OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES AND THE OPEN MOVEMENT

(#OCTEL WEEK 3 WEBINAR - POST 2 OF 2)

OK, so back to reflecting on ocTEL Week 3 Webinar with Cable Green, Director of Global Learning at Creative Commons. 'Post 1' focused on the well-delivered Webinar, this 'Post 2' focuses on aspects of the content.

Creative Commons (CC) - makes it simple, easy and legal to share and reuse

With CC, Cable notes you don't give up your authorship/ownership rights, but rather share under the conditions that suit you, using licencing that is recognised around the world.

With the advent of digital resources, we needn't keep paying for producing or purchasing resources, but rather share digitally, resulting in low/no cost c/to creating and shipping hard-copy resources such as books.

Open Educational Resource (OER) - what makes a resource an OER?

An OER:

• must be freely available
• must have the rights to:
• REUSE    (as is)
• REVISE    (modify)
• REMIX      (put more than one OER component together to make a resource)
• REDISTRIBUTE (share it back)
• RETAIN    (get to keep a copy/can't be taken away from you, e.g. the copy that you remixed, etc.).

If you see a resource within a MOOC that is (C) - Cable gives the example of a Coursera resource - if you use it without permission you would be in violation of the law and you could be sued. Such a resource is not an OER.

Creative Commons (CC) - licencing codes

I've been using Creative Commons for years, but I did not know that putting the licence conditions at the end of a citation was the preferred CC method.

For example, after I found a suitable Flickr CC image, filtered by suitable licencing requirements to save time finding good images I couldn't use, once double checked I would tend to reference as: 

(CC) Nick Kenrick. Imperial Peacock https://www.flickr.com/photos/zedzap/3376988285/in/photolist-69pWXX-eaqv7v-D9uuL-4HERje-37dURK-3aJiN-ghLm6H-6AtnwH-enPNMd-cbzDdj-cLuxSN-chZabj-zUejp-PEAxA-cVaM1-4SMedU-4ZxyH1-zRbLr-7xdT5Y-9qcE8i-8bubxQ-nvFVrp-8Anp85-hEhT7A-akCno-efFig8-hmpTmi-4w9vq2-8ura1L-6pLnng-cjf6if-cjeRHA-55TdHP-dvUtF7-6Go8s-gR3jA-ntDQZJ-bVVgzd-fbYbXj-dvY59C-6QVPcX-cjf3XG-cjeTcq-eie3vH-L45nn-e8DofA-4D3NGj-9Tdo92-gNTpwW-kXWKei

This practice was since modified (not long after the period of time when many Flickr URLs became exceedingly long...) to a more sightly version, such as:

(CC) Nick Kenrick. Imperial Peacock

Now, after Week 3 ocTEL Webinar:

Imperial Peacock by Nick Kenrick is licenced under CC BY-SA-NC

That is, after I filter for Flickr images with the CC licencing conditions I am after, I then double check the conditions via the symbols and associated link on the image page, I now also note the licencing conditions at the end of the reference in abreviated form as above, and as illustrated by Cable and supported by the CC website.

Note, the CC website page Best practices for attribution, has examples of referencing using letters such as 'CC BY-NC' or by using the hyperlinked full term, e.g. 'Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial'. I'm going with Cable's shorthand.

  

Licencing Condition	Abbreviation	Symbol
Public Domain Declaration	CC0	Line in 0
Attribution	BY	Person
Share Alike	SA	Circular arrow
No Derivatives	ND	= sign
Non Commercial	NC	Line through $

Examples of Creative Commons License Use

The CC Website illustrates how the licencing denotes the most open resources through to the most restricted resources via the Examples of Creative Commons License Use webpage.

Other useful tips from Cable Green

Cable was asked and responded to a range of really useful questions. I have heavily summarised them here, mashed together some of the discussions, and re-ordered and re-worded to my preference..!

Q: Is a CC licence good practice for blogs?
A: Yes. If you (C) it, then others can't copy and use it without gaining permission from you. If you (CC) it, then - depending on your licencing conditions - others can use it and reference you with a link back to your site.

Q: Is a University that charges students tuition fees a commercial entity and therefore cannot use NC resources?
A: The University charges for tuition not for the resource. If the Uni prints a 'CC BY-NC' book in bulk for students and charges cost recovery, they are not making a profit. If they charge above the cost recovery for such a book, then they are making a profit and would be violating the NC licence conditions.

