OTTER OER, by Richard Mobbs, University of Leicester

OTTER Project

By: Dr Richard Mobbs Beyond Distance Research Alliance

Learning TechnologistOTTER [email protected]

http://www.le.ac.uk/otter/

http://www.le.ac.uk/oer/

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.le.ac.uk/otter/

http://www.le.ac.uk/oer/

http://www2.le.ac.uk/

http://www.le.ac.uk/otter

http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/beyond-distance-research-alliance/

Presentation outline1. The OTTER context

2. The CORRE evaluation framework

3. Issues regarding transforming teaching materials into Open Educational Resources (OER).

4. Use of indicative evidence in the CORRE evaluation framework

5. Questions and comments

Gabrielle Ruth Witthaus

(Content, Openness, Reuse/Repurposing, Evidence)


For time reasons, I suggest switching the order of points 2 and 3 and call point 2 "Other issues regarding transforming..." - see my comment on slide 6.




OTTER – creating OERs• Open• Transferable• Technology-

enhanced• Educational• Resources




• OTTER is funded by JISC and the Higher Education Academy

• Project started in April 2009 and due to end in April 2010

• OTTER works with 9 departments in the University of Leicester to release the equivalent of 360 credits of OERs into:

o Jorum Open

o UoL Plone

o EvidenceNet

o EduCommons

o iTunes U etc

• CORRE is an evaluation framework in the development of OERs

• Emerged from the OTTER (Open, Transferable and Technology-enabled Educational Resources) project

Background to OTTER & CORRE

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/

http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/


13


approximately 500


, and one international partner,


Not a workflow model?


of OERs into a range of repositories. (I would leave out the list - trying to help you cut down the text and the time it will take to give the presentation!)




University of Leicester Context• Web server introduced in 1993 to

support STILE Project (TLTP Phase I)• Tools produced for “diy” Web page

creation• CWIS Project launched in 1996




University of Leicester Issues• Staff only could publish to the Web• No quality control• No transformation• No context• No idea!




Why OTTER?

• Quality OERs enhance the University's image

• Quality OERs attract students• Knowledge sharing across diverse

contexts




CORRE model – how the team works




http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

The world is “Open”‘We are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching and learning. Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge… [OERs] will help nourish the kind of participatory culture of learning, creating, sharing and cooperation that rapidly changing knowledge societies need.’

(The Cape Town Declaration, 2007)




The world is “Open”Global initiatives

• MIT OpenCourseWare

• Open University’s OpenLearn

• OER Africa

• MORIL The Pan-European OER project

• China Open Res. for Educ. Consortium

Tools and services

• Authoring tools e.g. LAMS, GLO Maker II, Xerte and COMPENDIUM;

• Open licenses e.g. Creative Commons; GNU

• Repositories e.g. iTunes U and OER Commons


If you have too many slides for the time available, you might want to leave out Slides 3 and 4. The audience at Nottingham will probably be familiar with this info?




Issues regarding the transformation of teaching materials into OERs• Staff attitudes to open access ( King et al., 2008)

• Transforming existing teaching materials into OERs (Lane, 2006)

• Degrees of openness (Hodgkinson-Williams & Eve Gray, 2009)

• Design for openness (Boyle, 2006; McAndrew and Weller, 2005)

• Open teaching (Laurillard, 2008)

• Evaluating learning objects for re-usability (Schoonenboom et al.,

2009)

• Open licensing for educational resources (Bissell, 2009)

• Sustainability (Downes, 2006)


There's a huge amount on this slide: you could spend the whole presentation going through each of these bullet points, and even then only have scratched the surface! How do these points link to the rest of the presentation? (If they are only indirectly related, I would move this slide to the end and label it "Other issues" - its main purpose might be to show you've done your homework, and that way you won't be tempted to spend time on it at the expense of describing the CORRE model!)




“my bag contents on a special day “ courtesy tnarik (flckr) some rights reserved

The CORRE evaluation framework

“C” is for CONTENT

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tnarik/250330428/




Nice picture! But the caption does not show up. I added the yellow background by going into "Format", then "Shape fill" and choosing the colour yellow.


