Project Receives an Award July 14, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , 1 comment so farSome exciting news happened this week the project received the Desire2Excel 2010 Collaboration Award and D2L’ s Fusion conference. We knew we had been nominated but never the less this is a big surprise and an honour. We feel that this recognises the collaborative efforts made by the project with respect to engaging staff in its activities and outputs. And a big thank you goes out to NTU and D2L colleagues who have supported and have been involved in the project over the last year, together with a thank you to the support provided by JISC.
Desire2Learn Fusion Conference July 8, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentNext week is Desire2Learn’s Fusion conference and we have two colleagues attending and giving workshops and poster presentations - Anna Armstrong is presenting on our use of the learning repository in a workshop titled An Object Shared is An Object Halved and Sanjay Gupta is presenting on reviewer access to our learning environment. In addition the project has also been nominated for a Desire2Excel award in the collaboration category. So best wishes go out to Anna and Sanjay and our colleagues at NTU, in particular Yvonne Monterosso. I am sure the conference will be a great success.
Strategic Discussions Continue July 8, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentMy Development and Implementation wider group met this morning to discuss how to progress into the next year. I had already canvassed some opinions from the group using a survey in Poll Daddy . Generally people wanted to stick with the monthly meetings but there was great discussion with respect to how these should be structured. This ranged from integrating in strategy and influencing senior management and sharing good practice instigated by early adopters. As this part of the project has a main focus on cultural change and staff engagement, I was thinking the creation of a tool kit or framework similar to RSP or the OER Infokit - that has sections addressed to manager and practitioners may be the way to go that includes guidance, overviews of the OER landscape etc. So we just need to get our thinking caps on – time is rushing by.
OTTER Project Sympsium July 8, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentI attended a very useful online symposium this week that was run by the University of Leicester Otter Project . The symposium agenda was created with input from the attendees and they used Wimba Classroom as a platform which worked well.
This was the agenda
| Welcome and introduction | Samuel Nikoi | |
| 10.00 | Are institutions missing the point by focusing on using OERs as marketing tools? | Mick Norman |
| 11.00 | Engaging institutional partners in OER projects, what works and what doesn’t? | Alejandro Armellini |
| 12.00
|
Lunch break | |
| 13.00 | Is copyright the problem? “All rights reserved” versus “all rights reversed”: whither OER? | Samuel Nikoi |
| 14.00 | Could and should OER replace educators? | Chris Coetzee |
| 15.00pm | Wrap-up and close | Richard Mobbs |
There was some lively discussion mainly in the chat room – particular in the areas of staff engagement, strategic approaches, resourcing, collective approaches copyright and quality issues. I think the format worked particularly well and congratulations to the OTTER project for organising this, if they have recorded the event I will disseminate.
Web Sites of the Week w/e 9th July 2010 July 8, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentThis week we have the travels of a photograph, a dossier on OER, a publisher engaging with open access, a couple of videos on OER, together with webinars and courses.
- Realizing the potentially unforeseen benefits of “openness” using creative commons :a creative commons story of the travels of a photograph
- Open Educational Resources and Higer Education : dossier porduce Neil Butcher OER Strategist, OER Africa
- Springer Announces New Open-Access Journals: Springer publishing announces the setting up a new open-access journal program
- Learning to be open by default: Post by Brian Frank stating that there is a need to be open by default
- George Siemens Connectivism: Socializing Open Learning : You tube video
- Turning Resources into Open Educational Resources : A guide from the University of Hull
- OCW Blog Webinar Schedule for July – September 2010
- Writing Spaces : a collection of creative commons licensed essays for the use in the first year writing classroom
- CETIS OER Technical Support Project Final Report
- Look no further for OER search engines : a list of OER search engines
- Open Educational Resources Pod Cast:Momna Hejmadi, Senior Fellow in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry
- Integrating OER in the classor a cours for teachers: from Curriki
- Stephen Downes the Role of Open Educational Resources in Personal Learning: Video
Planning Ahead for the Project in the Next Academic Year July 1, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentWith my Development and Implementation core group we discussed how we want to progress with our meetings, given that the many of the major implementation activities are complete and our efforts now need to be concentrating on the ongoing task of strategically embedding the use of LR within learning and teaching, implementing Creative Commons and looking at the usability aspects of JorumOpen and how we can support its use. So we have reduced our meetings to every 4 weeks, I have also done this with our Testing Training and Support Group. I think it is important that you reflect on project processes on a regular basis and adapt to changing needs. With the wider group that includes staff from across the University I have put a survey in Poll Daddy to see how they would like things to progress next year, so far I have had quite a favourable responses for keeping the meeting going monthly.
Preparing for Dissemination July 1, 2010
Posted by vickimcgarvey in : Comms , add a commentThis week thoughts and efforts have gone towards preparing for two dissemination events the JISC Innovation Forum where we have a stand and Desire2Learn’s Fusion Conference where my colleague Anna Armstrong will be presenting on the project. For the Innovation Forum we are capturing some short case study videos with colleagues that have used the LR, we also have some posters and will be presenting web captures demo’ing the learning repositories. For Fusion as well as the workshop we are producing a poster because the project has been nominated for a Desire2Excelaward in the collaboration category, we are really excited about this, as this illustrates the good practice the project has initiated with respect to including colleagues across the University in the implementation of our LRs.