Some academics put 'CC BY' only, as they want people to:

• use the resource
• reference and link people back to their own work (which would show people it's available freely and they don't have to pay)
• modify and improve the resource as a dynamic resource (best to put 'CC BY-SA' if you want to require others to share modifications back to OER community) .

Q: Can I make up an OER from a mix of OER resources with differing licencing conditions?

A: Yes. Will need an overarching statement like:

     "Except where otherwise noted, everything in this book is under the Creative Commons
     Attribution-Noncommercial licencing conditions"

Then at each otherwise licenced area, note the discrete licencing conditions. Take great care if the resource is a well-mashed resource!

Q: What if the conditions of one resource within my new, remixed resource changes it's licencing conditions?

A: You can rely on the conditions at the time you used the resource (hence the 'RETAIN' clause), but if you go to renew the work, you have to look again at the licencing conditions.

Q: I want to share my stuff; how do I choose a licence?

A: Go to the Creative Commons Choose a Licence tab, and work through the steps.

There is no charge, no privacy detail collected, no register of listed works.

Q: I want to use OERs. Where do I start?

A: Start with The Open Professionals Education Network (OPEN). This is the biggest open project ever, and all is freely available, including educational items, simulations, etc. Others can freely use, modify (e.g. translate to local language is a common modification), and has sites from around the world. Also look at OpenStax College.

I really enjoyed this Webinar, have shared it with my Uni colleagues on Yammer, and it is going to be super useful to quote from!

Shiny happy people by Donna Cymek is licenced under CC BY-NC-ND

Open Educational Resources and the open movement

(#OCTEL WEEK 3 WEBINAR - POST 1 of 2)

So far, this #ocTEL MOOC has been a worthwhile adventure. However, this morning I viewed the recording of the Week 3 Webinar with Cable Green, Director of Global Learning at Creative Commons, and I've got to say it's been my highlight so far.

While there was a familiar start to the Webinar, given my frequant professional use of Creative Common (CC) resources, there was much offered on a very useful level for OERs (Open Educational Resources). However, I am going to post my reflections in two entries; this first post is on the delivery of the Webinar itself. 

Well-delivered Webinar

Cable's delivery was something educators new to delivering content online should be directed to watch. It's that good.

While I suspect a couple of the questions were Dorothy Dix-ers (common lingo in Australian politics re planting questions) it worked really, really well. The first questioner, Martin, was able to provide context for Cable to apply the detail to, and carefully threaded this throughout his talk even when others asked more general (and likely spontaneous) questions. With no prepared slides, we either looked at Cable talking to us (vidcam), or at the whiteboard he was cleverly and messily drawing on to conceptualise a concept (and came back to usefully several times), or his typing on the whiteboard a range of questions popping up in the chat field. I haven't seen a Webinar done so well since I had the pleasure of professionally liaising online via Blackboard Collaborate's predecessor 'ElluminateLive!' with Steve Rowe, Southern Cross University. 

I felt the hour went very fast, I learnt a lot, and it felt very interactive (in a vicarious sense, since I was watching the recording...).

peacock time: my #ocTEL badges so far... 

(Including the ones I didn't know I'd automatically achieved...)

Imperial Peacock by Nick Kenrick is licenced under CC BY-SA-NC

Yes, a little 'show-off' time. Except... there is a sense of achievement and progress in being offered and participating in a badge award system. I have been regularly noting how I am 'behind' with the #ocTEL MOOC activities, so it came as a surprise to me to see that I have actually completed more than half of each of the weekly badged activities. Personally (and professionally) I would recommend such a system for non-graded MOOCs.

Week 2-3 badges

I have attempted and applied for:

• Check-in Badge (wks 2 and 3)
• Webinar badge (wks 2 and 3)
• TEL One Badge - Week 2 

Week 1 badges

Week 1 Badges not (yet?) attempted:
'TEL Explorer badge' - Week 1

Week 0 badges

Week 0 Badges not (yet?) attempted:
'TEL Explorer badge' - Week 0

Auto badges I didn't know I could achieve / had achieved...

What a bonus! Badges I didn't realise existed and I have already automatically achieved some of them simply by following some #ocTEL guidelines.

'Community Badges'

'Quest Badges'
Nil (I honestly don't know what these quest badges are - I'll look them up if I can be bothered...)