Nice picture! But the caption does not show up. I added the yellow background by going into "Format", then "Shape fill" and choosing the colour yellow.





CONTENT refers to teaching materials from UoL partners.

1. Indicative evidence for Gathering content.

•Has the teaching material been used in an educational context at

UoL?

•Are there gaps in the material? e.g. missing units

•Has the credit weighting been checked?

•Has “partner agreement” been agreed?


lower case "gathering"





Indicative evidence for screening CONTENT

• What type of content is it e.g. lecture?

• Are there editorial issues?

• Is the language offensive?

• Is the language formal (e.g. jargons) or informal?

• Are changes required to the learning design?


A question you might be asked in relation to this slide is, "What do you do with this information once you've got answers to these questions?"




The CORRE framework

“A room with a view” by loungerie -http://www.flickr.com/photos/97041449@N00/3415698043/

The CORRE evaluation framework:

“O” is for OPENNESS

http://www.flickr.com/photos/97041449@N00/3415698043/





OPENNESS involves transforming teaching materials to make them publicly usable learning objects

1. Indicative evidence for assessing the pedagogic dimension of openness:

• Are changes required to learning goal(s)?

• Are changes required to learning activity(ies)?

• Are changes required to learning outcome(s)?

• Are changes required to the assessment?

• Is learning support required to use this material?

• What level of users is the material aimed at?





OPENNESS: (cont).

2. Indicative evidence for assessing the legal dimension of openness

• Does the learning object contain copyright material?

• Is the material still in copyright?

• Have 3rd party materials/IPR been duly acknowledged?

• Has written permission been obtained from rights holders?

• Is it cost effective to negotiate a quote or reject the material?

• Has an appropriate Creative Commons license been assigned to the learning object?


I would use the word "resource" (the R in OER) - so you don't invite a debate on the definition of LOs... (But that's just me being overcautious!)





OPENNESS: (cont).

3. Indicative evidence for assessing the technical dimension of openness

• Is the learning object (LO) available in a range of formats?

• Is the learning object standalone or does it refer to related resources?

• Are other tools/software required by end-user to use the LO?

• Will the LO be compatible with other repositories?

• Does the LO have the potential to evolve as technology develops?

• Does the end-user require further technical help to use the LO?


See slide 12!




“Coke scooter” by Gertrud K. - http://www.flickr.com/photos/11946969@N00/165507542/

“RR” is for REUSE/

REPURPOSE

The CORRE evaluation framework:






REUSE/REPURPOSE are focused on “adaptability” and “modification” of the OER

This is done through reality checking and validation by:

• OTTER project team

• UoL academic partner

• Other UoL academics

• Students

• External educators


Gilly is keen for us to use the word "beneficiaries" to describe all these users in the last 3 bullet points... (It was used in the OTTER Interim Report to JISC and I was asked to ask everyone to use it in all our dissemination materialsl...)





REUSE/RE-PURPOSE: Indicative evidence:

• Is the CC license appropriate?

• How clear is the learning goal?

• How engaging or interactive is the learning activity?

• How clear is the learning outcome?

• How easy is it to navigate through the learning material?

• Is the OER ready to be released to various repositories?

• What improvements are further required if any?




“E” is for EVIDENCE


Scales Of Justice by VaXzine. http://www.flickr.com/photos/vaxzine/485424742/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vaxzine/485424742/




http://www.flickr.com/photos/vaxzine/485424742/


Indicative evidence for tracking evidence - web statistics.

• Number of of views

• Number of downloads

• Google analytics

• Web bugs

• Star ratings

EVIDENCE is focused on tracking use, reuse, adoption and impact of the OER.





EVIDENCE (cont.)

Indicative evidence for tracking evidence - web survey

• What is the title of the OER you downloaded?

• From which geographical region of the world are you accessing the OER?

• What changes or modifications did you make to the OER?

