Practising Open Education 2010-11

POE Web version

Project Partners

Leeds Trinity University College – Department of Media Film and Culture
Bucks New University – School of Design, Craft and Visual Arts
De Montfort University – Faculty of Art and Design
Kingston University – Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture
University of Southampton – Winchester School of Art
University of Hertfordshire – School of Creative Arts

" Participation in this project will help us to begin to address some of our key concerns regarding embedding TEL processes and transforming HE L&T practices in Art and Design."

Tina Barnes Powell (Head of Postgraduate Studies and Learning and Teaching Enhancement) - De Montfort University

Project News

For project updates and OER Programme News please go to the PROJECT BLOG and scroll down this page to see the Project Newsletters downloadable as PDFs.

About the UK-OER Programme

JISC and the Higher Education Academy are collaborating on the Open Educational Resources programme. The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has provided an initial £5.7 million of funding for 29 pilot projects (April 2009 to March 2010) which will explore how we can expand the open availability and use of free, high quality online educational content.

These resources showcase the high quality of UK higher education and our vision is that they will be used and reused globally. Such resources might include full courses, course materials, complete modules, videos, assessments, tests, simulations, worked examples or software. The programme will support universities and colleges in exploring intellectual property rights, cultural issues, technical requirements and data management issues.

Project Overview

Practising Open Education, as part of the JISC-Academy UK OER Programme, is a twelve-month project being managed by the ADM-HEA Subject Centre with six art, design and media departments in UK universities.

As part of the ‘Cascade’ funding strand the OER Phase 2 Project’s aim is to build upon the experiences understandings, findings and supporting resources of the pilot ADM-OER Pilot Project to the benefit of the wider range of project partners, the subject network and wider HE community.

By engaging directly with departmental staff the project aims to investigate understandings of OERs within the partner institutions in order to assess and address motivations and barriers to their creation and use.

The project will seek to highlight the potential benefits of OERs with regard to institutional and staff profiles. In consideration of enhancing the student experience the project’s underlying message implies the long-term merits of OER creation and use in raising pedagogic standards.

The project’s key strategy is to work with staff across the department in order to shape and realise each partner’s ‘OER vision’. The project is grounded in the belief that institutional support, staff understandings and constructive dialogue across the department provide the best opportunity to encourage cultural change. In order to work effectively in the online ecology OERs provide an appropriate mechanism to fulfill this potential.

The project’s objective is to encourage engagement with openly accessible teaching and learning resources providing opportunities for widening participation in higher education. Through the processes of the project partners will collate and create, making openly accessible, and repurposable licensed resources available through institutional portals and the Jorum Open website.

The findings, outputs, final report and additional reports are available on the:

ADM-OER Pilot Project Website

Project Methodology

Focus Groups

A focus group will be held in each participating department comprising a range of staff, from across all subject areas including: teaching, library services, IT services, management (HoD) and, where possible, partner FE institutions, performing arts staff and student representatives.

The focus groups will be a mechanism to collect information about:

Perceptions of art, design and media OERs; motivations for, and barriers to, their creation and use
Repository facilities in place
Technical support
Institutional support
Resources with OER potential

The focus groups will provide information about:

The outputs of the ADM-OER Pilot Project that may be of value and offer guidance – intellectual property, copyright, licenses, creative commons, and metadata
Consultancy offered by the ADM-OER Pilot Project partners, UAL, UCA and University of Cumbria, on any strategic issues
Jorum Open – how to upload and use resources

Focus Group Reports

The project manager has presented the collected information, in report form, back to the institution with appropriate recommendations.

The report are available here to download:

Focus Group Report - Kingston University

Focus Group Report - De Montfort University

Focus Group Report - Winchester School of Art

Focus Group Report - University of Hertfordshire

Focus Group Report - Bucks New University

Focus Group Report - Leeds Trinity College

An additional thematic spreadsheet is available which summarises the Focus Group information:

Click to download

Support Documents - PDFs to Download

Focus Group overview and Guidelines

Focus Group Questions

Practising Open Education - Project Partners' Reporting Template

Project Partners' Action Plan Feedback Template

In addition there is a whole range of supporting documents, templates, reports and OER guidance information available at: ADM-OER Pilot Project Website

Departmental Action Plans

The designated departmental ‘project leader’ has drawn upon the recommendations highlighted in the Focus Group Repopts and the Action Plan Feedback in order to work with departmental staff to develop a strategic OER Action plan. The departmental Action Plan identifies actions which address barriers and capitalise on motivations within the department for OER production and use and ultimately embed effective OER practices and policies.

