This task was designed in the context of the C-SAP (Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Open Educational Resources) Open Educational Resources Phase II project: Cascading Social Science Open Educational Resources. Through the use of reflexive tasks, the project team aims to develop a collaborative framework for cascading OERs within social sciences. This reflexive task is designed to give the cascade project partners a chance to discuss issues related to project priority areas (i.e. capturing/developing the cascade framework, student engagement and OER release) within the framework of peer review.

1. Reflexive task: Peer review
This task was designed in the context of the C-SAP (Higher Education Academy Subject
Centre for Open Educational Resources) Open Educational Resources Phase II
project: Cascading Social Science Open Educational Resources. Through the use of reflexive
tasks, the project team aims to develop a collaborative framework for cascading OERs
within social sciences. This reflexive task is designed to give the cascade project partners a
chance to discuss issues related to project priority areas (i.e. capturing/developing
the cascade framework, student engagement and OER release) within the framework of
peer review.
Task overview
We have put together a number of reflexive prompts (see below) which you can use as
headings to help structure your discussions, however feel free to incorporate additional
themes and issues that you find relevant in your own context. You might also find it useful
to have a look at the peer review development activity which took place in the context of
the pilot project. The format in which you write up your reflexive account is pretty much up
to you and could include text documents, annotated diagrams, audio recordings (provided
there is a transcript attached) etc.
The topics we would like you to consider are as follows:
Cascade framework
How are you addressing the cascade framework in the context of your involvement in the
project? Is this a generic model for “how to” cascade OER practices from one context to
another? Or is it a model for “how to do” OER in the C-SAP/social sciences ethos? Are we
cascading with the intention of creating OER consumers, producers or both? Who are we
cascading to? How does the institutional context impact on the opportunities or barriers to
sharing and how relevant is that context to our cascade framework?
On a related note, how are you capturing development of the cascade framework? As part
of our efforts aimed at capturing the process of developing a rationale for the cascade
framework we have explored tools such as voicethread, mindmeister or prezi. Of course,
numerous other tools exist – which ones have you found to be most useful when it comes to
representing/visualising the cascade framework? Which tools would you recommend to
anyone who might want to use the cascade framework developed in the context of this
project in the future? In particular, if you had a chance to use the toolkit developed in the
context of the pilot project, in what way could that be helpful to current and future
cascaders and cascadees?
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2. The social sciences context
Overall, through our involvement in the OER programme (pilot/second phase) we have
embedded our bids and project plans within a critical social science perspective on the
processes of sharing digital educational resources. On a related note, the cascade project
seeks to cascade support for embedding Open Educational Resources within the social
sciences curriculum. At the same time, in what way does this disciplinary context impact on
your own involvement in the project? In what way can we/are we capturing the social
sciences perspective within the cascade framework?
Some themes and issues we have identified previously (by no means an extensive list)
include the process of social sciences knowledge production, the space for OERs within the
social sciences curriculum; power relationships within OER context - between HE and HE in
FE institutions; between producers and users of content, students and tutors etc.
Student engagement
In the project bid, we have stated that “students should become active co-creators of
learning”; we have also indicated student engagement as one of our priority areas. In
our draft mindmap of the cascade framework, we have indicated a number of approaches
to using OERs with students: “hand-picked”, “letting students loose” and “students as
producers”. Each of these implies rather different priorities for content production and
release, as well as for reuse of content. Which approach have you adopted when
introducing OER resources and/or open education-related concepts to your students? Have
you identified any particular resources, strategies etc. that others might find useful? Finally,
what conditions need to be met to enable students to understand the purpose and their
relationship with OER s and how might we deal with any issues they might have about loss
of contact with teachers?
OER release
For this part of the peer review task, please select one of the resources you are currently
developing. To facilitate discussion about re-purposing, please upload your resource (it
really doesn’t matter if the resource is in a very raw state at the moment) to the wiki and
share the link with your peer review partner.
What technical challenges/issues/aspects have you identified in terms of developing your
resource? How have you/are you planning to address issues around accessibility, copyright,
depositing etc.? We recognise that for most of you have decided to release resources at the
granular level of a module - what issues do you see arising from this choice?
What major issues with regard to re-usability can you identify? For instance, in the context
of the pilot project, we commented on the fact that a lot of teaching materials we received
are embedded in the context of a particular institution and rely on implicit pedagogic
assumptions. How do you envisage that your material will be re-used and do you have a
This content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK:
England & Wales http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
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3. specific audience in mind – e.g. colleagues within/outside your own institution? Your
students? Independent learners? How would these different end users change your thinking
about the material and the ways in which it could be re-used?
This content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK:
England & Wales http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/
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