The Virtual Graduate School: an Approach to Embedding Open Educational Resources in Social Science Research Methods Teaching and Learning

Dr Ester Ehiyazaryan-White, University Centre Doncaster

6th ESRC Research Methods Festival, St Catherine’s College, Oxford

University Centre Doncaster – HE in FE provider in South Yorkshire. The premise of the open learner and open education are fairly new and unfamiliar to staff .

Open learner: ‘the learner is positioned in a wider open world of free access’ (McAndrew, 2010)

Drivers for openness at UCD:• Move towards more flexible forms of provision (meeting the needs

of mature learners, professionals with families) - open access resources help to develop quality flexible provision (Lane, 2010)

• Expanding postgraduate study (due to HEFCE student number cap) – quality research methods resources needed to meet the needs of postgraduate learners; as compared to larger HE institutions - paucity of up to date resources available in the library.

Context

Examples of flexible provision

Fully distance learning BA Hons Top Up Early Childhood Studies, dissertation module:

• Access to resources and support – entirely organised through the VLE

• Utilises lecture capture material produced in-house (costly, labour intensive, becomes outdated fast in a dynamic area of study where policy changes rapidly)

• Supplemented by video, audio and text based resources drawn from OER repositories (less costly, but similar issues with keeping the material up to date). Advantages – provide a richer learning environment

In house

OER

Examples of flexible provision

Communication is through a mixture of open and closed platforms

• Formally: VLE discussion forums (Blackboard discussion forums, threads for each topic, applying Salmon’s five stage model (2011)

• Informally: Facebook• Skype and Join.me – one to one

tutorial support; Join.me very good for a verbal walkthrough as it allows screen sharing (in the absence of an institutional web conferencing tool)

• Twitter – addresses some of the issues of currency of information which the video content presents

@childhoodUCD

Examples of flexible provision

Examples of flexible provision

Salmon’s five stage model for collaborative online learning

Image courtesy of International Forum of Educational Technology & Society

Learner needs and the benefits of openness

• Engaging, media rich research methods learning resources

• Pedagogy which addresses the challenges of research methods teaching:

• procedural (applying technique)

• theoretical knowledge (understanding of abstract epistemological terms)

• Research methods constitute troublesome knowledge:

‘when what is to be assessed lies outside their prior knowledge and experience’ (Land and Meyer, 2010, p. 62)

• Platforms which facilitate access to such learning and conversation and idea exchange around the learning

How do OER and open academic practice address some of these challenges?

• Open, real world data• Interactive content (procedural knowledge, for example – coding

and analysing data)• Context free content (some OER are flexible enough to allow the

tutor to introduce context specificity – the advantage of designing for reuse)

Challenges of research methods teaching

Open, real world data

•Addresses troublesome knowledge – the data is subject specific and situates learning in context.•Statistical analyses return results which learners can relate to knowledge acquired in other modules (examples: social policy; child development)•For more on the value of secondary data (Smith, 2011):•http://www.bera.ac.uk/resources/using-numeric-secondary-data-education-research

•Growing Up in Scotland – large scale child development survey; similar to the Millennium Cohort Study•Openly accessible data through the Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS)•SPSS format

Open, real world data

Learners explored:•Food and nutrition – formation of healthy eating habits•Neighbourhood and community – active citizenship; social policy•Activities with others – distributions of outdoor/ indoor play•Demographic factors – work, employment and income

How does this meet learners’ needs?

•A way of introducing working with SPSS through examples relating to practice

•The scale of real world data – daunting; students would have preferred to work with their own data

•Learners needed to establish a personal connection with the study and a better understanding before analysing the ESDS data

Open, real world data

Understanding quantitative

research methodologies:

longitudinal cohort studies

Understanding social policy:

children’s health, education, welfare

GUS open data

Understanding descriptive

statistics

Skills in SPSS use

Open, real world data

Context

Why develop the Virtual Graduate School?

• Capture, share and increase the impact of the work on developing resources for distance learning courses

• Promote the presence of postgraduate study at University Centre Doncaster• Support the continuing professional development of postgraduate learners.• Access to resources in an HE in FE environment

Aims of the Virtual Graduate School

• Providing resources on research methodologies aimed at postgraduate learners

• Providing an idea of postgraduate study at UCD through case study examples of student project work

• Involving students in open sharing• Involving research methods tutors in the development of

OER through repurposing/ reuse.

Topics:

Dissemination of researchQualitative and quantitative research methodsPractice based researchWriting for publicationAcquiring and writing research bidsReflective practice in researchAdvanced literature searchingPresentation skills for researchersEthics guidance for research projects

What is the Virtual Graduate School?

