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

Open Scholarship Assumptions

Open educational practices are many, George Veletsianos and  Royce Kimmons look at open scholarship in ‘Assumptions and Challenges of Open Scholarship’. The following are some thoughts on the 4 assumptions they make within the article.

Assumption #1: Ideals of Democratization, Human Rights, Equality, and Justice

Anecdotally it would seem that those who work within the ‘open education’ community, who advocate for and publish openly would describe themselves as having ideals that are congruent with this assumption, being involved with movements that reach openly beyond education such as Open Access and Open Standards. However there is potentially a coincidental relationship between the assumption and those engaged in open scholarship at this stage in the ‘evolution’ of openness.

Veletsianos and Kimmons identify Open Scholarship as not always having to be entirely noble, as the benefits of working openly increase to enhance personal academic practice and the markets value this openness so this assumption becomes diluted based on needs. MOOCs are perfect example of this with first steps into this space coming from the more altruistic nature of access to learning and connectivist approaches but with the rapid rise of Universities and private companies providing ‘open’ access to learning, or some might argue just content, the drivers for openness become more about economics than learning (or the assumptions outlined).

Assumption #2: Emphases on Digital Participation for Enhanced Outcomes

It would be fair to say that openness is not predicated on technology although the ability to engage in networked communities through ICTs does support or, as described by the assumption, enhance the ability to disseminate, engage and learn openly. As Veletsianos and Kimmons recognise it not just about having the tools their but about the ability of those to utilise the tools and understand the contexts and the participatory nature of those digital tools in developing their digital literacies.

Assumption #3: Co-Evolutionary Relationship between Technology and Culture

Here we see an extension of the above assumption in the development of digital literacies. Being able to understand how you are potentially being manipulated by the technology in its impact on how we see ‘open’ based on a set of algorithms. Being able to develop strategies to deal with or at least understand this is key in contextualising your approach. For example the Wikipedia view of the world comes from a predominantly male, global north perspective http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk/?page=the-geographically-uneven-coverage-of-wikipedia with more articles written about Antarctica than any country in Africa or South America.

Assumption #4: Practicality and Effectiveness for Achieving Scholarly Aims

Again in this assumption Veletsianos and Kimmons see the need for the development of digital literacies as a key component of scholarly practice. Being able to efficiently filter data, stay on top of publications and disseminate your work in an increasingly (over) crowded space is essential. The other issue that this poses is an extension of the last point the ability to be ‘recognised’.  This is exemplified in the world of online sponsorship before the support of technology to gather sponsorship for your local 10 mile run you would see people raising £50 maybe £100 pounds now this has (as the authors say) sky rocketed with targets set in the thousands and seeing daily campaigns that begin to reach the millions. One no longer needs the approval of 5 or 10 peers reviews but 100s or 100s of thousands to be seen as successful.  The value of this is of course debatable in the week that sees Wayne Rooney reach his 10 millionth follower on twitter will we soon see value given to scholarly practice based on the number of hits or followers (paid for or real)?  

Indian MOOCs

MOOCs

There has been much talk of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) over the past 2 years with the Open University arguably taking a lead role in the UK seeing the launch of its platform FutureLearn https://www.futurelearn.com/. For those that have not heard of MOOCs before they are courses, usually between 2 – 8 weeks long, offered for free and open to anyone, there is no entry requirement beyond having an internet connection. The term MOOC was coined around 2008 from the Open Education movement particularly those with an interest in OER, early pioneers from Canada include George Siemens and Stephen Downes. The real explosion of MOOCs in terms of significant uptake came about in 2011 when large Universities such as Stanford released MOOCs to the world, in particular Sebastian Thruns MOOC on Artificial Intelligence saw an enrolment of 160,000 students. Since then many Universities have released their own platforms including the aforementioned FutureLearn from the Open University UK and edX from Harvard and MIT, there are also very significant private companies such as Coursera and Udacity founded by academics.

