#OpenScotland from #EADTU Conference from @LornaMCampbell

EADTU Conference - Open Scotland from LornaMCampbell

Re-posting this excellent presentation from Lorna Campbell here to get more folks to consider the policy gap that does exist in Scotland around promoting a culture of developing , sharing and re-using open educational resources across all of  public education.

Will stick it up too on SQA intranet - it is a handy over view of what is happening across Scotland in terms of opening up education. 

So SQA and #Openbadges What does that Really Mean ? #Mozfest

 In has taken a longer gestation period than I expected it to - but that is sometimes simply the nature of something worthwhile - but finally and with  the support of a number of colleagues from across  the SQA we had a paper accepted and approved by the necessary committees and we can move ahead in supporting #openbadges.

The press release came out two weeks ago and generated quite a lot of twitter traffic and a lot of emails too.
I thought it was worth setting out just what has been agreed.

I am speaking to Mozillians on Wednesday night and on Saturday I am a guest at Mozfest in London to speak to some of the many English based awarding bodies on the national approach we are taking to #Openbadges in Scotland.

I hope too to meet some other national awarding and accreditation bodies from around the world and compare notes on their approaches to #openbadges

We already have generated a lot of interest from corporate sector and from a number of professional bodies who are interested in our approach from across the UK.

Here is substance in terms of press release -

 Over the last two years we have been in dialogue with the Mozilla Foundation.

The Scottish Qualifications Authority supports the concept of Open Badges and is working in partnership with the Open Badges in Scottish Education Group  to support the adoption of Open Badges across a range of sectors.

We believe that the infrastructure promotes and supports greater flexibility for learning and the recognition of achievement.

Within the national context we believe that Open Badges have the potential to: accredit significant small steps in a learner’s journey from informal learning to formal certification,  offer recognition for the achievement of single competencies and outcomes,  provide recognition for chunks of learning or performance smaller than would normally be recognised in national certification and national credit rating systems and that badges can  be used towards accreditation of prior learning where appropriate.

 In an organisational context: We will explore the adoption of Open Badges as part of the recognition that we can offer teachers and appointees through our SQA Academy Courses We will explore the possibilities that Open Badges offer in terms of digital certification in the future.

Random Thoughts on Opening Up Education from #NAACE12

listen to ‘Interview with Joe Wilson @joecar at #Naace12’ on Audioboo

Found this interview from last year - thanks @eyebeams

Open Badges Scotland and SCOOB Group #openbadges

Really just using a range of vehicles including my own blog to promote membership of the Scottish Open Badges Group.

See communication below from Grainne Hamilton JISC Regional Support Centre Scotland

Over recent months there has been increasing interest in the digital, standards-based, open accreditation framework called Open Badges http://openbadges.org/. The Open Badges Infrastructure, which is being developed by Mozilla and shaped by an international community of people interested in accreditation, can be used to issue, display and earn digital representations of awards. A number of high profile organisations, educational institutions and communities such as NASA, Microsoft, De Paul University and the City of Chicago are already using Open Badges to reward and recognise hard and soft skills, achievements, attributes, contributions and so on.

In Scotland, interest has been growing in the opportunities afforded by Open Badges to augment traditional accreditation routes. A recent Jisc RSC Scotland event, the Open Badges Design Day, provided an opportunity for people to work with the Mozilla Badges and Skills Lead to consider the framework and possible badge-based pathways to learning. At this event, there was consensus that it would be useful to bring together interested parties to identify areas where Open Badges could add value to education in Scotland and to co-develop such badges.

The Jisc RSC Scotland has, therefore, convened the Scottish Open Badges (SCOOB) Group, which has met once and agreed that members will perform an overview and mapping function of Open Badges developments in Scotland, set up a number of sub-groups to jointly take forward specific areas of Open Badges work (to be agreed) and consider and develop badge pathways. The group hopes that through the input of representatives from a variety of educational institutions and agencies in Scotland, we will be able to consider synergies between different stages on a learner's formal and informal learning journey and contribute to the development of a badge eco-system within Scotland.

We want to ensure a broad representation on the SCOOB Group and sub-groups and would like to hear from anyone in Scottish education interested in joining them.

To note interest in becoming a member or if you would like more information about the kinds of areas the sub-groups might cover, please email openbadges@rsc-scotland.ac.uk. Please include a list of any particular areas of interest you have regarding Open Badges.

#OpenScotland #OER

On the 27th of June a group of decision makers from across Scottish Education will gather in Edinburgh for "Open Scotland".  

Open Scotland is a one day summit facilitated by Jisc CETIS in collaboration with SQA, Jisc RSC Scotland and the ALT Scotland SIG. 

