embedding oer and open practice at ual a process.arts case study, hea annual conference 2012
DESCRIPTION
Embedding OER and Open practice at the University of the Arts London: Chris FollowsInstitutional VLE's and OER repositories are rarely built to support social media content communities, as a result many learning and teaching materials are being independently dispersed across the web using more familiar and user friendly 'social media' environments such as wikis, blogs, independent websites, youtube accounts etc, there is currently no middle ground to facilitate OER content communities. How can OER communities adopt social media tools and practices to help improve and encourage better rich media OER practice?Key challenges for the rich media reuse community are finding or being directed to the most useful and usable open content. Random google searches will sometimes get you what you want but the content will be more than likely high risk and non-reusable in an OER sense. Finding OER rich media reusable 'gems' in this granular landscape is difficult and random standalone pieces of media content are difficult to assess in regards to reuse, remixing this content even more so.How do we share and collaborate in this space and overcome the obstacles of use and re-use specifically when creating and designing complex rich media learning content?Chris will draw from four different perspectives of developing media content communities within practice based Art and Design subjects including SCORE research, http://process.arts.ac.uk ,the DIAL project (digital Integration into arts learning) part of the JISC UK Developing digital literacies programme and ALTO (JISC UK OER programme)TRANSCRIPT
Exploring OER rich media reuse through social media content communities.
process.arts case study.
HEA Annual Conference 4 July 2012.
Chris Follows, University of the Arts London & SCORE fellow OU.
What is process.arts?
An open online resource sharing day-to-day arts practice and research of arts staff, students, alumni and practitioners.
Voluntary run/managed grass roots web2.0 open educational environment.
Currently provides a new ‘open learning’ space to the University of the Arts London (UAL) that straddles the institution/educational (formal learning) environment and the social (informal learning) environment.
It’s an ‘experimental’ space for open educational practitioners to develop and define a new language for open edu-social practice without conforming or being influenced by pre-existing academic structures and processes.
http://process.arts.ac.uk
Background - grass roots activity, documenting practice & shared web environments
2006: Documented students and staff working in studios, I did a series of videos of students and staff talking about their practice.
Where do we put video resources?
Sharing practice: Questioned the usefulness of individual & isolated web environments, began to explore the notion of creating a sustainable shared online environment for staff and students to share and cluster rich media content and resources.
process.arts was initially developed in 2008 by Chris Follows with the support of UAL’s Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design (CLTAD).
Combining institutional support & grass roots activity for developing sustainable Open Educational Practice.
Voluntary (unofficial activity & support, mostly external)
• Day-to-day webmaking & digital stewardship (happening outside in web2:0, blogs, wiki and social media, see next slide).
• Open educational practice (OEP) & active participation (Embedding).
Institutional (official support, mostly internal related initiatives & projects)
• Institutional secondments and fellowships (Development)• 2010 -15 Institutional Strategy. (Policy & cultural change)• Projects:• ALTO – JISC UKOER programme 2 & 3. (Policy & cultural change)• SCORE Fellowship – Open university (Development & support)• DIAL - The DIAL project (Digital Integration into Arts Learning) part of two year JISC
digital literacies programme. (Policy, cultural change & Support)
SurveysYour Digital World - please tell us more!
2010 -15 Institutional Strategy Policy & cultural change.
The Medium Term Strategy 2010-15 identifies the development of communities of practice in one of its aims:
“In developing the strategy it was noted that innovation, new ideas and approaches have tended to emerge from grass roots activity, and by working collaboratively and in cross disciplinary contexts. Our experience has shown that collaboration emerges from shared interests and purpose and that it is unlikely to be successful if imposed from above. It can flourish when activities are supported with small amounts of seed corn support, and where staff are given time and space to work outside their immediate arena.”
Policy & cultural changeUKOER ALTO - http://alto.arts.ac.uk//filestore/
Policy, cultural change & Support
The ‘digital baseline’ blogs will record all aspects of digital life, including learning & teaching, college, department, course & individual perspectives
http://ualdigitalbaseline.myblog.arts.ac.uk/
Early thoughts and common features from DIAL evaluation of pilot projects:
The DIAL projects provide opportunity for personal reflections on personal roles and emerge from long-standing challenges people want to tackle, and perhaps up to now have not had the time or resources to attend to them. Some common OEP related aspects being addressed by DIAL:
• Teachers’ fear of learning in public. (Online reflective practice)
• Dealing with the discomfort of making curricular resources public. (Open educational resources, OER)
• Anxieties relating to presenting oneself in video and online. (Professional open/online identities)
Development & SupportImpact of SCORE fellowship & consistent digital stewardship.
Participation.
Logged in users = 362
All content posts = 1450.• Video direct = 195.• 3rd Party video posts = 150.• Image/text/audio = 950.• Forum topics = 105.
Conversation:• Comments = 470.• Tags = Thousands.
AVERAGE PER MONTH:4k visitors a month.2-3k unique visitors a month.
Below Analytics May 2012:
Interest groups
Research & conferences
Open staff development
Open learning together
Industry connection & Curriculum development
The studio/workshop
Alumni involvement
Fun
Support for Open Educational Practice
ALT-C 2012 Mainstreaming grass roots innovation in open educational practice:
benefits and challenges
The transition of process.arts into an official UAL service will test this model and raise questions as to how institutions successfully support and develop autonomous and independent grassroots innovation without homogenising innovation.
Thank you
Chris Follows
Email: [email protected]
University of the Arts London272 High HolbornLondonWC1V 7EY
Mobile: 07703 887845