Development perspective

The uptake of MOOCs within the HE sector has increased exponentially in the last 2 years with a belief that it will be of benefit to the issues around provision of education in an ever expanding world (Trucano, 2013). With the majority of MOOCs coming from and being aimed at the global north (ICDE, 2013) asking the question how do providers of MOOCs contextualise them for a local or global context and how does OER support this contextualisation? One answer was provided when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced in his independence day speech the launch of an Indian MOOC platform 'Swayam' http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/moocs-platform-swayam-narendra-modi-deen-dayal-upadhyaya-iit-bombay-princeton-university-hrd-ministry/1/376764.html Full details are yet to be released but there will be a launch on the 25^th September. This announcement has coincided with NCERT (National Council Of Educational Research And Training) and COL (Commonwealth of Learning) launching the ‘Teach Smarter with OER’ MOOC http://nroer.gov.in/CourseOnOER/ and a MOOC on MOOCs from IIT (Indian Institute of Technology)Kanpur http://mooconmooc.org/ which will have a focus on development issues in particular low bandwidth access. IIT Kanpur have already run one MOOC (http://m4d.colfinder.org/) and have created their own platform MOOKIT http://mookit.co/ to support these it will interesting to see the crossover with the government based platform.

TESS-India MOOC

The TESS-India project (www.TESS-India.edu.in)is developing a MOOC aimed at supporting Teacher Educators in developing pedagogies based around collaborative and open practices and the use of OER. Launching in May 2015 this MOOC will be developed around the use of already existing OER with very minimal content being originated in order to realise the potential of OER. OER used in the MOOC will not always have specific local context as it is dependent on available content, the contextualisation will come in the form of scaffolding and support that the MOOC structure offers.

The MOOC will be developed collaboratively with a series of developmental testing workshops and pilots within the focus states to gain an understanding of the contextualisation required in the  scaffolding. This approach will also support the development of the course to work more efficiently for those with bandwidth issues and seek to address alternative approaches that would be unique in MOOC development.

References

ICDE. (2013) ‘World Bank EduTech: MOOCs and developing countries’, http://www.icde.org/en/icde_news/news_archive/2013/2013_part_2/World+Bank+EduTech%3A+MOOCs+and+developing+countries.b7C_wJLG2t.ips  [online] last accessed 04/09/14

Trucano, T. (2013) ‘More about MOOCs and developing countries’, World Bank blog on ICT in Education. http://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/moocs-developing-countries [online] last accessed 04/09/14

OER14 Building communities of open practice

So I have just returned from Newcastle in the UK after having attended OER14 conference. After being involved in the planning of both OER12 and OER13 I would like to congratulate the team on an excellent conference, not only was the organisation incredibly smooth and helpful as a delegate but the quality of the papers were particularly high this year. A full list of abstracts can be found here.

The theme this year was "Building communities of open practice" which saw presentations from Europe, Africa and the US. Catherine Ngugi Project Director for OERAfrica delivered the opening keynote and related themes of OER as a collaborative catalyst for open practice in the context of copyright in Africa where the cost of textbooks considerably limits access for teachers and students alike, potentially leading to more rote and didactic approaches. Something which is of course a particular interest in the work of TESS-India.

Catherine Ngugi Project Director for OER Africa - Photo CC BY OER14 

There were a lot of discussions this year around open practices and support for staff and academics in the development of these practices with presentations from Lindsay Jordan on Open Practices for teachers, Erin Nephin and Nick Sheppard from Leeds Met on linking communities of practice for digital literacy and an off the wall Blues Brothers inspired presentation from Rochelle Lockridge, Alan Levine and Dr Mariana Funes on how the corporate world is looking to open practices to create more collaborative and creative skills sets to support business.

(L-R) Dr Mariana Funes, Rochelle Lockridge and Alan Levine - Photo CC BY OER14 

The conference was finished as always with the announcement of next years conference which will be in Wales and hosted by co chairs Martin Weller, Professor of Educational Technology, The Open University  and Clive Mulholland, Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of South Wales.

You can read more about others views of the conference on the OER14 blog but would just like to leave this post with a mention of Sara Frank Bristow's Craigs List for OER http://oerexchange.org/ go and add your resources, projects and anything OER a new look at aggregating content, services and discussions.