The event will provide an opportunity for key stakeholders to critically reflect on the national and global impact and opportunities of open education, provide a forum to identify shared strategic interests and work towards a more integrated Scottish approach to openness in education.

A smarter Scotland is critical to delivering the Government's Purpose of achieving sustainable economic growth. By making Scotland smarter, we will lay the foundations for the future wellbeing and achievement of our children and young people, increase skill levels across the population and better channel the outputs of our universities and colleges into sustainable wealth creation, especially participation, productivity and economic growth.”

(http://www.scotland.gov.uk/About/Performance/scotPerforms/objectives/smarter)

How can Scotland leverage the power of “open” to develop the nation’s unique education offering? Can openness promote strategic advantage while at the same time supporting social inclusion, inter-institutional collaboration and sharing, and create new opportunities for the next generation of teachers and learners? 

The Scottish Government’s ‘Scotland’s Digital Future’ strategy, published in 2011, sets out the steps that are required to ensure Scotland is well placed to take full advantage of all the economic, social and environmental opportunities offered by the digital age.  However, whilst the Scottish Government has been active in advocating the adoption of open data policies and licences it has yet to articulate policies for open education and open educational resources. 

 In March 2013, the Scottish Funding Council published a ‘Further and Higher Education ICT Strategy’ that builds on the Scottish further and higher education sectors’ culture of collaboration and the range of national shared services that are already in place, many of which are supported by Jisc, JANET UK and others.  

What kinds of open policies and practices can we develop and share across all sectors of Scottish education to help implement these strategies and move them forward?

Scotland has a proud and distinctive tradition of education, which is recognised internationally.  The Curriculum for Excellence is transforming schools to better equip our children for the challenges of the 21st century.  With our colleges and universities experiencing major changes in terms of structure, funding and access, Scotland’s colleges are opening up their educational content to the world through the new Re:Source OER repository.  

The University of Edinburgh have pioneered the delivery of MOOCs in Scotland, recently attracting over 300,000 students to six online courses, and Napier University is embracing open practice through their open 3E Framework for teaching with technology, which has been adopted by over 20 institutions globally.  The Jisc RSC Scotland are making extensive use of the Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure (OBI), which enables an open, standards-based way to issue digital recognition and accreditation. The Scottish Qualifications Authority is exploring how open badges can be built into the national qualifications system and the ICT Excellence Group, which is overseeing the re-development of the Scottish schools' intranet GLOW, are also investigating their potential use

Elsewhere, the HEFCE funded UKOER Programme has been instrumental in stimulating the release of open educational resources and embedding open practice in English HE institutions.  SURFNet in the Netherlands recently published their second ‘Trends Report on OER’, and a group of Nordic countries have launched the Nordic Alliance for OER. The UNESCO 2012 Paris Declaration called on governments to openly license publicly funded educational materials, and later that year the European Union issued a public consultation on “Opening up Education – a proposal for a European initiative” in advance of a new EU Initiative on "Opening up Education" expected to launch in mid-2013. Underpinning many of these developments is an increased acceptance and adoption of Creative Commons licences.

We are experiencing a period of unprecedented flux in all sectors of teaching and learning.  For better or for worse, the advent of MOOCs has opened a public debate on the future direction of post-school education, though the balance of commercial opportunities and threats from the increased marketisation and commodification of education is  still unclear.

Open Scotland is a one day summit facilitated by Jisc CETIS in collaboration with SQA,  Jisc RSC Scotland and the ALT Scotland SIG.  The event will provide an opportunity for key stakeholders to critically reflect on the national and global impact and opportunities of open education, provide a forum to identify shared strategic interests and work towards a more integrated Scottish approach to openness in education.

“UNESCO believes that universal access to high quality education is key to the building of peace, sustainable social and economic development, and intercultural dialogue. Open Educational Resources (OER) provide a strategic opportunity to improve the quality of education as well as facilitate policy dialogue, knowledge sharing and capacity building.”

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-educational-resources/

I hope the gathering  will decide that we must have some simple policy drivers in Scotland to encourage individual and institutional open sharing , re-purposing and re-use of learning materials . The right decisions here will lay the foundations for lifelong learning in Scotland for generations to come.

Ultimately I think this will take some firm leadership and some political decision making.

 It has taken some mandating in other countries to make open and shared the norm.

I am very grateful to my colleagues at CETIS and the membership of the Association for Learning Technology for making this gathering possible 

#OER13 Open Access Explained!

The video below begins to explain open access in academic research but #OER is also about open access to learning and teaching materials.

I have been championing the sharing of learning materials since I came into the teaching profession. Here are some thoughts from a year ago.

I am delighted this year to be on the organising committee of #OER13.

