have been some minor changes to the assessment and the language of instruction has been slightly tweaked based on feedback from the first iteration. It is of course too early to really comment on the differences of the learner experience but you might like to have a look at some of the statistical information in the form of an infographic from the first iteration of the MOOC.

MOOC infographic

I will posting an update on our progress soon and if you are interested in participating in the MOOC it is not too late to register https://www.edx.org/course/enhancing-teacher-education-through-oer-oecx-tess101x-0 

Digital Teachers – Opportunities for Development

This week the Open University and the British Council jointly run an event in Delhi looking at the role of technology in teachers professional development, highlighting the work of the British Council, The Open University and the TESS-India project. Rob Lynes (Director of the British Council India) opened the event to a packed auditorium, followed by a background on the Open University and its part in educational technology from Edith Prak (Director of Development, The Open University).

Rob Lynes opening Digital Teachers event in Delhi 

Tom Power (Senior Lecturer at the Open University and Director of English in Action programme) provided a thought provoking presentation on the 'opportunities, challenges and evidence for improving the quality of teaching and learning through educational technology, in International Development contexts'. Highlighting a number of interesting projects that had made significant impact in this area including English in Action http://www.eiabd.com/ using mobile technology to deliver video based materials via Micro SD card and the TESS-India project http://www.TESS-India.edu.in that has developed flexible OER (Open Educational Resources) that can be accessed in multiple formats across digital devices as well as an OER based MOOC on 'Enhancing Teacher Education through OER' https://www.edx.org/course/enhancing-teacher-education-through-oer-oecx-tess101x-0 . Over all Tom highlighted the need to provide the conditions by which teachers can be enabled to engage and realise the benefits of educational technology but the challenge is in finding appropriate ways to create these enabling conditions.

British Council team launching ICT across South Asia report

The launch of the British Council report into recent research on the access teachers across South Asia have to ICT followed,

“This report highlights the findings from a study into English language teachers’ attitudes and preferences for using technology for professional development in South Asia.”

(British Council, publications website)

You can download the report here http://www.britishcouncil.in/continuing-professional-development 

Tom Power chairing panel discussion 

Tom Power finished the event by chairing a panel discussion on the opportunities, challenges and evidence in the use of technology for teachers professional development. The panel members were Ms Preet Verma – COO Tech Mahindra Foundation, Chris Cavey – Open Learning Manager, British Council UK, Rashmi Menon – Research Manager, Central Square Foundation and Dr Atanu Bhattacharya – Chairperson, Centre for English Studies, Central University of Gujarat. The event was recorded so I will post a link once it is available, there was also a tag to follow the event #digitalteachers with a storify following it available here https://storify.com/Tim10101/digital-teachers-event. The main themes that were coming out from the discussion were along the lines of technology cannot be used in isolation, that quality resources are vital and developing appropriate pedagogies that look at bridging the gap between theory and practice are key.

What's the SCORE?

So for a while now I have been meaning to write a post about a project I was involved in about 4 years ago that enabled me to be actively involved in a field I had long held beliefs in but not been able to make what I felt were significant steps to fully understanding or realising change. Thanks to Marieke Guy (Open Education Working Group, coordinator http://education.okfn.org/) and Alannah Fitzgerald’s (SCORE fellow) timely email it has given me that nudge to write maybe the first part of a series of posts along the lines of “What did OER do for me?” and “SCORE, what happened next”. This first one is a brief history and achievements of the project to set the scene.

SCORE (Support Centre for Open Resources in Education) was a three year project funded by HEFCE operating from 2009-2012 and based at the Open University (UK). 

Running alongside the UKOER programme it was part of the OU national role to support individuals, projects, institutions and programmes across the higher education sector in England to engage with open educational resources (OER) and practices.

In support of this SCORE worked in a number of ways:

• Increased the amount of quality OER available through creation of new OER deposited in the OU ‘Labspace’ (now known as OpenLearn Works) and JORUM.

• Worked as an advisory service to the HE sector

• Ran events to support dissemination of research as well as a variety of workshops ranging from licensing to ‘Introduction to OER’

For me two of the more significant activities were:

SCORE Fellowship

SCORE funded 30 fellowships from across HE institutions in England who’s projects aimed to inform, influence and impact on OER policy and practice across the sector.  These fellows were the heart of the project getting involved in multiple events both inside and outside of the project advocating for and supporting OER work in their institutions and more widely. Fellows supported workshops and events through presentation and teaching and in the creation of new OER. In one example I worked with fellows from The Universities of Leicester, Nottingham and Manchester to create 2 open websites with curated OER http://readytoresearch.ac.uk/ http://digitalscholarship.ac.uk/ the breadth of work and commitment of the fellows still astounds me and hopefully you will be able to read more about their work and what happened next in further posts.

Short term Fellowship

If the fellows were the heart of SCORE then the short term fellows were the blood flowing through reaching further and deeper into areas of HE. In my time at SCORE we ran a number of week long residential courses impacting on around 50 individuals from multiple institutions. These were designed to introduce those in HE to OER with the creation of projects (OER) that would impact on their institutions policies and uptake of OER through the development of their own practice. Although only funded to support English institutions we did have a number of international fellows as well increasing the diversity of the impact.

What else?

SCORE also ran the OER conferences and for OER12 in Cambridge did this in conjunction with the Open Education Consortiums (formally the Open Courseware Consortium) global meeting making it the first large scale international OER conference in the UK. As part of the conference we supported the Paris Declaration consultation in the only tier 1 country. The ALT Open Education special interest group https://www.alt.ac.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/oer-sig was conceived and supported in collaboration with SCORE fellows gathering interest with the launch of the Open Education Statement of Commitment

“I will, whenever possible, release the educational content I produce under an open licence and whenever I am looking for resources for education I will endeavour to seek out content with an open licence.”

This post has only touches on some of the work of the project hopefully you will be able to read some more personal accounts of the fellows and others working on the project over the next couple of months but for further information have a look at the UKOER/SCORE Review report – ‘Journeys to Open Educational Practice’ https://oersynth.pbworks.com/w/page/60338879/HEFCE-OER-Review-Final-Report

And as with all things open please feel free to adapt this post, get the facts right, make it work for you and add your voice.

CC-BY-SA

N.B.

If you are interested in joining the Open Knowledge Foundation Open education group mailing list http://education.okfn.org/mailing-list/

You can find more information on the next OER conference in April 'OER15' here http://oer15.oerconf.org/ might get a chance to chat to some of the SCORE fellows