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Talis have produced a podcast of a review board round-table. The podcast provides insight into the Talis Incubator, as well as introducing members of the review board, commenting on their background and what they feel Talis can add to the area of Open Education.
For the unfamiliar, Talis is “an angel fund to further the cause of open education”. Talis launched at the ALT-C 2009 conference last month and provides funding of up to £15,000 to help individuals or small groups realise ideas which intend to further development of Open Education. In return, they request that all research and outcomes are returned to the community via ‘open source’.
Chris Clarke, Programme Manager for the Talis Education Division, gives an overview of the Incubator in the podcast – its motivations, some practical steps and time scales involved in applying and how the review board decides which submissions to take forward.
Other members of the review board involved in the podcast discussion are:
Prof. Andy Lane, former Director of OpenLearn at the Open University
(introduction at 00:08:30-00:12:30);
Steve Ryan from the Centre for Learning Technology at the London School of Economics and Political Science
(introduction at 00:12:35-00:15:16);
Dave Cormier from the University of Prince Edward Island
(introduction at 00:15:32-00:18:30).
The podcast runs for about an hour and is invaluable for anyone considering applying to the Incubator. To be considered for funding from Talis, you need to write a proposal according to the guidelines.
Direct mp3 download
October 29th, 2009
The UNESCO OER Community have published an Access2OER report, based on discussions earlier this year in February/March. The report is available in PDF or on their wiki. One of the main aims of the discussion was to stimulate new work in the area and generate new proposals, two of which are being actively pursued:
Introducing digital OER into Zambian primary schools through school-based professional development.
This project intends to overcome access barriers, and engage with OER for Zambian primary/secondary school mathematics teaching. Such barriers include issues around infrastructure, awareness and appropriateness of materials, though it is hoped that various experiences and solutions can be drawn upon to make this successful.
Funding is limited and will be used primarily to engage in Spring 2010 with teachers in Zambia through a North-South partnership. The outcomes will be reported at eLearning Africa in May 2010, at Lusaka. Further information is available here.
Continued engagement through the UK National Commission for UNESCO.
OER has been a long-standing theme within the Information Society Working Group. The second proposal, however, recommends a shift in focus to concentrate on issues around OER access and collaboration. To achieve this, UNESCO are running a series of meetings to further focus on feasible projects. The first meeting will take place in Nottingham on the 25th/26th in conjunction with the Nottingham Open Learning Conference and OER Africa
Also blogged by Bjoern Hassler over at Open Education News.
OpenLearn published a research report in July – news story.
October 29th, 2009
Today is Blog Action Day and the subject is climate change. Over 8000 bloggers have signed up with an estimated readership of almost 12 million people. While I fear anything I say will be a further duplication, that’s really the point, to spread the message.
While we all believe we have a handle on climate change, how much do we really know and are we aware of small things we can do to have a positive impact? Personally, I don’t own a car and take the bus to work. I’m actually moving closer to work and will then be able to walk. I’m not obsessive but I recycle as much as I can and would say that 90% of general packaging now goes in a red bag as opposed to a black one. I started being more proactive about recycling 6 months ago and it’s quite scary to think how much recyclable material I was sending to landfill. I have a small bin on the counter in the kitchen now for regular waste and my 50L bin is now the recycling bin. I suspect many people do the converse and this is one simple way to literally turn climate change around.
I’m lucky that I live in a south-facing apartment and rarely need to use heating (I’ll simply wear an extra layer when I move). My wife is a vegetarian, I switch everything off at the mains (except for the PVR) at night, buy furniture from sustainable sources and, best excuse I’ve found so far, don’t have kids! So there you have it, simple, everyday actions like this mean my carbon footprint is pretty small and I’m sure many of us are able to implement at least one of these changes – though you shouldn’t really give up your kids.
The Open University (OU) had computers setup at their recent 40th anniversary event to calculate carbon footprint which I hope had an impact. The area certainly seemed popular – there’s some pictures of the events here on flickr. If we created the tools ourselves, they’re a well kept secret so here’s a good carbon footprint calculator.
OpenLearn, the OU’s site which gives free access to its learning materials has a number of study units relevant to climate change in the LearningSpace (detailed below). In the LabSpace, you can remix and reuse materials and there is also the opportunity for collaboration with others. There’s a collaborative space for the 10:10 Climate Change Campaign which also links to OU iTunesU podcasts, YouTube videos and use of the OU’s Cohere tool which makes sense of ideas/arguments and shows the connections between these and other people.
So there you have it. There’s plenty of information out there to become better informed and make a positive impact on climate change and global warming. Congratulations to Blog Action Day for informally raising the profile and getting people thinking and, hopefully, acting. You can follow Blog Action Day and OpenLearn on Twitter – @blogactionday & @OpenLearn.
OpenLearn courses related to climate change:
Climate change
Climate change is a key issue on today’s social and political agenda. This unit explores the basic science that underpins climate change and global warming.
Climate change: island life in a volatile world
What impact will global warming really have? This unit examines the potential problems faced by the people of the Pacific Island of Tuvalu as a result of rising sea levels. Where would you go if your island is only a few feet above sea level? Who would you blame?
Global warming
This unit provides an introduction to global warming. We will be considering the history of global warming by looking at the pattern of ice ages and analyisis of recorded temperatures. We will aim to gather meaningful information from this data. We will briefly assess the impact and influence of humans on global warming and, finally, we will examine climate models and how to predict future changes.
Managing coastal environments
Coastal environments are by their nature ever-changing. This unit looks at the example of the Blackwater Estuary in Essex, England, describing how the current state of the estuary came to be. It examines the contests and conflicts that centre on the estuary in terms of managing the environment for human needs and the needs of the other species who make their habitat there.
Water and human health
Water is a natural resource that is vital for human survival and health, although only a tiny fraction of the Earth’s supply is available to humans and terrestrial animals. In this unit we look at threats, such as pollution, to water’s capacity to support life around the world.
October 15th, 2009
The UNESCO publication, Educational Resources: Conversations in Cyberspace, is now available to download for free or there’s a print copy which will set you back 12 Euros.
The publication documents an early period in the OER movement and many of the foremost debates and discussions at the time that are still talked about today. The publication also brings together the many background papers and reports from these first few years in the open education community.
Incidentally, OpenLearn has also recently published a Research Report on its first two years – further info here.
Also available free online from UNESCO is Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning. UNESCO have other releases in the pipeline from Philipp Schmidt (@sharingnicely) and Bjoern Hassler so watch this space.
August 13th, 2009
A new Open University (OU)/BBC produced TV series called Silverville starts this Wednesday at 10:45pm on BBC One. The six part series documents the lives of residents at a 300+ retirement community in Milton Keynes.
The OU has two academic advisors on the series, who are both involved in researching identity and environment in later life. In the next 20 years, the over 80s will be the fastest growing age group in the country with more people in this age group than any other. The OU is also carrying out an online survey to find out how much people know about the options and services available for caring for the elderly.
OpenLearn has study units on retirement and ageing as well as more broadly in the areas of care, community and social work:
Caring: A Family Affair (K100_1)
Care is needed at all stages of life. This unit makes care in the family its focus because the overwhelming majority of care, including health care, is supplied in families, much of it in private, much of it unnoticed and unremarked upon. The meaning of the term (informal carer) and the word (care) itself are explored.
Care relationships (K100_3)
To set up a care relationship that works well is a delicate matter, whether you are at the giving or the receiving end. In this unit we explore the very varied meanings of care relationships and how these meanings arise. Millions of care relationships are going on as you read this, and each carries its own particular meanings for those involved. But where have all those people picked up their ideas of how to relate to each other? How does any of us know where to begin?
The boundaries of care (K100_8)
In this unit, we are going to look at a number of situations which put a strain on the idea that caring is just ‘being ordinary’, including times when people are giving intimate care. In these special circumstances, since the normal rules do not apply, we have to develop a set of special rules to guide practice.
Introducing social work practice (K113_1)
Social work is a vital element in how our society cares for those in need. This unit looks at the meaning of ‘social work values’ as well as the different approaches to social work and the skills involved.
Retiring lives? Old age, work and welfare (DD305_3)
Retirement, pensions, care homes – old age may not be as rosy as we think. This unit looks at old age taking us from the Workhouse to the basic state pension. Why are people expected to stop work at a certain age and what impact does this have on their lives?
Ageing and disability: transitions into residential care (K216_1)
Moving into a care home can have a profound emotional impact on an individual – just the anticipation of residential care is one of the biggest sources of fear for the elderly. This unit discusses the role of social workers and care staff in supporting individuals through the transition, and how residential environments affect quality of life.
Addiction and neural ageing (SD805_2)
This unit looks at two topics that are of immense worldwide social, economic, ethical, and political importance – ‘addiction’ and ‘neural ageing’. You will develop a Master’s level approach to the study of specific issues within these two important subject areas.
What’s in a title: understanding meanings in community care (K222_1)
What do we mean by ‘community’, ‘care’ and ‘welfare’? In this unit you will explore the meanings of these words in their historical and cultural settings. The unit does not discuss these terms exclusively in terms of social work practice so service users, carers or anyone interested in community care and the ways in which welfare services are provided would find this unit useful.
Living with death and dying (K260_1)
This unit will explore how knowledge and beliefs about death and encounters with death affect people’s lives. It will also examine the concept of a ‘good death’ from an individual perspective in order to enhance the quality of dying.
Moral and ethical principles in end of life care (K260_2)
‘The role of medicine in death, dying, and bereavement’. This unit is for people who are interested in issues surrounding the role of medicine for people who are dying and/or bereaved. It will also be of interest to those working with dying …
In many areas of health care, and especially in such areas as palliative care, increasing attention has been paid in recent years to patient autonomy, and the need to respect it. Autonomy has come to be seen as a very important aspect of the interaction between patients and those looking after them, and forms the basis for many ethical commitments, such as telling the truth to patients, and seeking their consent for health care interventions. In this unit we look at quite a wide range of ethical issues. They all have one thing in common, however: autonomy. Each of them is a pressing ethical issue because of our concerns about how best to respect patient autonomy, and about whether it should be ignored or overridden in certain cases.
July 29th, 2009
The Open University has published a research report which is now available online. The report evaluates the impact OpenLearn has had internally and externally and the challenges that lie ahead in open content and establishing open learning networks.
The research report brings together several case studies, reports and reflections from the OpenLearn team over the last two years, delivering several perspectives on the provision of Open Educational Resources (OER).
Patrick McAndrew, Research and Evaluation Director for OpenLearn said:
“OpenLearn has been a really fascinating research opportunity. We wanted to find out what the impact was on us as an organisation; how we could help other people who wanted to provide their material available for free; and perhaps most importantly, what learners got out of having access to all this open material”.
The report highlights many successes – OpenLearn has made over 10,000 hours of content freely available; had over 5 million unique visitors; enabled new partnerships, as well as enhancing relationships with current strategic partners; and resulted in more than 10,000 Open University course registrations.
The publication of the research report comes at an interesting time as Prime Minister Gordon Brown recognises the achievements of the Open University and has donated £7.8 million to enhance it’s national role, working with other institutions to further develop distance learning for the benefit of the whole higher education sector.
The Open University’s research into OER is now conducted for OLnet in collaboration with Carnegie-Mellon University, funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
July 27th, 2009
As you’ve likely heard, President Obama announced last week that he would be committing $50 million $500 million to the development of open online courses for community colleges as part of the American Graduation Initiative.
President Obama said:
“Now is the time to build a firmer, stronger foundation for growth that will not only withstand future economic storms, but one that helps us thrive and compete in a global economy. It’s time to reform our community colleges so that they provide Americans of all ages a chance to learn the skills and knowledge necessary to compete for the jobs of the future.”
Like OpenLearn, the course materials will be available under a Creative Commons license, being freely available to reuse and remix as appropriate.
Former Head of the OER Program at the Hewlett Foundation, Cathy Casserly wrote:
All of us in the Open Educational Resources (OER) community should pause and take a moment … to reflect on the tremendous journey that has brought us to this announcement.
President Obama has taken a bold step and we hope that Congress will follow.
It’s good to see the world is waking up to the fact that education is changing and that we need to adapt and be more proactive if we wish to avoid the impending demise of the university. Less than a month ago, the UK Government also announced a dedication to online learning, giving £7.8m to The Open University to create a support centre for OER and share expertise with other institutions (SCORE).
July 20th, 2009
Yesterday The Independent reported on the Open University’s National Role Programme (not available on their website, see here). This was first announced back on the 24th June at Downing Street while the PM celebrated with the OU for reaching its 40th birthday. However, mainstream media have primarily focussed on one of the 3 projects contained under the National Role umbrella – Shared Returns – and paid little attention to the other potentially groundbreaking project, SCORE.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) awarded the OU £7.8m from its Strategic Development Fund in order to further its role as a national leader in distance learning and to collaborate with other institutions to put the UK at the forefront of online-learning.
SCORE – Support Centre for Open Resources in Education – will focus on sharing OU expertise in Open Educational Resources (OER) with other universities. People are increasingly learning using freely available online content on sites such as OpenLearn and social networks. Universities need to harness these networks in order to develop students’ learning. This is where the OU comes in – we’ll be leading collaborations to develop OER resources and services, as well as to lower course development costs.
The OU is collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University (funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation) to research open learning networks (OLnet) and will also work alongside the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) on their own OER programme, utilising links it has through membership of the Open CourseWare Consortium, such as MIT. JISC has also funded another project, POCKET, which has already established a pilot network of universities collaborating over OERs.
The Shared Returns strand has been most picked up due to the impressive number of people that ‘drop-out’ of formal higher education every year – some 45,000 in the UK according to the National Audit Office. Shared Returns will see the OU working with other universities and the Universities & Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). Using its regional centres, the OU is in a unique position to provide advice and guidance to students facing difficulty, aiming to return as many of them back to education as possible – either by suggesting (or indeed providing) a different course, a different institution or a different form of education such as an apprenticeship.
The final project under the National Role programme is an Academic Partnership Hub, creating consortia to promote and manage change and innovation, enabling the higher education sector to be more flexible in order to better fit with students’ changing personal circumstances.
It could be argued that all the effort being put into OER could also impact on student recruitment as people would be better informed on subjects and more confident in their chosen course of study, discovering what suits them best before starting a qualification and realising otherwise further down the line.
This all adds up to a very positive outlook for OER and open/social learning as well as for UK universities and of course learners, finally being given a real opportunity to seek their own answers than be ‘taught’.
July 8th, 2009
If you haven’t heard, open learning got some more mainstream exposure last week thanks to Boxee’s Dev Challenge.
Boxee chose the OpenCourseWare app, designed by Roshan Revankar, for the Judges’ Choice award at their event in San Francisco last Tuesday.
Over 40 apps were submitted and the OU had one amongst them too which received praise from judge Cali Lewis and even the CEO of Boxee himself, Avner Ronen.
It’s good to see that media centre apps are realising the importance and potential of their interactive platforms to deliver learning as well as entertainment so we’re all winners and I’d like to think we share the award, since we entered too!
If you’ve been hiding under a rock, Boxee (borne out of XBMC) is a media centre with a 10 foot user interface, designed to be viewed on your TV via a PC/Mac/Apple TV etc. Think of it as an app store for your TV. Boxee has an open API so others can build on top of the platform and provide numerous plug-ins for services such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, BBC iPlayer etc.
The OCW app offers courses and video lectures from MIT, Stanford University, UC Berkeley and Yale straight to your TV. The Open University app works in a similar way, pulling together content from the OU Podcasts site and channels on iTunes U and YouTube, along with a top notch UI built from the ground up for easier navigation and viewing of OU content on the big screen.
The full winners list can be seen here.
July 2nd, 2009
OpenLearn has been acknowledged in a new exhibition “Where Tomorrow Begins: Reflections of Scottish Innovation”.
Launched on 2 June, the exhibition is a six month touring exhibition by Scotland’s universities and forms an important part of the Homecoming Scotland events programme which celebrates Scotland’s great contributions to the world. OpenLearn is one of 40 innovations captured by award winning Sunday Herald photographer Kirsty Anderson, under the title “Tomorrow: We will have free access to world-class learning”.
The accompanying text states:
The Open University is the first UK University to provide free access to course materials with the launch of OpenLearn, an open educational resources website. Featuring written, video and audio resources, OpenLearn offers a full range of subject areas, from access courses to postgraduate study, with over 5,400 learning hours of content available online. Now, in harmony with Homecoming Scotland 2009, The Open University has developed OpenLearn Scotland, a new collection of free online learning resources designed specifically for Scotland. This innovative programme offers an interactive learning facility which aims to take Scottish society, culture and history to the wider world.
The Open University features twice in the exhibition, also getting a mention for its dedication to provide high quality educational video and audio content from its courses on iTunes U.
Details of the exhibition and all the images can be found on the where tomorrow begins website.
June 17th, 2009
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