8. Open content literacy is knowing when and why open content is needed, where to find and share it, and how to create, evaluate, and use it in an ethical manner .
Melissa Highton is head of the Learning Technologies Group, OUCS at University of Oxford. She has institutional responsibility for e-learning strategy, the VLE and IT skills and training. She is a Fellow of Kellogg College and works closely with the E-learning Research Group in the Department of Education. She is the senior manager responsible for Oxford’s current OER initiatives and the development of open-source learning technologies. The Learning Technologies Group was established by Oxford University Computing Services in response to a growing demand for advice and support related to the use of C&IT in traditional teaching, learning and research in all disciplines. The Learning Technologies Group currently host several externally funded research projects around the development of digital community collections, green IT, computer modelling, learning design and open educational resources.
The OpenSpires project released hundreds of hours of Oxford digital learning content as Open Content Resources (OER) in appropriate ways via appropriate online platforms. The project has had global impact, as the resources are from world-class speakers and researchers. Oxford academic colleagues are supported in changing practice by becoming 'open content literate' to make informed choices regarding the materials they release and choose to reuse. The OpenSpires bid focused on supporting strategic institutional learning and encouraging cultural change. The project began in 2009 as a HEFCE/JISC OER pilot project . Follow on projects have continued and expanded this work. Our current OER projects are: Triton , Ripple , Listening for Impact and OER Impact Study . The outcomes will promote the sharing of effective practice that may inform and influence policy in other research-intensive institutions in the UK HE sector and beyond. Contact email: [email_address] Website: http://openspires.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ Blog: http://blogs.oucs.ox.ac.uk/openspires/ Duration: April 2009 - May 2011 Support by the HEFCE/JISC.
In institutions where teaching is research-led academic colleagues are regularly engaged in processes of knowledge creation. This new knowledge quickly becomes the content of their teaching. Oxford University has established processes to enable academic colleagues to capture their research presentations as podcasts and licence those as OER with a rapid turn-around and minimal extra effort. We have aimed to make this creation of OER part of the day-to-day activity of staff who research and teach. This project will explore the relationship between OER and the research-teaching nexus by looking closely at how academic staff at two research intensive universities are supported in their academic practice. Working with colleagues in central services and academic libraries at Leeds and Oxford this project will look at the synergies between OER and Open Access Publishing in institutions where OER provides another dissemination mechanism for research, impact and public engagement. Contact email: [email_address] Website: http://www8.open.ac.uk/score/fellows Blog: http://blogs.oucs.ox.ac.uk/melissa/ Duration: October 2010 - September 2011 Supported by the SCORE Fellowship programme at the Open University
The Listening For Impact project, funded by the JISC under the Digitisation and e-Content programme, will engage in systematic analysis of the impact of University of Oxford podcasting activities, beyond simple download statistics, in order to answer the following important questions: What impact the collections have. What factors influence their impact What the audience is for this material If it is worth funding this service in the medium and long term How these collections can best be maintained The current service tracks basic visitor numbers through log analysis and compiling user feedback but without an in-depth systematic analysis of where and how these visitors discover the materials. We will interpret this data using approaches from the TIDSR Toolkit and look at other techniques for gathering data and engaging users. Contact email: [email_address] Website: http://blogs.oucs.ox.ac.uk/listeningforimpact/ Duration: October 2010 - March 2011 Support by the JISC Digitisation and e-Content programme
To ensure that the lessons learned through phase 1 of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Programme help to inform the strategies developed at other UK HE institutions contemplating OER release, the team responsible for the successful delivery of OER from Oxford University (OpenSpires) will provide expert support and training to two partner institutions, Harper Adams University College and Oxford Brookes University. We will help these institutions to understand their own institutional implications, investigate local solutions for sustainable OER release, develop effective engagement and dissemination strategies, and aim to release some of their materials under a Creative Commons licence. Contact email: [email_address] Website: http://openspires.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ripple Duration: 1 September 2010 – 31 August 2011 Supported by HEA/JISC OER Programme Phase 2.
Work done at Oxford during the pilot year of institutional Open Educational Resources (OER) activity through the OpenSpires project resulted in the release of a collection of materials from the Politics and International Relations subject area. Triton will aid discovery of OER in three ways: Regular short scholarly posts and commentaries released as OER. Learning pathways – drawing together sets of quality controlled OER. Thematic collections – dynamically generated channels to learning. The Triton project will bring high-quality OER closer to the Politics and International Relations subject community and increase the discoverability of OER through a heavily promoted cross-institutional blog: http://politicsinspires.org Contact email: peter.robinson@oucs.ox.ac.uk Website: http://openspires.oucs.ox.ac.uk/triton Duration: 1 September 2010 – 31 August 2011 Supported by HEA/JISC OER Programme Phase 2.
During the summer of 2010 staff at OUCS ran a Community Collection where members of the public, teachers, academics, museums and other units, were asked to send material related to the Anglo-Saxons to form part of a freely reusable web site. The Project – Woruldhord (or ‘world hoard’) – extended OUCS’s research into public engagement with community collections, and in the space of a few weeks has assembled a large collection of freely reusable educational resources. The collection will be launched soon and anything you find in there can be used as OER. The archive contains photographs, documents, presentations, databases, and more; covering objects, archaeological sites, poems, prose writings, and course material. It holds around 4,500 digital objects contributed by about 400 people or institutions. Anything you locate within Woruldhord can be freely reused for educational purposes under a Creative Commons Licence ( CC-BY-NC-SA , see also Permitted Use ). The project was part of the RunCoCo project. “ Go and explore The First World War Digital Poetry Archive and The Great War Archive. Go even if you don’t care about the First World War, just to revel in the high quality of the thought that has gone into creating such a wonderful resource.” Dan Todman, Historian The First World War Poetry Digital Archive is a wealth of resources for researchers, teachers, students, and the general public . Anyone is entitled to use the material for Educational Purposes (means for the purpose of education, teaching, distance learning, private study and/or research) but not for Commercial Purposes (i.e. selling or reselling the material or using it for any commercial gain). A press release from the Hague 16.12.10 described the signing of our new 1914-18 archive alliance. The German National Library, Oxford University and Europeana have signed an agreement to digitise family papers and memorabilia from the First World War in order to create an online archive about the people involved in the conflict. There will be a series of roadshows in libraries around Germany that will invite people to bring documents and artefacts from family members involved in the First World War to be digitised by mobile scanning units, and to tell the stories that go with them. There will also be a website allowing people to submit material online if they are unable to attend the local events. Everything submitted will also be available through Europeana, where it will add a new perspective to collections of First World War material from institutions across Europe. The collaborators will bring German soldiers’ stories online alongside their British counterparts in a 1914-18 archive.