Motivations to deposit: Two approaches to Open Educational Resources (OERs) within Languages and Social Sciences

Sarah Hayes

Shared resources, unshared language?

EUNIS Conference, Warsaw24 June 2010

Our joint paper for EUNIS examines the language used to discuss what OER means to teachers, with insights from C-SAP, Humbox and JISC

Hayes, S, Lowe, P, Marsh, D & Gruszczynska, A (2010)“Motivations to deposit: Two approaches to Open Educational Resources (OER) within Languages and Social Sciences (LSS) at Aston University

School of Languages and Social Sciences

Participation in 2 Open Educational Resources (OER) Projects run by our 2 Higher Education Academy Subject Centres & funded by JISC:-

C-SAP Evaluating the Practice of Opening up Resources for Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences Participation co-ordinated by Pam Lowe

LLAS Humbox (Languages) Participation co-ordinated by Sarah Hayes

..an inspiring collectionof free Humanitiesteaching resources

www.humbox.ac.uk

Introducing....

Why use HumBox?

• Showcase your learning resources to the world

• to colleagues and potential students

• People can put a face to the learning resource

• You can disseminate your research too - as part of your profile

Why use HumBox?

• Diversify your teaching• Receive feedback from

others on how they use your resources – a peer review and comments facility enables this

• In short, we are proud, as project partners, of all that HumBox has achieved so far…

But, there are nowmany OERs to choose from in many different places ‘You don’t need to reinvent the wheel’ – if someone else has already developed a learning resource similar to what you need, then you can download and adapt it.

This sounds easy – but is it?

What if ‘re-inventing the wheel’ is an important, necessary part of teaching?

• In Social Sciences students question/add to knowledge• The C-SAP Project evaluated the process of re-purposing• What does this mean for teachers in Social Sciences?

– To ask, how might someone else use my teaching materials?• They developed a toolkit to 'map' out a module into an

enhanced open framework• Released their teaching materials to ‘Jorum Open’ • Conducted a literature review. Read more on C-SAP at

http://www.csap.bham.ac.uk/oer/index.html

Given that HumBox and C-SAP took such different approaches, OER could mean quite different things to different subject groups….

Q: Are we sharing resources, but not sharing the language we use to discuss these?

A freely available corpus tool: Antconc http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/antconc_index.html

was used to examine the discourse about OERs - What are different ‘voices’ saying?

Discourse from the 2 project forums and from JISC papers was analysed to ask: What language is shared by all?

……..In short – not that much!C-SAP: materials, teaching, learning…….HumBox: HumBox, resources, meeting…….JISC: JISC, Project(s), JISC OER Call……..

3 different ‘voices’?

Getting deeper into OER discourse

What do the words around ‘teaching’ and ‘materials’ reveal?

“I think that teaching materials are always embedded in contexts, users need to read them critically to identify pedagogic assumptions”

“takes the class into areas not necessarily scripted in the teaching materials but this direction is tacitly assumed”

Re-use needs tacit understanding of the context in which we teach

1. C-SAP (Centre for Sociology Anthropology & Politics)

2. HUMBOX (LLAS – Languages, Linguistics & Area Studies)

“to introduce the dissemination of teaching materials in School or Faculty’s strategy maps?”

“the potential Humbox has in relation to both teaching and research and the building of a personal profile”

“the big advantage of the Humbox is that it caters for every member of the teaching and learning community.”

‘Self-marketing’, dissemination, community

3. JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee)

“helping universities to share educational materials freely online”

“so that universities are able to continue sharing materials at a similar pace beyond the funding period”

“Sharing quality learning materials in this way can enhance a university’s reputation. A ‘shop window’ for the university’s work.”

“especially when material is being used as a marketing tool.”

Sharing as a ‘marketing tool’ for the university

‘OER initiatives can draw strongly on institutional discourses that aim to raise profiles, leaving to a second plan the commitment to offering true possibilities for the knowledge construction’

Santos, A, McAndrew, P, & Godwin, S 2007 The Discourses of OERs: how flat is this world? From:-http://aisantos.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/the-discourses-of-oers-final-licensed.pdf

What form should OER take?What are we asking people to do with their teaching

materials – do students benefit?“Academic staff can reuse and repurpose materials rather than needing to develop them from scratch. This frees up time to work on aspects of their work where they can truly add value, such as furthering their research and effectively tutoring their students.” (JISC)

Should we avoid re-inventing the wheel?“How a module is taught doesn’t just depend on the availability of appropriate and useful materials. It depends on the dynamism of the teacher, the rapport with the class, the adjustments that need to be made depending on the different needs in different years.” (C-SAP)

In summary• Studying word counts from OER discourse can be

revealing. A tool called Antconc was used for this• Established comparable sized texts from HumBox, C-SAP

forums and JISC briefing papers• What are the personal critical goals for academics, the

aims for funding bodies and the benefits for students in releasing teaching materials as OERs?

• Important to examine the social, cultural and political environment around ‘OER’ as an ‘interpretive resource’ (Mautner, 2005) to further sustainability

• We can learn what might motivate tutors from language

• Visit HumBox and set up your own account• It is now completely open to all

•Create your own profile•Find a useful resource and help yourself – lots there•Give some feedback to the creator on how you use it

• Have a look here at partner videos discussing Humbox

www.humbox.ac.uk How do I get involved in OER?

• Visit C-SAP and read about the project to map modules into an enhanced open framework

•Try the online demo of the Toolkit

http://www.csap.bham.ac.uk/oer