Content sources

• JORUM• Open Learn• Economic and Social Data Service• East Midlands Research Support Group• Research methods YouTube channels:

AIEMCA (Australian Institute of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis)

• HEA/JISC Open Educational Resources programme: Discovering collections project

• University of Huddersfield Online QDA

What is the Virtual Graduate School?

Involving research methods tutors in reuse/ digital curation

Advantages of involving tutors:

• Broader range of expertise (diverse disciplines – criminology, social science, education, arts, sports science, business and management)

• Sense of ownership – tutors more likely to embed the VGS content in their research methods teaching.

• Development of digital scholarship – digital curation is one of the key forms of digital scholarship for academics (Weller, 2010); open publishing relevant for staff in an HE institution aiming for taught degree awarding powers.

Challenges:• Promoting a sense of ownership• Digital scholarship not yet widespread in an institution where the

emphasis is on scholarship of teaching and learning not on research.

Involving students in content creation

Changing the Learning Landscape HEA funding

Involvement of four students working on projects in their respective disciplines

Premise of the project – to develop digital literacy skills in students participating in the project, as defined by the Digital and Information Literacy Framework (OU)

Following the example of Graham Gibbs, national teaching fellowship project – Online QDA.

Subject area Topic

English Academic blogging: A Way Forward in Improving English for Academic Purposes in Post 16 Education

Education and inclusion The impact of tablets and eLearning in a post 16 Special Educational Needs Department

Education and employability The value of vocational qualifications in a competitive industry

Early years education A case study into developing a community based approach to outdoor learning through curriculum enhancement.

Involving students in content creation for the VGS

Advantages of involving studentsDeveloping their digital scholarshipDeveloping the digital literacy skills for postgraduate students (Digital and Information Literacy Framework, Reedy and Goodfellow, 2012):• Applying digital techniques to conduct and share research• Develop ability to articulate the ways in which research information is generated

and disseminated• Engage in critical appraisal, including judgements on reliability and validity, of own

work and the work of others. • Demonstrate leadership in an online community – for example take the initiative to

propose appropriate media and working methods• Provide evidence of engagement in online communities and professional subject

groups using multiple technologies

Student voice

Challenges of involving students(Very similar to those when involving tutors!)• Need to develop further confidence in digital scholarship practices • Need to develop a sense of ownership of the project.

Cloudworks – a support environment for students working on VGS content development

http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2894

Challenges to address

• Making the VGS sustainable – ongoing contributions from research methods tutors and postgraduate students

• The need for staff and students to engage in developing their digital scholarship and higher level digital literacy skills

• Ensuring accessibility of the materials shared• Ensuring the material selected reflects the needs of the students• Overcoming technical issues – much of the open content sits

outside of the website system

Dr Ester Ehiyazaryan-White, Lecturer in Professional and eLearning Development, University Centre Doncaster

Email: ester.ehiyazaryan@don.ac.ukTel: 0130 255 3809Twitter: @eehiyazaryanSlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/EsterEhiyazaryan

Thank you

Land R. and Meyer, J. (2010) Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (5): Dynamics of Assessment. In Eds. Meyer, J., Land, R., Baillie, C., Threshold Concepts and Transformational Learning. London: Sense Publishers.

McAndrew, P. (2010) Defining ‘Openness’: updating the concept of ‘open’ for a connected world. [Online]. Journal of Interactive Media in Education (JIME). Available from: http://jime.open.ac.uk/ 2010/10. [Accessed: 18 June 2014].

Reedy, K. and Goodfellow, R. (2012) Digital and information literacy framework. The Open University. [Online] Available from: http://www.open.ac.uk/libraryservices/subsites/dilframework/. Accessed: 18 June 2014.

Salmon, G. (2011) A model for collaborative online learning. In E-moderating: the key to teaching and learning online. 3d Ed. Oxon, Routledge.

Scottish Centre for Social Research (2012) Growing Up in Scotland Study: Providing Information to Help Develop Policies Affecting Children and their Families in Scotland. [Online]. Available from: http://www.crfr.ac.uk/gus/index.html [Accessed 18 June 2014].

School of Human and Health Sciences (2013) Online QDA: Learning qualitative data analysis on the web. University of Huddersfield. [Online]. Available from: http://onlineqda.hud.ac.uk/. [Accessed: 18 June 2014].

Smith, E. (2011) Using numeric secondary data in educational research, British Educational Association online resource. [Online]. Available from: http://www.bera.ac.uk/resources/using-numeric-secondary-data-education-research [Accessed 18 June 2014].

Weller, M. (2011) The nature of scholarship. In The digital scholar: how technology is transforming scholarly practice. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

References