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Review and Endorsement of Open Educational Resources (OERs) by Graduate-Recruiting Employers in HumBox <br />Antonio Martínez-Arboleda<br />Principal Teaching Fellow - SCORE Fellow <br />University of Leeds - Open University<br />sllama@leeds.ac.uk<br />Cascading Open Educational Resources<br />Teesside University - 16 September 2011<br />

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Today’s presentation<br />The HumBox<br />SCORE Project on User Engagement (in progress)<br />Engagement though reviewing and endorsing<br />Employability: the reason for reviewing<br />Research questions to be answered by this project and beyond<br />Reviews of OERs by non-academic users <br />Partial or focused reviews: reviewing one aspect of the resource<br />Patterns for employer engagement after the project<br />Lack of transportability of reviews and its impact on OERs dynamics<br />Open choices for businesses and HEIs: Open Licence and location of reviews<br />References, resources and acknowledgements<br />Discussion <br />

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I. The HumBox<br />Online Space (repository) for the Publication, Sharing and Managing of digital resources in Arts and Humanities<br />Hub of practitioners re-using, reviewing and networking around their materials<br />Source of useful material online available to the global learning community<br />Extremely open in many ways<br />Hosted by the University of Southampton School of Computing but run by the LLAS Centre. Contributions across the UK HE sector by academics from Glasgow, Sheffield, Warwick, Leeds, Coventry, Southampton, Portsmouth, Oxford, Winchester, Manchester… <br />

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The creation of the HumBox <br /><ul><li>More emphasis on developing a teachers-led repository

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Existing resources, rather than new ones, were released at the initial stages, although some of the partners also adapted existing resources and even created new ones ahead of the launching of the repository, which happened in February 2010. as well as creating them.

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A space that welcomes everyone and welcomes current practice: the project did not isolate practice.</li></li></ul><li>Openness in the HumBox<br />Variable granularities - Learning Objects - “Little OERs”-Variety of files <br />

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Openness in HumBox<br />Openness = Practitioner inclusiveness = resources inclusiveness<br />Bigger community of sharing = + user interaction<br />Open to non-education users, who can comment on resources and create collections <br />

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Openness in the HumBox<br />By exposing more resources to the public and by engaging with more colleagues in many different ways (look, upload or reuse) the chances of positive “cross pollination” are increased.<br />

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II. SCORE Project on User Engagement (in progress) <br />This project will concentrate on the area of sustainability of Open Educational Resources (OERs)<br />by exploring engagement in OERs by graduate-recruiting employers groups (from now employers)<br />It’s a national project. It will involve gathering empirical evidence plus OERs from academics from a number of Faculties of Arts across the UK. <br />Tangible outcomes: engagement will hopefully lead to the review and endorsement of a selection of OERs’ published in the HumBox by these employers and/or a collection of endorsed OERs. <br />

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Aims of the project <br /><ul><li>To propose a feasible model of employer engagement in OERs by describing good practice that may result from this experience;

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To add extra value to existing OERs;

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To reinforce our existing Communities of Practice in the Arts;

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To encourage high-quality open content publication and re-use.</li></li></ul><li>III. Engagement through reviewing and endorsing<br />MERLOT<br />Connexions <br />HumBox<br />

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IV. Employability: the reason for reviewing<br /> This project proposes a new avenue for employer engagement which covers an existing and attractive unexplored gap in the theory and practice of Higher Education Employability.<br />It is clear that curriculum enhancement, particularly in our post-Browne scenario and in vulnerable subjects such as Arts, has to include student employability in the equation in more visible and effective manner. Looking at the numerous studies published about employability, a more dynamic, case-based and multilateral definition of employability is urgently needed in my view . The recent report by K. Lowden, S. Hall, D. Elliot and J. Lewin (2011) indicates a lack of curricular engagement with employers that this project will address.<br />In that respect, the review and endorsement of OERs by employers can play a crucial role in this transformation. In the medium-long term this type of employer engagement may foster a culture of employability partnerships between employers, users and institutions with OERs as a medium. <br />

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V. Research questions to be answered by this project and beyond<br />A. Reviews of OERs by non-academic users<br />B. Partial or focused reviews: reviewing 1 single aspect of the resource<br />C. Patterns for employer engagement in this project and beyond<br />D. Lack of transportability of reviews and its impact on OERs dynamics<br />E. Open choices for HEI and businesses: Open Licence and location of reviews<br />

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A. Reviews of OERs by non-academic users<br />1. What are the employers’ motivations to review and what impact will this have in OER publication?<br />2. What OERs will employers be willing to review? Will they be selective about institutions? Will there be subjects within the Arts or types of methodologies that they will feel more comfortable about? <br />3. What language can we expect from employers in terms of style, register, perspective, modality, vocabulary? <br />4. Will employers take advantage of existing conventions in OERs for developing their own reviewing practice? (“bootstrapping” is the term used by Kelty, Burrus, and Baraniuk (2008)). Or is the review of OERs not sufficiently established as a fixed academic genre?<br />