Open Courseware Consortium Global Meeting 2014

This year the Open Courseware Consortiums Global meeting http://conference.ocwconsortium.org/2014/ was held in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, as always it was another great event and saw participants from multiple sectors including academia, government and commercial. The theme of the conference was “Open Education for a Multicultural World” and so was particularly relevant for the work of TESS-India working in multiple states within India and collaboratively with UK and Indian academics.

Union Hall in Ljubljana at OCWC 2014 

The conference keynote saw Slovenian Minister for education Jernej Pikalo launching new initiative ‘Opening up Slovenia’ introducing openness into Slovenia enabling teachers and students alike to gain access to new methods of teaching and learning.  The initiative is wider than just education and you can find out more here http://www.k4all.org/openingupslovenia/

TESS-India www.TESS-India.edu.in was represented by Alison Buckler, Leigh-Anne Perryman and myself and we presented a paper on the adaptation of TESS-India OER, the full paper can be viewed here http://conference.ocwconsortium.org/2014/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Paper_48-localisation.pdf  

Alison Buckler presenting on TESS-India

Leigh-Anne Perryman presenting on TESS-India

Finally it was great to see the OER research Hub win an award for excellence in open research http://oerresearchhub.org/2014/04/25/oer-research-hub-celebrates-open-research-award/

Mobile Learning Week 2014

Mobile phone technologies and ownership are advancing rapidly. Around 75% of people globally have access to a mobile and ownership in developing regions is matching this trend. The rapid growth in mobile use has the potential to open up access to learning, supporting teachers and students alike.

The theme, explored in this year’s mobile learning week (http://en.unesco.org/events/mobile-learning-week-2014 )at UNESCO  is teachers with an emphasis on using mobile to leverage effective use in education, deliver professional development to working teachers and support the training of new teachers.

The week began with a series of workshops including one from USTAD mobile, learning how mobile learning id benefiting police women in Afghanistan and enabling simple app development from basic feature phone to smart phones https://www.ustadmobile.com/

Mobile Learning Week 2014 - Opening Plenary

The following 2 days saw presentations from a varied range of participants including large NGOs, commercial providers, Universities and individual teachers on how mobile learning is benefiting their work in education and development. You can view the complete range of presentations here http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/themes/icts/m4ed/unesco-mobile-learning-week-2014/symposium/breakout-sessions/

Technology is often assumed to incur significant costs to the learner, but this needn't be the case. In TESS-India the learning resources can be preloaded onto a micro SD card – teachers don’t need connectivity, simply slot the card into the side of their phone. VSO’s work in Papua New Guinea on English language teaching  http://www.vsointernational.org/Images/sms-story-impact-assessment-report_tcm76-41038.pdf uses SMS to deliver lesson plans and Cambridge University are looking at SMS to support professional development of school leaders http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/centres/cce/initiatives/projects/leadership/index.html . Penn State University talked about using MOOCs for teacher development reducing distributed learning costs, if you are able to attend they are running a conference on MOOCs for development in April http://www.moocs4d.org/ .  There were also many apps presented to the delegates including the Keywords English language and literacy app, demonstrating how mobile pedagogy can address diverse learning needshttp://www.keywordsenglish.com/ .

Mobile learning presents a unique set of benefits and challenges. Complex learning needs to be adapted for the small screen. Mobile offers 24/7 access, yet it is also more likely to be associated with interruptions, necessitating bite sized learning. Users can engage with fellow learners at a distance, access rich educational content such as video and personalise their learning.

Low bandwidth services were a key topic at Mobile Learning Week with the continued presence of SMS as well as missed call technologies that have the potential to deliver micro-learning chunks, without costing even the price of connecting a call.

The range of discussions at mobile learning week sort to strengthen the rhetoric that rapidly changing technologies are hugely eye-catching, but equal emphasis must be placed on the academic value of mobile if we are to improve teaching and learning.

(written for TESS-India blog 24th Feb 2014 - www.TESS-India.ed.in)