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Two OER sites for researchers
I've been involved very peripherally with a project funded through SCORE, and led by my colleague Robin Goodfellow. The aim was to develop two sites, one aimed at overseas postgrads coming to the UK to conduct research study. This site gives advice on matters such as research methods and writing for academic purpose. It is at http://www.readytoresearch.ac.uk/ The other site is aimed more at UK undergraduates and looks at digital literacy, digital scholarship type issues, so addresses topics such as learning with social media, plagiarism, collaborating online. It can be found at: http://www.digitalscholarship.ac.uk/ The interesting thing about the project was that the brief was to build it using only OERs as content.…
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Innovating Pedagogy report
Here at IET in the OU, a bunch of us, led by Mike Sharples, were asked to produce an annual report on how changes in teaching and learning (related to technology) were changing the current landscape. The initial idea was to do this for senior OU management, but I'm pleased to say that everyone involved wanted to make it wider than that and create a publicly available report. Think of it as like a Horizon's report with more focus on pedagogy. We adopted the same methodology as the Horizon report also. It does have a bit of an OU bias, but I think it's a very good read (and I…
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The inclusions & cold flows of the Finch report
In this post I shall attempt to use aluminium pressure die casting as a metaphor for what I perceive as the defects in the recent Finch Report on Open Access publishing. I know what you're thinking, "not another aluminium die-casting as metaphor for open access post, I've read ten of those this week". Here goes then – when making aluminium pressure die casts, molten aluminium is forced into a mould at high velocity and pressure. There are a number of defects that can occur, and two of these are analogous to the problems I see with the Finch report. I should start by saying I think the Finch team did…
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How to dismantle a sector
I'm not an overtly political animal, unlike many of my colleagues, so maybe this post is misguided or misinformed, but increasingly working in Higher Ed in the UK feels like working in a beleagured sector. Many people will feel like this in the current crisis, so higher ed is no different in that respect, but it now feels like it is not only suffering the same fate as all sectors, but is actually the victim of an ongoing campaign. I sit in many meetings with colleagues, in this university and across the sector, where we end up shaking our heads and laughing with a mixture of amazement and hysteria at…
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Comparing the value of education
I've signed up to study the OU's MA in History starting in September. My reasons for this are twofold: it's good to be a student every now and then to remember what it's like to be a 'real' student; and I have this notion that part of what I do on this blog and in my digital scholarship book is to act like a contempary historian. I am trying to document, predict, analyse, and generally make-it-up-as-I-go-along this particular period of change for scholarly practice, because I feel that it's a significant one. But I don't have the real theoretical or methodological underpinning from a historical perspective to do this. I'm…