Student/Learner Approaches to Learning

#ocTEL Week 2 'If I only do One Thing' activity

It's the end of Week 3 in the #ocTEL MOOC, and I'm still doing Week 2 activities. If I took heed from the Week 0 Webinar, I'd have learnt to just be satisfied with how much I achieved each week, and just move on. But I can't. I can see there are some good activities that I haven't had time to engage with as yet.

In Week 1, Activity 1.1 forum discussions, fellow ocTELers Tom introduced me to ipsative assessment and Elizabeth followed with a blog reference, Kleeman (2012), What is ipsative assessment and why would I use it?.
But why did I just jump from mentioning Week 3 to Week 2 to Week 0 to Week 1? I'm seeing a thread.

Differing from norm-referenced measures (supposedly out-dated 'comparison to others' so why does it keep re-surfacing) and criterion-referenced measures (the more acceptable use of set external criteria), "ipsative assessment in an education/learning context compares a test-taker’s results against his or her previous results" (Kleeman, 2012). Kleeman purports that ipsative assessment can help all improve, e.g. encourages instead of demotivates a 'weaker' student by showing progressive improvements; challenges a 'stronger' student not to be complacent but to aim to do even better.

The simple question I set for myself in Week 0 for this #ocTEL MOOC (see first blog post, dated May 1) was simply:

       "Will ocTEL be the first MOOC that I actually complete?"

The point is, I'm not going to finish it if I don't see the WIFM; the 'what's in it for me'; the motivation to keep going despite all other busy demands of life. I'm interested in the meta-analysis of the design and components of this course that might keep me connected and finish my first ever MOOC, despite this not being my first MOOC... I'm hoping to further understand learning design that works (or doesn't work) for me, as a 'learner' that may be representative and/or be comparative to other learners.

So then we get to:

       Week 2 Activity: If you only do one thing… Approaches to learning

An excerpt is provided by #ocTEL from Marton, F., Hounsell, D. and Entwistle, N., (eds.) The Experience of Learning: Implications for teaching and studying in higher education. 3rd (Internet) edition. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. It shows Table 1.1, Defining features of approaches to learning (p.19, plus presented below), which offers a quick snapshot comparison between learning approaches of deep (transforming), surface (reproducing), and strategic (organising).

Table 1.1, Defining features of approaches to learning, Entwistle, N.,  (2012) Contrasting Perspectives on Learning (2012) in Marton, F., Hounsell, D. and Entwistle, N., (eds.)  The Experience of Learning: Implications for teaching and studying in higher education. 3rd (Internet) edition. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh (p.19)

(may be photocopied or reproduced for non-profit educational purposes, provided that the source is explicitly and openly acknowledged and no amendments are made to the text).

.

The table below was created in response to a couple of #ocTEL questions, as related to the above referenced table:

Have you seen any evidence of these different approaches in online contexts, e.g. in technology-enhanced courses you teach? How did these differences manifest themselves in terms of online learning behaviour?

How might we encourage ‘deep learning’ in online contexts?

