The open education movement has achieved much in the last decade, but there remains wide acknowledgement that the impact of OER has yet to be fully understood. A suggested approach is to address this through collective approaches that collate information and present them back in an integrated way. This has some appeal, particularly in the way it matches to ideals of openness, but needs to be implemented with care.
In this presentation I critically evaluate attempts that have been made to support communication and collaboration through mapping OER. After endorsing the basic rationale for mapping evidence surrounding OER implementation I review two examples of where this has been attempted. The Open Learning Network (OLnet) Evidence Hub used the concept of Contested Collective Intelligence to inform a discourse-centric social-semantic web application that could structure the discourses of the OER community. I provide a short critique of this approach which focuses on the data model and the metadata requirements made upon users. I go on to consider the UNESCO OER Mapping Project which set out some quite specific protocols for metadata (despite never getting beyond the prototype stage). The value of a mapping approach is defended at the same time as noting that different audience will likely have very different needs in terms of evidence.
A rationale for a new, improved evidence hub is provided along with a number of design considerations and a proposal for future development. I conclude with a brief presentation of the new Evidence Hub being developed as part of the OER Research Hub (OERRH) project. I describe the ways in which our evidence model tries to overcome some of the issues which were manifest in these earlier projects, a range of different data sources, the importance of data visualization, and account for how different types of evidence might be flexibly accommodated. The final part of the session will be given over to group discussion about the idea of mapping the OER evidence base and what the OER community might want from such services.
4. About me
• Philosopher & Educational Technologist
• Based at the Institute of Educational Technology (IET) Open University UK
• Research Associate (OER Research Hub)
• http://flavors.me/philosopher1978
• Twitter @philosopher1978
About The Open University
• Europe’s largest distance learning university
• Access: foremost provider to mature, disabled and working students
• A world leader in technology-enhanced pedagogy
• Head of the FutureLearn MOOC consortium
5. About the Project
• Funded by William & Flora Hewlett Foundation for two years
• Two professors lead four researchers among a team of ten
• Tasked with building the most comprehensive picture of OER impact
• Organised by a set of research hypotheses
• Working across different educational sectors
• Collaboration model
• Global reach but with a USA focus
• http://oerresearchhub.org
10. Filtering data according to sector,
hypothesis & polarity
Framework for comparing disparate
evidence types
Effective evidencebased decisionmaking and advocacy
Collaborative research, analysis &
dissemination
Openness in action: openly licensed
research instruments, data
11. Research Hypotheses
Keyword
Performance
Openness
Access
Hypothesis
OER improve student performance/satisfaction
People use OER differently from other online materials
OER widen participation in education
Retention
OER can help at-risk learners to finish their studies
Reflection
OER use leads educators to reflect on their practice
Finance
OER adoption brings financial benefits for students/institutions
Indicators
Informal learners use a variety of indicators when selecting OER
Support
Informal learners develop their own forms of study support
Transition
OER support informal learners in moving to formal study
Policy
OER use encourages institutions to change their policies
Assessment
Informal assessments motivate learners using OER
14. UNESCO Mapping Project (2012)
http://unescochair.athabascau.ca/oer-mapping-exercise
• Mapping to raise awareness of OER
• Tracking complexity, identifying major players & actions
• Community building, communication and advocacy
• Localised data with centralised quality control
OLnet Evidence Hub (2011-2012)
http://ci.olnet.org/
• Explore and debate key challenges for OER movement
• Collective intelligence: raise questions, propose solutions
• Sharing relevant web resources
19. Title
• Text
Copy
• Text / HTML
• Supports embedding of multimedia content
Hypothesis
Polarity
Location
Sector
Citation
• Association of evidence with hypothesis
• Evidence is either +ve/-ve in relation to a hypothesis
• Geotagging / GPS
• School (K12) / College / HE / Informal
• Academic citation
• Hyperlink / URL
37. Explore Survey
Data
Policy Map
Machine
curation
API Integration:
SurveyMonkey,
Google, etc.
Data
Visualizations
Human curation
bookmarklet
Data mashups
using open data
Exporting data
sets under
open license
Argumentation
analysis