Presentation to the SUALL Council on the Opening Educational Practices in Scotland Project

1. Opening Educational Practices in
Scotland
Opening Educational Practices
in Scotland- presentation for
SUALL Council: 20 March 2015
Pete Cannell (email: pete.cannell@open.ac.uk)

2. 2
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
The Promise and the challenge of OER
PROMISE
• Free access to high quality education on a mass scale
• Redrawing the boundaries between informal and formal learning and
between community/workplace learning and college/university learning
CHALLENGE
• At the moment (in Scotland and the rest of Europe) ‘Open Education’
is providing more resources for the ‘educational haves’ and is not
making a significant impact on delivering it’s promise

3. 3
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Developing Practice
• The OEPS focus is on widening
participation and transitions from
informal to formal education
• We aim to develop the practices
associated with OER that can
support participation and
transition – OEP not OER
Practice is about design, structure and support
But also about partnership, networks and social
models of learning

4. 4
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
How are we trying to do this?
• Linking across different educational and user communities
• Scoping what already exists in terms of practice and
understanding – listening hard!
• Embedded evaluation
• Researching and reporting
• Supporting and encouraging the development of new capacity
across Scotland
• Analysing and understanding existing practice
• Disseminating good practice
• Developing a Scottish ‘hub’ for OEP

5. 5
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Currently working with …
• 12 Universities
• 3 Colleges and 1 pan-College sector organisation
• 6 Third sector organisations
• 1 Football club
• 3 Trade Union organisations
• 13 National or Regional organisations
• 2 Research institutes
• 1 EU funded project

6. 6
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Developing a network and sharing practice
• Informal meetings and dialogue
• Open education workshops
• Learning design workshops
• Advisory forum every 6 months
• Blog/website
www.oepscotland.org
• Conferences and seminars

7. 7
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Development of new content and new practice
• Parkinsons UK – enabling Parkinsons education to be delivered
at much greater scale
• Glasgow University Welcome Foundation funded programme on
‘end of life care’ – developing a global community of practice
• Carbon Busters – supporting teachers to develop material
around energy and sustainability
• Women into Science and Technology – working with EQUATE
and the OU Science Faculty

8. 8
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Learning from the practices and approaches
associated with already existing OER
Example: ULRs into Open Learning Champions
Example: Rural Entrepreneurship – working with SMEs

9. 9
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Open Badges
• Currently 4 and shortly 5 open
badges created under the umbrella
of OEPS and being used at scale
• More in the design process
• Badged Online Access Courses

10. 10
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Scottish hub for OEP
• Aimed at facilitators of learning
• Links to a small number of exemplar
resources created in partnership
• Tools to support users
• Case studies of effective OEP
• Communities of practice
• A short open course on OER and OEP
• Iterative development of OLW
functionality
• Scottish hub will sit ‘on top’ of OLW
and provide support, community and
examples of practice

11. 11
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Further detail
• A detailed report on the
progress of the project is
available at:
http://oepscotland.org/about/a
boutoeps-project-reports/

12. 12
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Useful links
• OER from the OU
• www.open.edu/openlearn/
• Open Platform which is open for others to host OER
• www.open.edu/openlearnworks/

13. Opening Educational Practices in
Scotland
Contact Us: Email:
OEPScotland@gmail.com
Social media:
@OEPScotland
www.oepscotland.org