Here’s some we used earlier! Integrating published content into OU teaching materials
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by Wendy Mears, Open University
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Here’s some we used earlier! Integrating published content into OU teaching materials
- 1. Here’s some we used earlier! Working with third party content Wendy Mears Sherif 27th June 2019
- 2. 2 • How the OU writes the use of Library content into modules to deliver key teaching points • How that actually works and looks for students • The particular difficulties of delivering that content in the OU context • ..and how we overcome some of those difficulties Today’s session will cover…
- 3. 3 • OU is a higher educational body AND an educational publisher • Content delivery is blended learning and digital by design • Formal module production process: large scale and collegiate • Intense production cycle, then taught for a number of years before update or replacement • Open to all – range of educational backgrounds • Large percentage of disabled students – 24% at last count • Distance education: how to support? OU context
- 4. 4 Exploring the Classical world: A229 eBooks Primary Texts VideoDatabases DatabasesImages Reference texts Images
- 6. 6 A229: Try for yourself You have 6 minutes to complete the following tasks: - Navigate to the ‘Loeb Classical Library’ database through the library resources page on your module. Link here. - Find the ebook: ‘Pro Caelio’ by Cicero, or the ebook ‘Satire’ by Juvenal. - Can you find the reference for your chosen ebook? - Feedback in the chat box: Did you find this process easy? Did you encounter any problems?
- 7. 7 S111 and Bad Science
- 8. 8 Here’s one we nearly missed earlier! Anatomy.tv
- 9. 9 A327: teaching history with primary sources
- 10. 10 • Regardless of disability? • Regardless of location? • Regardless of initial digital competency? Equality of access © 017206184/iStockphoto.com 02-15-13
Editor's Notes
- Introduce self and job title
- This is what I hope to cover today: how we in the Library get our content into University teaching materials. What the student experience is around the use of that content Some of the difficulties we face in doing that… And some of our solutions….
- The OU has a large scale delivery model – it has economies of scale. Formal production processes that can help ensure the library voice is heard in module production. Online delivery means library subscription content is easily integrated into Moodle VLE – sometimes seamlessly with embedded links, sometimes requiring students’ active engagement with Library databases to deliver information literacy outcomes. And where we still use print – we are able to use the course pack licence with some of our content to include in module published books, Colleagues working at campus based institutions often express jealousy at the level of involvement we have achieved with academic production processes, but there are still the usual difficulties – module chairs rule their own domains and it can still be hard to break down doors. We do that by being pretty damn marvellous and pushing boundaries of innovation wherever we can. The cycle of production – i.e. module creation - and then presentation – i.e. teaching to students - means there can be intense pressure to achieve the right levels of support around content use in a short space of time, and the scale of production and the length of module presentation life mean it has to be right. I am working with the Arts and Humanities new first level module – with estimated student populations of 5000 per year for the next 12 years – no pressure then! Coupled with a hugely diverse student population, around a quarter of whom have declared a disability of some sort with us, and a mission of being open to all regardless of prior educational attainment, this brings with it particular support issues.
- But let’s start with some of that marvellous content. Here is a range of the materials we’ve used to enrich the content of a recently produced Classical Studies module: this one had its first presentation this academic year. You will see here that one or two of these sources might be rights cleared; the image of Kirk Douglas and his gladiator opponent in their pants are rights cleared for instance, but the vast majority of this stuff is provided through our licences with publishers. There are images that we have embedded into module printed and online materials using the permissive licences from Bridgeman Education, and primary texts and secondary readings that are variously extracted and embedded within module content, or that students are either sent to using direct links from within the VLE , or that they are asked to find using Library Search, to then read, as part of individual learning activities. SO how do we get this material embedded into OU teaching and learning? The formal, established production processes mean that we can get into module production meetings, all module teams are assigned an academic liaison librarian, usually a specialist in the subject, who understands the qualification pathway, where this module will sit within that qualification. Over the years we have negotiated both formal means of access to module production meetings through top down initiatives like faculty policy documents, and through bottom up work like relationship management and the development of trust within faculty. Word of mouth recommendation if you like! So an ALL will review teaching drafts as the team discusses them, and will feed comments back based on the Library’s perspective, suggesting new content, existing content, checking the terms of use and accessibility of materials. Faculties work in slightly different ways according to the needs of the discipline, so we adapt our methods. Some module teams for instance have an assigned skills or employability lead within the academic team. So we can work with that individual to help us seed ideas and integrate skills and content into teaching materials. In other situations we might notice an early adopter, or a member of the MT who is particularly supportive of the Library agenda; so we can work with them as an advocate to help us progress the Library agenda. All very Machiavellian I guess… The ALL will also point out skills gaps in the qualification that might hinder student use of that content, suggesting skills development activities that will develop the right skills, deliver them at the right point in the student’s learning journey. These activities might be delivered through a variety of means, using live tutorial webinars, supporting module wide chat forums, F2F delivery where modules provide day school events, written learning objects that might sit within the module VLE, or more generic materials that are available as OERs. The nest two slides show a couple of the typical ways we have supported skills development for these second level Classics students.