In implementing their OER Action Plan, departments have been able to call on the support of the Project Manager, access the resources developed as part of the ADM-OER pilot project, and draw upon the support from the pilot project’s Institutional Leaders, at University of the Arts, London, University for the Creative Arts and University of Cumbria, who, if required, have been available as consultants for the Phase 2 project.

See Support Documents above for 'Action Plan Feedback' Template

The plans, now completed, are available here as downloadable PDFs:

ACTION PLAN: Kingston University

ACTION PLAN: Winchester School of Art

ACTION PLAN: De Montfort University

ACTION PLAN: University of Hertfordshire

ACTION PLAN: Bucks New University

Community of Practice

"While institutions can coordinate open educational resource projects, faculty who voluntarily share their creative works are the primary force behind the success of these projects".

David Wiley - On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resource Initiatives in Higher Education

The project believes that pedagogic practice is the central issue in OERs and that the opinions, perceptions and support from the subject community is fundamental.

The processes, outcomes and findings of the project are to be shared by all. The project values your input in this. Please feel free to follow the course of the project and you are encouraged to comment and get involved.

Practising Open Education Final Project Plan (PDF)

Project Completion and Final Report

The project has now been completed the Final Report is available below:

Final Project Report (click to download)

To help support the subject and HE communities a briefer Summary Report is currently being drafted by the project management and will be made available through this website.

Although the funded project period has concluded many of the project partners' 'actions' and activities extend beyond this period as well as the continued release of resources through Jorum Open and other platforms.

For information regarding the continuing activities please read the ADM-HEA Bulletin updates and go to the Project Blog

Project Evaluation Report

In order to help assess the processes, outcomes and potential long-term impact the partners have shared their experiences, reflected on the lessons, challenges and successes of the project. These observations, together with identified strategies for sustainability and plans for further developing open educational practice, have been collated into a report, available here as a PDF download:

Project Partners' Evaluation Report

OER News

A special issue of JIME: Journal of Interactive Media

is now available online covering a range of important OER topics.

The articles are available to download as PDFs or in HTML format.

Link to Journal

What Do You Know About Copyright?

The University College Falmouth is undertaking the Intellectual Property Rights For Educational Environments (IPR4EE) Project for the UK OER Programme Phase 2.

As part of the project the team have designed a questionnaire to assess how much we really know about copyright, trade marks and patents. If you follow the link you can respond to show your knowledge of these issues.

The questionnaire is not a test and there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ responses but it is important we answer the questions honestly.

Link to Questionnaire

Link to Project Website

Pedagogic Research Conference 2011

The project management team, Steve Mallinder and Debbie Flint, presented early project findings at the University of Brighton Pedagogic Research Conference, 2011.

The presentation looked at key OER initiatives, examples of resources and facilities, and discussed the themes emerging from the focus group meetings with staff in the participating institutions.

Click to view the presentation slides

Jorum Open

All teaching and learning materials identified by the ADM-OER Project and the Practising Open Education Project are deposited into the JISC central repository JORUM OPEN which houses materials in all subject disciplines.

The materials are uploaded and Creative Commons licenses applied. The process straightforward and all teaching, and support, staff in UK institutions will be able to log in and complete the stages to upload.

We would encourage everyone who has teaching and learning materials (PDFs, Power Point Presentations, worksheets, podcast links etc.) they wish to share to become involved.

To browse the resources and deposit materials please follow the link to Jorum Open

If you have any questions or problems depositing please contact: suppport@jorum.ac.uk

Project Newsletters

A regular newsletter is distributed to project partners through the Project JISCMail list. They will include important news and information, up and coming publications, conferences and opportunities in relation to the project and OERs. These updates will be included on the project website and project blog for the subject, and HE, community to access.

We would encourage you to forward any information you think would be good to share with the group to Steve for future newsletters.

Practising Open Education Newsletter 1 October 2010

Practising Open Education Newsletter 2 November 2010

Practising Open Education Newsletter 3 December 2010

Practising Open Open Education Newsletter 4 Jan-Feb 2011

Practising Open Education Newsletter 5 March-April 2011

Practising Open Education Newsletter June 2011