What can openness do for teachers

The impact of open scholarship on teaching and scholarly practice

Martin Weller

About me

• Prof at the Open University

• Digital Scholarship book bit.ly/digscholar

• OER Research Hub oerresearchhub.org

• Blogger edtechie.net

• The Battle for Open

This talk

• What is open scholarship?

• What’s it got to do with me?

– Pedagogy

– OERs and teaching

– Open practice

• The battle for open

• Conclusions

Definition

Weller (2011) open scholars are likely to:• Have a distributed online identity • Have a central place for their identity• Have cultivated an online network of peers • Have developed a personal learning environment from a range of tools• Engage with open publishing • Create a range of informal outputs • Try new technologies • Mix personal and professional outputs • Use new technologies to support teaching and research• Automatically create and share outputs

But what’s it got to do with me?

Pedagogy

• Pedagogy of scarcity?

• Lecture – one to many

• Library

• Instructivism/didactic

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skyfaller/8394194/

What would a pedagogy of abundance look like?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42903611@N00/387761039/

Assumptions

• Content is free

• Content is abundant

• Content is varied

• Sharing is easy

• Social based

• Connections are ‘lite’

• Crowdsourcing

• Network is valuable

Resource based learning:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlgkhc/3284242747/

Problem based learning

http://www.flickr.com/photos/donnagrayson/195244498/

Constructivism

http://www.flickr.com/photos/auro/230377281/

Communities of practice

http://www.flickr.com/photos/antphotos/3489600094/

Connectivism!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/feuilllu/153570089/

3 possible reactions

1. There is nothing in the pedagogy of abundance

2. We have enough theories just need to recast them

3. None of the existing theories quite captures new tech &

behaviour & new one is required

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cawley/894692611/

Open Educational Resources

teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an

intellectual property license that permits their

free use and re-purposing by others.

Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.(Hewlett Foundation n.d.)

OERs & the OER Research Hub

Oerresearchhub.org

OER improve student performance/satisfaction

• Educators believe this somewhat, learners more so

• Stronger for related factors, eg confidence, interest, enthusiasm, experimentation

• Access to resources & ownership important

• “I went from being horrible in AP Biology … and went from a D 66% up to a A 90% so far.”

People use OER differently from other online materials

• Adaptation is high – a continuum of practice

• Majority of educators think open licensing is important, but only 12% share with CC

• Open licence less important than relevance & reputation

• Openness as virus

• “It’s given me the desire to share more openly”

OER widen participation in education

– Students use OER to trial subjects

– Students use OER to supplement study

– Some use OER as replacement to formal study

– “It has allowed me to develop knowledge easily in areas that I thought would be difficult to learn due to the inability to buy an in-depth textbook.”

OER use leads educators to reflect on their practice

• Strong evidence that educators: • a broader range of teaching and learning methods;

• reflected more on the way that they teach;

• more frequently compare their own teaching with others

• get new ideas for teaching; prepare for teaching; to learn about new topics; & to supplement lessons

• An under-reported benefit of OER

OER adoption brings financial benefits for students/institutions

• Strong evidence for savings

• Mainly OpenTextbooks, not online OERs

• Continued access to current material more sig?

• “I think that it is highly beneficial to have a brand new text to use, I would have been forced through budgetary constraints to purchase other texts which are 5-10 years old”

OER Active

OER as facilitator

OER consumer

http://oerresearchhub.org/

engaged with issues around open education, are aware of open licenses and are often advocates for OERs

have some awareness of OERs, or open licenses, but they have a pragmatic approach to them. OERs are of secondary interest to their primary task

use OERs amongst a mix of other media and often not differentiate between them. Awareness of licenses is low and not a priority

Types of OER usage

https://flic.kr/p/dCB8ne

Open practice

My online identity

Blog Twitter

Some numbers

Blog (since 2006) – 500,000 views

Blipfoto - 155,000 views over800 entries

Citations - 1,620

Slideshare - 250,000 views (7 years, 59 presentations)

Colored dice by sgs 1019: http://www.flickr.com/photos/visionwithin/133942381/

Confession

• I don’t know what these numbers mean in terms of impact!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ransomtech/9555643908/

I don’t know what these numbers mean in terms of impact

Complementary process

link

links

promotes

automatic

publish

comments

subscribesdiscusses

retweets

It’s distributed

Reflections by stephen dooley http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/2577006675/

It’s evolving

It’s default

Staircase of the Vatican museum by _robertC_ http://www.flickr.com/photos/r_catalano/404014466/

It’s moving to the centre

It mixes personal & professional

New routes for impact

2400 visitors

52,000 visitors

= 163 hits/month

= 1000 hits/day

Open Research Online

Do we need different skills to compete in an

attention economy?

• Video

• Networks

• Data visualisation

• Analytics

• Curation/filtering

• Writing for online

• Liveblogging

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevendepolo/5749192621/

New skills

Open scholarship exampleKaty doing

MOOC, blogs

final assignment

Picked up by

Phil Hill at

eliterate

Becomes

defacto piece

on completion

rates

Invited to

submit proposal

for funding

Conference &

journal articles

follow

Who knows where it will end?

• Keynote invites

• Guardian events

• Book as staff development

• MOOCs

Challenges

• Open access is key, not always encouraged

• Takes investment to reach the pay-off

• “It’s not proper!”

• Not much of: stealing ideas, online abuse, conflict with traditional role

http://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/5893328472/

Tips

• Get started!• Find your voice/tool• Give a bit of you• Be a good networker• Use a mix• Don’t overplan• Be open

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kamranmeyer/9399451939/

The dark side of open

Perils of Open scholarship

• Trolls

• Job perils

• Promotion

“The failure of MOOCs to disrupt higher education has nothing to do with the quality of the courses themselves, many of which are quite good and getting better. Colleges are holding technology at bay because the only thing MOOCs provide is access to world-class professors at an unbeatable price.”

A means for tech to undermine education

Creates false dichotomies

Lessons from the VLE

Rapid adoption & mainstreaming

Outsourcing & sedimentation

https://flic.kr/p/dNxyCd

The charges

Systems - privileges a technology management mindsetSilos – does not allow for the benefits of opennessMissed opportunities –learners use a system unlike anything outside of education Costs – drain the financial and also the human resources, Confidence – ed techs are required to manage the system(Groom J & Lamb B (2014) ‘Reclaiming Innovation’. EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 49, no. 3

Openness is not just a peripheral interest now

https://flic.kr/p/fLj2C2

Ultimately it is a battle of ownership

What can openness do for you?

Some links:

• Digital Scholarship: bit.ly/digscholar

• Battle for Open book: http://www.ubiquitypress.com/site/books/detail/11/battle-for-open/

• Blog: http://blog.edtechie.net/

• Oerresearchhub.org