- This video is a clip taken from an introductory screencast to Loeb digital library, made using Camtasia. Where there are no existing publisher produced help materials that we can point students towards, then we will make our own recordings. This one on using the Digital Loeb for instance, is used in a range of modules at different levels of study, from 2nd year up to post graduate in the MA Classical studies; so even though it was quite expensive to produce in terms of staff time, our economies of scale enable us to get good VFM from the product. We do note however that some publisher produced materials do not have the same production values as the OU – we find they are rushed, not very accessible. This screencast has an accompanying transcript.
- This is part of a module specific webinar the Library provides each year at around week 5 in the study calendar for students on A229, which demonstrates key resources to students and then allows them to go and try some searches for themselves and then share their experiences and ask questions as they go in the chatbox, or using mikes. This is safe practice, where they have access to an expert who will answer questions. Sessions like these typically last 40 minutes to 1 hour, with librarian trainers usually lurking in the online room afterwards so that students can stay after class and ask related questions. These sessions are recorded and remain available on the module throughout the year, so that students can revisit their advice, or if they've been unable to attend the live session, they can simply watch the recording at their convenience. We also provide shorter generic sessions for students that they can join from the Library website on topics such as finding resources for your assignment, or literature searching at higher levels, referencing, critical evaluation.
- So far I’ve emphasised how we deliver skills teaching and support use of content in the online environment by using technical creativity. But it’s not just about the techie stuff; our best learning interventions are not just technical, they are pedagogically motivated, and they can improve students learning. This example was for the introductory module on our science qualifications. The writing team of S111 wanted a managed, stable link to a journal article that showed an example of bad science and the importance of reproducibility and experimental rigour. … so they contacted their ALL to ask her to provide a link to a rather long review article that described the debacle around polywater a whole ten years after it first broke the science news . With longstanding experience of student support and work with content, she could see that the journal article might have been a bit long and could be made into a more interesting activity than passively reading, so began a conversation with the module team around sourcing more appropriate material around this topic that would still illustrate the point that the S111 writing team wanted to make. So we developed an exercise for them on researching library content based around the reproducibility of a particular scientific experiment in the 1970s. So rather than students simply being linked out to a journal article and passively reading it, they were given the opportunity to research the “discovery of polywater” for themselves, follow up the original research paper and the scientific correspondence relating to it, whilst finding out how to use Library Search, and think about different types of content appropriate to their information needs at the time . The students start with a direct link out the Encyclopaedia Britannica, then follow up the original research paper and the scientific correspondence relating to it. And the great thing about this story is has it all; it has a bit of the cold war and the secret delight in the west once it became clear that the Soviets hadn’t discovered a new type of water at all, they just hadn’t cleaned their test tubes! The difficulty in reproducing the experiment was because the conditions were usually too clean!! So we went from academics wanting to link to an interesting case study all about doing bad science for students to work with, to a learning opportunity for lots of stuff… By talking to their content expert in the form of their ALL, NOW their students are guided through a range of different contemporary sources and scientific correspondence that convey the excitement of a potentially new discovery in science, and access them by independent searching within Library Search.. And then they are still provided with a link to the longer article as optional further reading at the end of the activity. This is a great example of how using a range of Library subscriptions, together with the skills of an experienced librarian, genuinely enriched the learning experience.
