Research
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Valuing emotional intelligence
I have the real privilege of being the lead on the GO-GN project, which if you don’t know, is a global network of OER doctoral researchers. It is by far the project I get the most from, since you see the real impact it has on people. Our members often talk about how much joining GO-GN has meant to them, using phrases like ‘finding my tribe’, ‘feeling like a member of a family’, ‘I no longer felt alone’. A very important aspect of GO-GN is helping researchers develop intellectually, such as selecting conceptual frameworks, refining their methodology, sharpening research questions, etc. But, as the quotes above indicate, as important (if…
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Models of online & flexible learning
I mentioned in a previous post that I have been doing some work with Dominic Orr and Rob Farrow in behalf of the ICDE, looking at various models of open, online and flexible technology enhanced learning (what we labelled OOFAT). The full report is out now, and I humbly suggest it is the best (OOFAT) report you will ever read. When ICDE set out this work they were very clear about two principles: it should address the range of how open, online and flexible models are being used, and every institution should be able to recognise themselves in the model. So, in contrast to many types of ed tech analysis…
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Developing models of open, online education
The “OOFAT” project is currently looking at different models of open, online, flexible and technology-enhanced learning (OOFAT) in higher education. It’s conducted on behalf of the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE), and a key element is the desire to cover and model a wide range of activity. Too often research projects are too focused on the search for new, innovative practices. The emphasis on very tech- oriented models also tends to favour the ‘silicon valley’ approach to education. This tends to over-represent some small scale examples, which often don’t develop into sustainable models once the hype has died down. These models are not always applicable to providers…
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Critically examining unbundling
I’m on the advisory board for a project led by Laura Czerniewicz in Cape Town and Neil Morris in Leeds, examining the concept of ‘unbundling’ in higher ed. I came across unbundling first of all back in 2000 with Evans and Wurster’s Blown to Bits book. It’s important to remember that at the time, internet business was new, people didn’t know how it would turn out, and many were still saying it wouldn’t be a big thing. So anything that offered a reasonably intelligent analysis was seized upon. There was a lot that was useful in their book, setting out the idea that services that had previously been held together…
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Emerging OER research discipline
The Primordial soup of OER… One of the things I’ve become increasingly interested in is how the OER discipline emerges. Having lived through it, you get to see the field evolve. I’m not sure it counts as a field, subject, discipline, or whatever. Is it part of a new open education discipline? Is there a unifying field at all? These are general questions I have, but one I was also interested in, was what themes have emerged in research over the years? I set out to have a look at this, by examining publications in OER Knowledge Cloud from 2001. I did a content analysis of abstracts from 2007 (chosen…
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Nothing is deserved, everything is accepted
In a recent post I mentioned how I’d been at two conferences and academics had bemoaned the state of the relationship with IT services. At the risk of making academics seem like a bunch of whingers, a second theme occurred (perhaps people just like moaning to me) which was the precariousness of the academic researcher. I write this as a tenured Prof (whatever tenure means now), so it is not a self pity or self serving motivation that drives this but concern at the direction universities are hiccuping their way to. I’ve become increasingly disturbed by the way universities (in the UK, but I suspect it’s commonplace) treat researchers. For…
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Should bid proposals be open access?
I was at a UNESCO OER meeting in Paris last week (impersonating an important person) and a topic that came up a couple of times was the waste of resource that we just accept. Someone highlighted all the EU funded projects which are difficult to search, or find outputs for. They were from an AI, machine learning background so they wanted access to this to discern patterns and create links between projects. In the Battle for Open I talk about how much effort is wasted in the current bid writing proposal: Some of the inherent waste in current practice often goes unnoticed, because it is accepted practice that academics have…
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What are the research questions for OER?
When we developed the OER Research Hub project with Hewlett, we came up with 11 hypotheses that they and we felt represented questions that it would be useful to find answers to. Some worked better than others to be honest, but it was a good way to shape the research of that project. We got the questions largely right I think, and this led to more people wanting to collaborate with us. But it was still very much our interpretation as to what was significant, and this was back in 2011. A lot has changed in the OER world since then – we’ve had MOOCs, open textbook projects are getting…
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Open Ed – All growed up
(Open ed is not about two teams battling it out. Plus – ice hockey!) Following on from my previous post, another reflection on the OpenEd conference. I went to two types of presentations – I’ll label them “hardcore research”, and “philosophy of open” to make distinctions, but I don’t mean to imply research is not involved in the second type. In the hardcore research group there were some excellent presentations from Rajiv, Tidewater college, and the Z-degree projects. I’ve labelled these hardcore research, because they did all those things you’d want to control for in examining the impact of OER. They tested pre-knowledge, controlled for demographic effects, compared across control…
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Better than Christmas – OER Research hub report
The OER Research Hub completed its second annual report for the founders, the Hewlett Foundation in September. It plots the evidence we’ve gained against the 11 hypotheses of the project. It’s not the final report which we will deliver next year, but it has some very interesting findings. We have over 6000 survey responses from educators, informal and formal learners, and librarians. Some of the key findings are: 37.6% of educators and 55.7% of formal learners say that using OER improves student satisfaction 27.5% of educators and 31.9% of formal learners agree that OER use results in better test scores 79.4% of OER users adapt resources to fit their needs…
