changing the learning landscape learning to share: collaboration & (open) quantitative methods...
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Changing the learning landscape
Learning to Share: Collaboration & (Open) Quantitative Methods Teaching Resources Online
Changing the learning landscape
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Known Difficulties in QM Teaching
• Teaching QM is hard work & takes time
• Difficult to engage students
• Many examples needed (surveys, data)
• Finding interesting data
• Finding interesting findings (e.g. heteroscedasticity)
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However
• REF pressures divert time and effort from teaching
• Often given to junior members of staff
• Thrown in the deep-end with other duties
• Career development requires scholarship in substantive areas, not generic methods
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The Result…• We do the ‘best we can’ (but not the ‘best we could’)• Tendency to teach what we already know• Scores of individuals in scores of institutions recreating QM
materials on the same topics• We could save ourselves much time and effort by pooling our
resources
To a certain extent this can apply to all modules, but the level of difficulty and anxiety students experience with QM
exacerbates these issues
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An Effective QM Curriculum
• Is collaborative
• Draws on experts from multiple substantive areas (many examples!)
• Peer reviewed teaching materials?
• Pooling of assessment regimes (e.g. MCQs)
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Dissemination of Materials
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ACTIVITY: Barriers or Excuses?
Barriers to Sharing?
‘Sharing’ suggests a reciprocal
arrangement – what’s in it for
me?
I’ve put a lot of effort into my materials, why would I just let someone else use
my work?
My materials are very subject specific so they wouldn’t be much use to anyone
else
Someone might plagiarise my
resources
There are already examples using t-tests online so why
should I upload another version?
People learn a subject through teaching it and may be tempted to take
shortcuts (i.e. ‘off the shelf’ teaching)
Private curriculum providers will have free
access to academic materials
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Group DiscussionBarriers (?) Observations
‘Sharing’ suggests a reciprocal arrangement – what’s in it for me?
Reciprocity is not always like-for-like (profile raising, constructive criticism)
I’ve put a lot of effort into my materials, why would I just let someone else use my work?
We put a lot of effort into our research and publications partly to save others from repeating what we have already done
My materials are very subject specific so they wouldn’t be much use to anyone else
I’d rather have a skeleton outline of a topic (or pedagogic approach) than nothing at all
Someone might plagiarise my resourcesA Creative Commons license will protect your materials and ensure that you are credited
There are already examples using t-tests online so why should I upload another version?
Yours might be better! Alternatively your pedagogic style might be easier for some people to learn from
People learn a subject through teaching it and may be tempted to take shortcuts (i.e. ‘off the shelf’ teaching)
Have you ever tried to teach with someone else’s slides and no preparation?
Private curriculum providers will have free access to academic materials
Don’t they already? Online resources for core textbooks? “Clients buy the consultancy not the product.”
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Protecting Authorship
• Your materials can be protected under a Creative Commons license
• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA):
• This license lets others remix, tweak and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
Source: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ [accessed 22/01/13]
• This licensing structure is built-in to platforms such as JORUM (http://www.jorum.ac.uk/)
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Summary
• If we’re serious about improving the QM experience for students then why wouldn’t we work together?
• Imagine the advantages of having a central bank of multiple choice questions (so what if students can access them?)
• Build a teaching profile online
• Get added value from all the effort and hard work you put into you teaching materials (what have you got to lose?)
• Resources sharing is likely to be a future agenda
Changing the learning landscape
Learning to Share: Collaboration & (Open) Quantitative Methods Teaching Resources Online
Luke SloanSchool of Social Sciences
Cardiff [email protected]