 If you want to find out what you need to do to engage with #OER as an individual , as a teacher , as a learner or as an institution or public body based in UK or internationally then #oer13 is the place to be.

The keynotes are here http://www.ucel.ac.uk/oer13/keynotes.html .
The programme is here http://www.medev.ac.uk/oer13/prog/

I hope I can tempt more teachers, lecturers and policy makers in Scotland to engage in this global debate.
Look forward to seeing you in Nottingham 

Closed Minds in an Open World

thanks to Gabriel Vivas for image under Creative Commons Licence 

I enjoyed chatting with members of the Association of Learning Technology at Glasgow Caledonian University on Thursday morning. It was great to speak to  lots of like minds. It is great that the Funding Council is committed to open  - but we need more folks to know this - it should be reflected in institutional policies . It should stretch into schools and FE and other government agencies, who should be leading by example.

A clear policy steer was made in 2004 . It is quite hard to find policy in action though !

 I included my own as an example of one that is trying to open up but could do with more of a  policy steer.

What would a more open world look like ...

1. To get institutions and teachers to throw off the shackles and get sharing - ideally using creative commons or other suitable open licences ( publishing only to an institutional VLE or even to the closed part of national intranet like GLOW is not open)

2. Non Departmental Public Bodies and other public agencies should understand open publishing too and be using the appropriate licensing. I'll stick here with learning content here but similar cases should be made for open data etc

3. In vocational space and probably school space too we should be doing much more reaching out to Commonwealth of Learning and initiatives like the American Community College Open Text Book initiatives. The Khan Academy and some other big charitable initiatives are really just the tip of much bigger iceberg of teachers and learners making and sharing content.

4. In UK we need to make more use of JISC and other institutional OER . There are real staff development needs in schools and FE for example in areas like computing and genetics to identify just two areas. But in lots of cases great teaching resources are open and available in the system but awareness is low . Education Scotland and others should be looking for evidence of a range of these materials being used across education.

5. In a UK context perhaps  Do you know about JORUM and better what is your publishing record to JORUM ? . Where is the Scottish or UK schools equivalent of JORUM ?

I am hoping that ALT can help all of us by pulling together a draft Scottish response to the next  UNESCO Declaration on OER which will appear after 20th of June 2012.

Open is part of the culture of Scottish Education but we need to get more folks to understand how to get there.

It is great too to have agencies like ALT who have been punching above their weight in this space for a long time. Great too that JISC have always committed themselves to the open space.

I suppose I better declare an interest  I've been on executive of ALT , I am currently on their publications committee and I still sit on advisory committee of JORUM - but I think that is just an indication that I am doing my bit .

Barriers to Adoption of Open Educational Resources

Just spent some useful time in a workshop with lots of colleagues looking at  some of the challenges around the adoption of Open Educational Practices.

Here is wee list we came up with

1. Generally legal issues around publishing in open way are not recognised by institutions or individuals
2. There are issues around current employment contracts - not clear to individuals or institutions around IP rights. Simple things like what happens when an academic leaves or moves to another institution.
3. Some practice that are ok in classroom under fair dealing or other institutional licences are not ok if works are published on openly - few institutions have specific copyright checker
4. Human factor too - institutions and individuals may not have an appetite for sharing - job fears, quality fears , and also concerns around or repurposing materials not invented in the institution.
5. Not enough knowledge about things like Creative Commons and other licence policies
6. Not enough information on best formats for publication of OER - things like EPub format not well understood
7. On using other peoples OER even under creative commons concern around attribution of derivative works
8. On specific things like images where meta data can be important you may want to share image but be concerned about licence of meta data
9. Good practice identified in Holland and Denmark where academics are mandated to publish to Open Educational Journals.

The Case for Open Educational Resources and Open Books

I would like to see Scottish Colleges and Schools plugged in more actively to the growing open educational resource movement. I have made the case a few times before. This info graphic says a lot more than words.
Article is great too.

Open Education #ediff

Some folks in Scotland will know the amazing work done by Brigham Young University in widening access and playing a major role in changing American Society. It is great to see this institution leading from the front in the Open Education debate here is David Wiley's presentation from last week's Educause Conference . Hope it helps some folk understand what I was getting at when I suggested that more and more learning resources would be free and accessible in the futureEducause 2010 - Openness, Data, and a Sustainable Future for Education

View more presentations from David Wiley.

Open Educational Resources

I think this image originates from some JISC CETIS Work - I used it as part of a presentation this week .

The question I would ask is how ready is your organisation to

A. Make the most from this global movement of open innovation

B However modestly how do you and your organisation contribute - (educators and learners need to become creators as well as consumers of Open Educational Resources) Are you ready ?