• What difficulties did you encounter using or accessing the OER?

• In what specific way did the OER benefit your teaching or learning?

• How would you rate the quality of the OER: “excellent”, “good”, or “poor”?

• Would you recommend the OER to others?

• How can the OER be improved?


In the contents page you mentioned "Use of indicative evidence" as a topic - the survey questions don't really tell us what use we are making of this evidence, and this slide is quite detailed so it could take a lot of time without really getting to the point. Perhaps you could just give 3 "sample" questions from the survey and then a sentence saying how this info will actually be used?





CONTENTCONTENT REUSE/REPURPOSEREUSE/REPURPOSE EVIDENCEEVIDENCEOPENNESSOPENNESS

Gathering

Rights Clearance

Internal validation

Tracking

Screening

Transformation

External validation

Release to repository

Formatting




Sustainability : The OTTER Future

?• Self-service + Library Copyright team

• CORRE

• iTunes


In the contents page you mentioned "Use of indicative evidence" as a topic - the survey questions don't really tell us what use we are making of this evidence, and this slide is quite detailed so it could take a lot of time without really getting to the point. Perhaps you could just give 3 "sample" questions from the survey and then a sentence saying how this info will actually be used?




Questions & comments on

OTTER Thank You.

www.le.ac.uk/otter





References1. Bissell, A. N., (2009). Permission granted: open licensing for educational resources. Open learning: The journal of open and

distance learning. vol 24, No. 1. pp. 97 – 106.2. Boyle, T., (2006). An Agile method for developing learning objects. In L. Markauskaite, P. Goodyear, & P. Reimann (Eds.)

Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education: Who’s Learning? Whose Technology? (pp. 91-99). Sydney: Sydney University Press.

3. Downes, S., (2006). Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources. Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects. vol 3. 2007. pp. 29 – 44.

4. Hodgkinson-William, C., and Gray, E., (2009) Degrees of openness: The emergence of Open Educational Resources at the University of Cape Town. International journal of education and development using ICT. Vol. 5. No. 5.

5. King, M., etal (2008). Analysis of academic attitudes and existing processes to inform the design of teaching and learning material repositories: A user-centred approach. Active learning in higher education. Vol 9. No. 2.

6. Laurillard, D., (2008).Open Teaching: the key to sustainable and effective open education. In Opening up education: the collective advancement of education through open technology, open content and open knowledge. Iiyoshi, T., and Kumar, M.S.V., (eds). MIT Press. Pp. 329 – 335.

7. Lane, A., (2006). From Pillar to Post: exploring the issues involved in repurposing distance learning materials for use as Open Educational Resources. Found at: http://kn.open.ac.uk/public/document.cfm?docid=9724 [ Accessed: 22 October 2009]

8. McAndrew, P., and Weller, M., (2005). Applying learning design to supported open learning In Learning Design: A handbook on modeling and delivering networked education and training, Koper, R. and Tattersal, C., Berlin: Springer-Verlag. pp. 281-290.

9. Schoonenboom, J., Sligte, H., Kliphuis, E., (2009). Guidelines for support re-use of existing digital learning materials and methods in higher education.ALT-J Research in learning technology. Vol. 17, no. 2. pp. 131 – 141.

10.Straub, R., (2008). Is the World Open? Found at: www.elearningpapers.eu. 1 Nº 8. pp. 1-5. [ Accessed: 19 October 2009]11.Yaun,L., MacNie, S., and Kraan, W., (2008). Open Educational Resources – Opportunities and Challenges for Higher Education .

Found at : http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/oer_briefing_paper.pdf [ Accessed: 19 October 2009]


Image AcknowledgementsAll images from Flickr, published under Creative

Commons licences :Slide 10: “A room with a view” by loungerie -


Slide 11: “Coke scooter” by Gertrud K. - http://www.flickr.com/photos/11946969@N00/165507542/

Slide 12: “Crayon scene investigation” by adamneilward - http://www.flickr.com/photos/36720649@N05/4081501000/