TEL Example	Learning Approach	Potential Reasons	Possible Solutions
Yearly workplace compliance online modules, e.g. 'work, health and safety', ‘equal opportunity’	Surface – on first completion Strategic – subsequent completions	Despite importance, the online modules were set up to be easy to complete. Staff may initially feel pressure to complete promptly. Later, the sites are familiar (unchanged) implicitly encouraging heading straight to answering test questions in a strategic manoeuvre to get the task ‘tick-off’ and managers happy.	Improvements could include refreshing the modules with: ·       updating content, including adding new case studies ·       altering assessment questions from previous years and including more interpretive questions ·       allowing for a collaborative component; there would be many people completing at similar times.
Fully online vocational single subject (Medical Terminology) with only campus attendance for final examination	Students with mixed approaches of surface, strategic, or deep depending on their own intrinsic and/or extrinsic motivations.	Students who do not necessarily want to do subject but their workplace has required it typically presented with surface and/or strategic approaches. Where there was personal motivation, e.g. own interest or desire for new job or promotion, often more a lean toward deep. Additionally, the online content offered minority of required learning c/to prescribed textbook.	Improvements to increase student motivations included: ·       updating online content: more content, wider range of choices to interact with content utilising an extensively interactive glossary, diagram labelling, word break-down exercises, formative questions with feedback ·       enabling more interaction, e.g. online interaction via LMS features; access to Med Term classes conducted on-campus.
Fully online undergraduate (health) subject, for students who are on-campus for other subjects	Students with mixed approaches of surface, strategic, or deep depending on their own intrinsic and/or extrinsic motivations. Few seemed to have a deep approach (prior to changes)	Low student satisfaction with this subject had a new teacher worried that most students really had little interest or motivation to do this subject; they viewed it as non-core/have-to-do. Minority of deep learning students truly valued the long lecture recordings; for most others way too long and repetitious intro and summarising (good for f2f but not required for online learning where student has video playing control)	Inspired to try a new approach, improvements included: ·       updating content, including removing long recorded ‘lecture hall’ lectures, to cut up and leave as shorter videos on the most interesting topic areas ·       providing connection via two short videos by the new teacher introducing herself and giving some reasons to be motivated, plus clear weekly guides of what is required, better online structure/navigation, and access to teacher options (on-campus and online).
Fully online postgraduate (education) subject, for students from various geographical locations	I was a paying student for this and represented a mix of deep and strategic approaches	I was: ·       engaged with content, wanted to learn ·       appreciative of the learning design ·       found nearly all peers interesting to engage with (unashamedly ignored a few who demonstrated they wouldn’t aid my learning) ·       unapologetically coveting good marks.

Is my overarching question/goal to complete #ocTEL coupled with an intrinsic expectation to achieve deep learning putting me in an antagonistic position?

The only thing you can do when a cardboard box is empty by Felix E. Guerrero is licenced under CC BY-SA

I guess my somewhat crammed question above leads to another #ocTEL activity question:

Are you leaning towards one approach in particular on ocTEL, and if so why might that be? Perhaps you are employing strategies from more than one approach?

My answer is that I am at risk of becoming a surface learner if I attempt to do everything on offer - in the context of being time poor due to work and life commitments - coupled with wanting to reach my overarching goal of completely this MOOC, and completing it to my satisfaction. 

There's the rub. To complete it to my satisfaction would mean I would have to do it 'well', in the dual senses of achieving the goals set and meeting my need to learn more meaningful learning design stuff. Yep. I'm feeling a little like the young lady in the cardboard box above. I know I don't have to feel like this, given no-one fails #ocTEL or is behind (re Week 0), but one has one's own expectations to add...

I'm certainly not defeated yet; let's see how I go... Perhaps I'll finish the #ocTEL course in August instead of June, and miss out on some of the timely online interactions with my peers (that'd be a shame as the ones I've dipped into are good). Or perhaps I'll break my foot and be stuck at home for weeks just doing #ocTEL (no thanks - I like walking too much!). Regardless, I am grateful for the scheduled hiatus between Weeks 3 and 4 so that I might finally catch up on Weeks 2 and 3 activities...

Learning design for student-directed learning: opportunities and challenges
(#ocTEL Week 2 webinar)

This morning I viewed the recording of the above-named webinar via YouTube. Not bad I guess - getting started on Week 2 activities at the start of Week 3...
The speaker, Panos Vlachopoulos, is from Macquarie University, Sydney (where the 2013 ascilite conference was held), in my home country, Australia. While Panos (easier to spell than surname...) is listed as an Academic Developer at Maquarie, I was immediately attentive when he referred to himself instead as a Learning Designer - my preferred descriptor for myself :-)

'Student-directed' - Perspectives on this Terminology

After Panos gave the (predominantly UK) audience the context of recently announced and nasty federal government budget cuts to Education in Australia, he spent a few minutes acknowledging differences in terminology. The table below shows my representation of the various terms Panos referred to, if you think of columns A and B being mix-n-match options, and the last row offering another term/phrase without a mix-n-match option.

A	B
Teacher- Student-	focused
	centred
	directed
Self-directed

The mix of terms were given to help direct us to what Panos refers to when he uses the phrase 'student-directed'. But before that, he takes us to other perspectives via recommended published texts. These included:

• Rogers & Freiberg (1969) Freedom to Learn
  Perspective on 'student-directed': teacher as a fellow learner
• Cowan (2006) On Becoming an Innovative University Teacher: Reflection in Action
  Perspective on 'student-directed': open to discovery and negotiation; think what is better at a particular point; allow students to have at least some level of negotiation on the learning objectives
• Brookfield (2004) The Power of Critical Thinking for Adult Learning and Teaching
  Perspective on 'student-directed': required as a responsibility of a modern society; universities should create student-directed learners with learners having choice in how they will study and be assessed
• Laurillard (2013) Teaching as a Design Science
  Perspective on 'student-directed': within formal education as part of a system, learning designers have to think and plan for opportunities to create student-directed learners
  Note: this text most close to Panos' own perspective.