- I’ve included these videos from Anatomy TV not because I wanted to make you feel squeamish – believe me if I’d wanted to do that there were far worse examples I could have chosen – but to illustrate two points: 1 – that our success in integrating third party content depends on publisher flexibility in licence integration 2 – the importance of the academic liaison librarian working closely with the module team in production We were already subscribing to this product – at the time called Primal Pictures, when a 2nd level Human Biology module was in production. The MT knew that the easiest way to teach muscle movement and anatomical functions was with the use of video. They weren’t keen to have students linking out to external products, and thought that was the only way they could work with a Library subscription product. So they asked learning designers from the production department within the University to explore alternative producers of anatomical videos that they might embed into teaching content. Our librarian attended the demonstration of some of these incredibly glossy, but eye wateringly unaffordable, products… came away and explored our existing licence to this product. The database producers agreed that we could embed both stills and videos from this product in our module materials with the right acknowledgements. So we have extensive use of external content from an existing subscription database in this module; and throughout other modules at no further expense to the University. And this was all achieved within existing licences, and at no further cost to the university. In the long run the content producers have benefitted from their permissive licence because OU students use this product across a wide range of modules; we still have the embedded content, but students are also encouraged to work independently with the product. So we have students on Health Science modules, nursing modules, Sports science modules, all independently using these resources. SO much so that we have negotiated an unlimited user licence with the platform providers.
- Here is an example of primary source material we bought outright from a commercial supplier, to deliver teaching in a third level History module - Europe 1914-1989: war, peace, modernity. The database producer – Adam Matthews, collects and curates primary source materials, to brilliant effect… so let’s look at what is happening here… Students follow a link from the VLE to this database – the FWW Personal Experiences Database - to explore the interactive maps of the Western and Eastern Fronts of the first world war. They spend 30 minutes exploring the two fronts, their main battles…There is a timeline to help students orientate and compare different fronts, and they can work through each battle in a linear fashion, showing different countries’ progress. There are images, excerpts from diaries, official documents to help students get a real feel for the experience of the First world war; and to help them understand the value of primary sources in history. Teaching points are delivered using a rich media source that is used at different points during the module. It would have been incredibly expensive to create a similar learning experience, to the same production values and quality, in-house. This product was supplied by Adam Matthews, who, as a small independent producer, value our business. We have cooperated with them over the years in different ways. They have sponsored OU Library staff attendance at a key sector conference, we have presented at their staff training day to help their editorial staff see how students actually work with their content, and we feed into their product development. Here in this third level, capstone history module. Finding and selection skills are tested as part of student assessment. The assessment guidance notes state: By this stage of the module, you are expected to seek out your own material, drawing on further reading and independent study sources, and on other appropriate primary and secondary sources, particularly those available through the OU Library website. So students are marked on the quality and relevance of the material they have found – both primary and secondary sources - and selected through their independent use of Library Search.
- How do we ensure equality of access? So that all our students – regardless of disability – are able to engage with our subscription resources to achieve required learning outcomes..? How do we ensure that students from a wide spectrum of digital competencies can manage to work with our resources online, at a distance, and feel confident doing so>? no matter what their device? Well – sadly – we can’t do all those things for all cases. But we do try very hard to ensure equality of access wherever possible and make reasonable adjustments for our disabled learners to ensure an equivalent learning experience To rise to the challenge of distance support for all our learning community we have used technology: Over the years we have been – the first to implement the Ezproxy server system in the UK – this was to help us get round the enormity of individual Athens logins for 200 k students, and eradicate some of the complexities of authentication for so many of our students. The first to run a webchat system to deliver help desk services – the first both within the wider HE community and within the University itself! We were early adopters of webinar software to help deliver teaching, use innovative methods of outreach like student hub live, facebook teaching events, and we write many learning activities, that sit behind the University paywall within module VLEs, or freely available OERs to help students build their confidence and skill levels in finding and using information.
- We are well known within the sector for our pioneering work ensuring the accessibility of Library subscription materials. We have a range of proactive and reactive measures Proactive measures include accessibility testing products during trials, feeding back to publishers on where they need to improve their products, Occasionally we have decided not to buy a product if its accessibility was deemed so bad it would make it unusable by its intended audience. ALLs working with module teams advise on the use of content, and work with academics to make reasonable adjustments to teaching activities so that the learning outcomes are achievable by users with disabilities. We provide accessibility tips for students on the Library website, and where materials are key to the delivery of learning outcomes, we test for accessibility, and convert into accessible formats where necessary. Reactive measures include specialist support on our helpdesk for screen readers users – helping them navigate difficult databases; conducting mediated literature searching for those who are required to conduct lit searches in an inaccessible interface. Using Sensus Access for simple and urgent conversions; where more complex conversions with table and figure descriptions, these are done manually.
- Through a mix of innovative online pedagogy; innovative use of technology, we ensure all our students have the opportunity to develop their digital skills Great content, and a readiness within the academic community to work with primary source content as well as secondary sources helps bring teaching to life. Our scale and mode of delivery helps us engage with innovative technology to deliver the right learning in the right way.