Embedding OER and Open practice at the University of the Arts London: Chris Follows Institutional VLE's and OER repositories are rarely built to support social media content communities, as a result many learning and teaching materials are being independently dispersed across the web using more familiar and user friendly 'social media' environments such as wikis, blogs, independent websites, youtube accounts etc, there is currently no middle ground to facilitate OER content communities. How can OER communities adopt social media tools and practices to help improve and encourage better rich media OER practice? Key challenges for the rich media reuse community are finding or being directed to the most useful and usable open content. Random google searches will sometimes get you what you want but the content will be more than likely high risk and non-reusable in an OER sense. Finding OER rich media reusable 'gems' in this granular landscape is difficult and random standalone pieces of media content are difficult to assess in regards to reuse, remixing this content even more so. How do we share and collaborate in this space and overcome the obstacles of use and re-use specifically when creating and designing complex rich media learning content? Chris will draw from four different perspectives of developing media content communities within practice based Art and Design subjects including SCORE research, http://process.arts.ac.uk ,the DIAL project (digital Integration into arts learning) part of the JISC UK Developing digital literacies programme and ALTO (JISC UK OER programme)

1. Exploring OER rich media reuse through
social media content communities.
process.arts case study.
HEA Annual Conference 4 July 2012.
Chris Follows,
University of the Arts London & SCORE fellow OU.

2. What is process.arts?
An open online resource sharing day-to-day arts practice and research
of arts staff, students, alumni and practitioners.
Voluntary run/managed grass roots web2.0 open educational
environment.
Currently provides a new ‘open learning’ space to the University of the
Arts London (UAL) that straddles the institution/educational (formal
learning) environment and the social (informal learning)
environment.
It’s an ‘experimental’ space for open educational practitioners to
develop and define a new language for open edu-social practice
without conforming or being influenced by pre-existing academic
structures and processes.

3. http://process.arts.ac.uk

4. Background - grass roots activity, documenting
practice & shared web environments
2006: Documented students and staff working in studios, I did a series
of videos of students and staff talking about their practice.
Where do we put video resources?
Sharing practice: Questioned the usefulness of individual & isolated
web environments, began to explore the notion of creating a
sustainable shared online environment for staff and students to share
and cluster rich media content and resources.
process.arts was initially developed in 2008 by Chris Follows with the
support of UAL’s Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design
(CLTAD).

6. Combining institutional support & grass roots activity
for developing sustainable Open Educational Practice.
Voluntary (unofficial activity & support, mostly external)
• Day-to-day webmaking & digital stewardship (happening outside in
web2:0, blogs, wiki and social media, see next slide).
• Open educational practice (OEP) & active participation (Embedding).
Institutional (official support, mostly internal related initiatives & projects)
• Institutional secondments and fellowships (Development)
• 2010 -15 Institutional Strategy. (Policy & cultural change)
• Projects:
• ALTO – JISC UKOER programme 2 & 3. (Policy & cultural change)
• SCORE Fellowship – Open university (Development & support)
• DIAL - The DIAL project (Digital Integration into Arts Learning) part of two
year JISC digital literacies programme. (Policy, cultural change & Support)

7. Surveys
Your Digital World - please tell us more!

8. 2010 -15 Institutional Strategy
Policy & cultural change.
The Medium Term Strategy 2010-15 identifies the
development of communities of practice in one of its
aims:
“In developing the strategy it was noted that innovation,
new ideas and approaches have tended to emerge from
grass roots activity, and by working collaboratively and in
cross disciplinary contexts. Our experience has shown
that collaboration emerges from shared interests and
purpose and that it is unlikely to be successful if imposed
from above. It can flourish when activities are supported
with small amounts of seed corn support, and where staff
are given time and space to work outside their immediate
arena.”

9. Policy & cultural change
UKOER ALTO - http://alto.arts.ac.uk//filestore/

10. Policy, cultural change & Support
The ‘digital baseline’ blogs will record all aspects of digital life, including
learning & teaching, college, department, course & individual perspectives
http://ualdigitalbaseline.myblog.arts.ac.uk/

11. Early thoughts and common features from DIAL
evaluation of pilot projects:
The DIAL projects provide opportunity for personal
reflections on personal roles and emerge from long-
standing challenges people want to tackle, and perhaps
up to now have not had the time or resources to attend
to them. Some common OEP related aspects being
addressed by DIAL:
• Teachers’ fear of learning in public. (Online reflective
practice)
• Dealing with the discomfort of making curricular
resources public. (Open educational resources, OER)
• Anxieties relating to presenting oneself in video and
online. (Professional open/online identities)

12. Development & Support
Impact of SCORE fellowship &
consistent digital stewardship.

13. Participation.
AVERAGE PER MONTH:
4k visitors a month. Logged in users = 362
2-3k unique visitors a month.
Below Analytics May 2012:
All content posts = 1450.
• Video direct = 195.
• 3rd Party video posts = 150.
• Image/text/audio = 950.
• Forum topics = 105.
Conversation:
• Comments = 470.
• Tags = Thousands.

14. Interest groups

15. Research & conferences

16. Open staff development

17. Open learning together

18. Industry connection & Curriculum
development

19. The studio/workshop

20. Alumni involvement

21. Fun

22. Support for Open Educational Practice

23. ALT-C 2012 Mainstreaming grass roots
innovation in open educational practice:
benefits and challenges
The transition of process.arts into an official UAL
service will test this model and raise questions
as to how institutions successfully support and
develop autonomous and independent
grassroots innovation without homogenising
innovation.

24. Thank you
Chris Follows
Email: c.follows@wimbledon.arts.ac.uk
University of the Arts London
272 High Holborn
London
WC1V 7EY
Mobile: 07703 887845