Webinar on Open Educational Practices, 5 Dec 2013

Title: Online webinar on “Open Educational Practices (OEP): What They Mean For Me and How I Use Them”

Speaker: Brian Kelly

Date and time: 09.30 – 10.30 on Thursday 5 December 2013

About the Session:
This webinar was given in a unit on Open Educational Practices which forms part of a PGCAP (Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice) module on Flexible, Distance and Online Learning provided by the University of Salford. See the course details.

Unit Rationale:
The move towards ‘openness’ in education has accelerated in recent years with a number of high profile institutional initiatives such as the MIT OpenCourseware project and there is now a growing body of Open Educational Resources (OERs) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) offered by a number of institutions around the globe which not only give access to free educational courseware, such as images, video, audio and other assets to educators and learners worldwide, without an accompanying need to pay royalties or licence fees but also provide opportunities for open access participation and learning in course settings via for example Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) which often attract large numbers of participants. The OER and OEP have emerged as a concept with great potential to support educational transformation as well as provide extended opportunities for learning in non-formal settings. This unit explores the benefits and challenges of openness in education and learning more generally and looks at ways in which educators and learners can harness and benefit from a plethora of open opportunities to engage and re-engage in learning but also to explore how OER and OEP can be re-purposed, adapted and contextualised for specific learning and teaching situations.

Abstract:
We have seen a growing interest across a spectrum of openness, covering definitions of the technical infrastructure (open standards), licences for the technical implementation of products and services (open source software), licences which permit reuse of content (Creative Commons), content with minimal barriers to reuse (open access papers, OERs, open data) and encouragement for wider engagement in activities (open science / citizen science). These are complemented by a culture of openness for those involved in a variety of professional activities, including open notebook approaches taken by scientific researchers, open educational practices taken by those involved in supporting teaching and learning and the generic open practices embraced by those in a range of disciplines who feel that such approaches can enhance the quality of their activities.

Brian Kelly has embraced open practices to support his work in advising the UK’s higher and further education sector on best practices for exploiting the potential of the Web, as well as helping to ensure that the ideas described in his research papers are exposed to a wide audience

In this webinar Brian summarises the benefits he feels he has gained from open practices and how such approaches can be applied in a teaching and learning context. However he acknowledges there may be associated risks. Brian provides a risks and opportunities framework which may help in identifying risks and risk minimisation strategies.

Resources: 
The slides are available on Slideshare and embedded below: