Project website
http://sidecap.pbworks.com/w/page/33114051/Sidecap-Home
What research questions the project addresses, aims & themes
SIDECAP means Staff Innovation in Distributed Education in Caribbean, African, and Pacific countries.
The overall objective of the project was to promote multilateral activity amongst the European and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) partners through practical activities, networking and hands-on exercises designed to improve the quality of teaching and support for students. This project had a particular focus on open education resources (OERs), as a means of developing courses in a cost efficient manner. This was the first exposure of the ACP partners to OERs so developing and sharing processes for their adoption and modification was the main focus.
How the research questions are addressed by the project (methodology and activity/environment)
The main project activities were:
- a baseline report by each ACP partner on their current technologies, their QA processes and their pedagogical approaches to teaching.
- a staff development workshop on pedagogies for student-centred distance and online education at the kick-off meeting given by members of the OU's Institute of Educational Technology
- setting up and supporting a network for technology research amongst the ACP universities, led by the University of the West Indies and supported by the European partners
- hands-on practice with online technologies facilitated by the European (UHI) partner
- major exercise in adapting Open Content material, including peer commenting on drafts and a workshop at the University of Mauritius to facilitate exchange of experience and peer-to-peer learning
- workshop for support staff on quality assurance processes given by the European partners at UWI
- cascade activities run by each ACP partner to other staff in their distributed universities
- final meeting in which all partners present their repurposed teaching material, led by USP
Findings and outputs
A central location for the documents, discussions, guidelines and workshop materials generated by the project has been maintained throughout the project by UHI. http://sidecap.pbworks.com/w/page/33114051/Sidecap-Home
UHI and the OU partners have produced an OER course on Sustainable Development which has been put up on the Open Learn site http://labspace.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=4391. The OU OpenLearn site has been used to create, re-use, and deliver open content.
All partners developed courses based on Open Educational Resources which are being used as part of their ongoing course offerings.
A final 5-day conference was organised at USP in Fiji in February 2012 with approximately 150 participants.
Project impact
The adoption of OERs has become a key strategy for all the ACP partner institutions involved.
The project led to a deeper understanding of the issues involved in staff adoption of OER based approaches, which has influenced further research.
Publications
Rennie, F & Weller M (eds) (2010) Open to All. Blurb. http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1267854
Weller, Martin (2010). Big and little OER. In: OpenED2010: Seventh Annual Open Education Conference, 2-4 November 2010, Barcelona, Spain.
Mason R & Rennie F (2010) Designing Higher Education courses using Open Educational Resources Khine, Myint Swe; Saleh, Issa M. (Eds.) New Science of Learning. Springer.
Santally, M (2009). The Use of Open Educational Resources in the Design of e-Learning Courseware: Some Reflections-in-Action. Proceedings of the 2nd Forum for e-Learning Excellence in the Middle-East. Pg 221-230.
Keywords
Open Educational Resources (OERs)
People involved
Martin Weller
Project partners and links
Lews Castle College http://www.lews.uhi.ac.uk/
University of Mauritius http://www.uom.ac.mu/
University of the Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute http://www.uhi.ac.uk/en
University of the South Pacific http://www.usp.ac.fj/
University of the West Indies http://www.mona.uwi.edu/
Funder
ACP-European Union Cooperation Programme in Higher Education (EDULINK)
Start Date and duration
16 January 2008 - 15 September 2012