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B. Partial or focused reviews: reviewing 1 single aspect of the resource<br />1. Will employers be willing to review OERs on the basis of their “employability value” or will they be willing to engage in other aspects of the resource?<br />2. Will they look at resources only if they have been previously reviewed by academics in relation to their “content”?<br />3. Will the language and the concepts used in relation to the “employable skills” be different to the one used by the academics and their Institutions in relation to those resources and in general? <br />4. Will reviews help to discovered unknown features of the reviewed resources in terms of skills development and even to reformulate skills?<br />

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C. Employer engagement in OERs after the project<br />Interaction reviewer-reviewed: <br />Will they talk to each other behind the public scene of the repository? Will they circulate drafts? What types of engagement will we see and where will they take place?<br />Who will approach who?<br />Will there be collaborative reviews?<br />How will they be organised? <br />

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D. Lack of “transportability” of reviews and its impact on OERs dynamics <br /><ul><li>Will there be more incentives for profile-seeking users to attract the first review on an OER, whether it is their own resource or a second generation version (created by someone else originally)?

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Will the value added to the resource by the attached review contribute to the fossilisation of the reviewed OER, whether it is a first version or an ulterior version?

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Will reviews from prestigious organisations become valuable for HE institutions? Will they be included in educational collaborative agreements ? A commoditisation of reviews in the long term?</li></li></ul><li>D. Open choices for HEIs and businesses: Open Licence and location of reviews<br />Publishing Open Licence Resources for HEIs: <br /><ul><li>Will the potential added value of the reviews of resources be perceived by HEI as a reason to increase publication of resources?

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Will HEIs opt for publishing more reviewable resources as non-open resources, as they may become more aware of the “commercial value” of reviewed/endorsed resources and hence more possessive about them ?

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Could we even end up by having reviews praising the quality of the resources of an institution without the publication of resources?</li></li></ul><li>E. Open choices for businesses and HEIs: Open Licence and location of reviews<br />Resource Reviewing by Employers/Business Groups:<br />Can a strong case be made in favour of employer groups and public interest business organisations giving preference to reviewing and endorsing resources which are open? <br />Only if they can be persuaded that by giving preference to reviewing and endorsing resources that are open they are making a socially responsible contribution to education and human and economic progress, and not just enhancing the reputation of individual HEIs where reviewed/endorsed resources have been produced. <br />

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E. Open choices for businesses and HEIs: Open Licence and location of reviews<br />Where will reviews get posted? <br />Only in those virtual spaces that are <br /><ul><li>technically suitable for the posting of reviews,

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perceived by the learning community as the appropriate place for reviews to appear, .

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and, very importantly, only in those spaces where the reviewers feel that their kudos is enhanced by having a presence and a valuable input in that space.</li></ul>Will any other business tempted to follow the steps of O2? https://www.o2learn.co.uk/. <br />

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VI.Bibliography, resources and acknowledgments<br />David Wiley & Seth Gurrell (2009): A decade of development…, Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 24:1, 11-21<br />C. M. Kelty, C. S. Burrus, and R. G. Baraniuk (2008): Peer Review Anew: Three Principles and a Case Study in Post-Publication Quality Assurance: Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 96, No. 6, June 2008<br />K. Lowden, S. Hall, D. Elliot and J. Lewin (2011): Employers’ perceptions of the employability skills of new graduate. Edge Foundation. www.gla.ac.uk/faculties/education/scre/<br />L.Lavender, Project discussion and partner presentations , http://humbox.ac.uk/2059/<br />L.Lavender, HumBox Peer Review Workshop Video: Session 2: Thoughts for completing the workshop reviews , http://humbox.ac.uk/2027/<br />

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VI.Bibliography, resources and acknowledgments<br />Merlot Peer Review Process, http://taste.merlot.org/peerreviewprocess.html<br />Connexions Lenses , ttp://cnx.org/help/viewing/lenses<br />Resources reviewed by Antonio Martinez-Arboleda, http://humbox.ac.uk/1525/<br />-Magnusfranklin, Slide 5 (Big Pebbles) <br /> -Slideshow Bruce, Slide 5 (Little Pebbles) <br />-Chris Willis, Slide 7 (Bee in purple flower)<br />-Chris Willis, Slide 7 (Close-up Bee)<br />-Luis Pérez, Slide 8 (Colibri bird)<br />-Fancydiamondsnet, Slide 14 (Diamond)<br />-Penelope Else, Slide 14 (Fossil)<br />-AbhishekSundaram, Slide 15 (Salesman) <br />-Photo Phoenix, Slide 17 (Woman choosing)<br />-ChristofBodzin, Slide 18 (Horse)<br />-Ellr-brown, Slide 19 (Canals Network)<br />Pictures downloaded from Flickr.com <br />(Creative Commons - Attribution Only<br /> – Non Commercial Use). <br />Credits in order of appearance:<br />Thanks to SCORE Fellow Anna Gruszczynska for the invitation to talk in this event. Thanks to SCORE Fellows Jackie Carter and Tony Coughlan and HumBox colleagues Lisa Lavender , Kate Borthwick and Rob O’Toole for their support with this project so far.<br />

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VII. Discussion<br />Comments, please.<br />Any questions?<br />Antonio Martínez-Arboleda<br />sllama@leeds.ac.uk<br />Thanks<br />