Panos differentiates further when he noted a question on 'student-generated' learning, and aligning this with 'student-directed'. He said that:

• student-centred learning is where someone else, e.g. the teacher, designs learning with the student in mind, while 
• student-directed/generated learning is where the teacher trusts the student to design or generate learning for self, and perhaps for the rest of the group.

Before finally giving us his preferred definition of student-directed learning, Panos notes the difficulty of obtaining advanced knowledge of our learner type/needs/preferences, never so more as we expand further into global markets.

Panos’ working/research definition of student-directed learning If a community of learners is to be formed, we need self-directed learners, who will develop intrinsic motivation to learn from and with each other (Wenger, 2009). If learning is to be truly self-directed, then there should be a period of learning activity during which the activity, the decisions which matter, the interceptions placed on sourced material and experiences, should be the sole responsibility of the learners, free at that time from pro-active inputs by people who set out to teach, however they define that word, and with whatever benevolent intent.

Panos' Study - and my Presentation of his Findings

The study was of a modest size, with 29 fully online post-grad students over one semester, including (heavily summarised):

• activities: traditional reading of articles and supporting discussions using both guided thought discussion and discovery thought discussion (both employing synchronous and asynchronous methods)
• technology: VLE (moodle); web-conferencing (Blackboard Collaborate); student choice of blog (either the Moodle provided blog or any other available blog); discussion diagram creator (draw or 'snap' pictures in Moodle discussion areas)
• learning design framework: The ring-fencing framework for student-centred learning (abridged from Vlachopoulos & Cowan, 2010b, p. 30) (and the full Distance Education article)
• data collection methods: dialogue analysis (harnessing, coding, analysing discussions across the various methods); post-activity questionnaire

Below I am representing the findings, which Panos visually represented in a radar diagram, reinterpreted for my own meaning making in a tabular version. I have not used all the detail Panos presented in the webinar; just the strengths and weakness that I interpreted from Panos' presentation.

Type of discussion activity	Strength/s *	Weakness/es *
Synchronous guided task	Community building	Task value (external) Self-evaluation
Asynchronous guided task	Task value (internal) Set learning-oriented goals Self-evaluation Feedback	Task value (external)
Synchronous discovery task	Task value (external) Set performance-oriented goals Community building	Task value (internal) Set learning-oriented goals Self-evaluation Feedback
Asynchronous discovery task	Task value (internal) Task value (external) Set learning-oriented goals Self-evaluation Feedback	Set performance-oriented goals Community building

* As interpreted from Panos’ findings of 7 factors on radar chart, as based on student feedback (Task value (internal – re worthwhile experience to learning what you thought you would learn); Task value (external) – not specifically defined; Set learning-oriented goals; Set performance-oriented goals; Self-evaluation; Community building; Feedback)

Note: In mid-20^th century psychology (e.g. Rotter, 1966), external control was a term for when a reinforcement was perceived as having some relationship to own actions but not contingent on them, while internal control was contingent upon own actions. Does this bear any relationship here?

During discussion ensuing from the findings, Panos was able to extol learning design decisions, and importance of designing in a suitable order and framing of activities, such as (and extended by me):

• Synchronous guided task - for - Community building:
  Best used at start of course to build community, but not too early; need to allow learners to grapple a bit with the content first to infuse the community building (give a context to relate to)
• Asynchronous guided task - for - completing tasks set in guide:
  Best to restrict this in first days, as it is overwhelming for students to see all the social networking posts when there's a lot of traffic and creates pressure to post for those who need to seriously analyse material and make their own meaning before posting
• Parameters of student-directed learning:
  Know your (institutional) learning environment; cannot innovate too wide or too often; can come across as too sporadic; need to carefully select.

Finally...

There are a couple of good parting messages. These can be found in the webinar recording:

• Key message from the study (around 38-minute mark) - 1 paragraph
• What is it all about (around 41-minute mark) - 4 points