Otago Polytechnic/Implementation plan

Preamble

OER is the means by which education at all levels can be more accessible, more affordable and more efficient. Using OER approaches, institutions can lower cost and save time required to produce high quality courses with untapped potential to diversify curriculum offerings especially for low enrolment courses in a cost-effective way. OER is about sharing and collaboration and to this end we have much untapped potential. I see this as a major challenge for teaching institutions today, that is, to encourage and facilitate our staff to work collaboratively, not only for the common good, but in their own long-term interests. Otago Polytechnic has demonstrated a pioneering international role with the adoption of a default intellectual property policy and copyright policy using a Creative Commons approach. A growing number of academics at Otago Polytechnic are leading the way with OER projects in their own subject areas. Our incremental development approach means that we have now reached a significant point in our capability maturity where we can reflect on what we have learned to take Otago Polytechnic's OER work to the next level.

Call to action

Leadership Team met recently and agreed that the next step on our collective journey is to collaboratively develop a sustainable and achievable OER implementation plan. We plan to "eat our own dog food" and commit to developing our implementation plan using the values that are central to Otago Polytechnic which are reflected through open education and our open IP policy. Leadership team are committed to actively engaging in this collaboration as we develop and refine the plan in the wiki. We welcome and invite all staff to join us on this journey. In the words of President Obama: "We don't know where this experiment will lead, and that is exactly why we ought to try it." ( President Obama announcing open source courses for Community Colleges under the American Graduation Initiative ).

Brainstorming
Add your thoughts, ideas and contributions under the relevant headings below.

OER Foundation
What is the OER Foundation http://wikieducator.org/OERF:Home

What is Wikieducator http://wikieducator.org/Main_Page

OER Foundation Strategy http://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:OER_Foundation/Strategy

Open Education Resources
OER Funding Game Changer http://www.ottawacitizen.com/funding+open+education+materials+game+changer/4363933/story.html

Publishers response http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/publishers-criticize-federal-investment-in-open-educational-resources/31483

What is an OER
Link to OER Foundation FAQ on OERs http://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:OER_Foundation/FAQs/Open_Education_Resources/

Why is OER so Important
UK roundtable - JISC http://www.youtube.com/user/JISCmedia#p/u/13/pkLHyRj33Nw

Benefits of OER
Benefits of Open access to your institution JISC UK http://www.youtube.com/user/JISCmedia#p/u/14/QoN-S0-YkZk

How will students in your institution benefit from OER? http://wikieducator.org/WikiEducator:OER_Foundation/FAQs/Open_Education_Resources/

Examples and links of OERs
OER Commons http://www.oercommons.org/

Creative Commons wiki what is OER http://wiki.creativecommons.org/What_is_OER%3F

new video explaining Creative Commons, made especially with Kiwis in mind http://www.vimeo.com/25684782

New Zealand Governments Position http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/nzgoal

http://wikieducator.org/OER_Handbook/educator_version_one

Educause Conference Session on OER http://www.educause.edu/E2010/Program/SESS135

Link to what is Open Access http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/brief.htm

Creative Commons http://wiki.creativecommons.org/New_Zealand

Open Access UK Initiative http://open-access.org.uk/

Higher Education Academy UK http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/ourwork/teachingandlearning/oer

Repositories and commons
National Repository of Online Courses http://courserepository.org/

OER Commons http://www.oercommons.org/oer

Image commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Public library of science http://www.plos.org/

Wikipedia http://wikipedia.org

Chemistry portal on Wikepedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Chemistry

Wikieducator http://wikieducator.org Simple maths tutorial on whole numbers http://wikieducator.org/ABE_Math_Tutorials/Whole_numbers

Health Education Assets Library http://www.healcentral.org/index.jsp

The Health Education Assets Library (HEAL) is a digital library that provides freely accessible digital teaching resources of the highest quality that meet the needs of today's health sciences educators   and learners. The collection includes a variety of learning objects, such as digital images, videos, animations, presentations, lectures, virtual patients, tutorials, cases, and quizzes. Users have access to the HEAL Reviewed Collection, resources that have undergone a formal review process by our editorial board, and Affiliate Collections, resources from partner digital libraries which have been subjected to their own quality assurance processes.

Directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.org/

Many Books http://www.manybooks.net/categories/

Open textbook on Fluid Mechanics http://www.potto.org/downloadsFM.php

Open access resources on nursing http://www.nursingplanet.com/resources/

Khan Academy Videos http://www.khanacademy.org/

Open Learning repositories http://wikieducator.org/Exemplary_Collection_of_Open_eLearning_Content_Repositories

Academic Earth http://www.academicearth.org/

Our OER successes -- What have we done well?

 * Instituting an intellectual property policy for our times defaulting to a Creative Commons attribution license. --Wayne Mackintosh 06:45, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * First New Zealand signatory of the Cape Town Open Education declaration. --Wayne Mackintosh 07:35, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Add your thoughts here ...
 * Encouraging staff to develop resources in wikieducator as part of their professional development, and when being supported to develop new resources by EDC - Jean


 * We are encouraging an emergent culture amongst staff to use OER resources - as always culture shift is a challenge but we have made a good start and the early adopters have been given good license and encouragement to pursue use of OER --Matt Carter

OER Leaders and their work at OP

 * link example here of the good work we have done - ground up

EDC - GCTLT http://wikieducator.org/Otago_Polytechnic/Educational_Development_Centre/Programmes

Otago Polytechnic OER Projects http://wikieducator.org/Otago_Polytechnic/OER_Projects

Leadership Team members and their views on OER
Robin Day: I am a strong supporter of Open Education this is influenced by my work on assessment of prior learning and access to education. There are significant links with open education, e-learning, flexible and blended learning as they relate to reducing barriers to access to education. This is also important at a policy level where traditional thinking on education can be a constraint. Being in a position to influence policy and challenging existing views is a key feature of how I see my current roles, both within Education within Otago Polytechnic and the wider learner community. Rob 21:32, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Here is a link to an excellent document which summarises and provides excellent examples of existing Open Educational Resources that are being developed and sustained by initiatives around the world, it goes further to present an argument for the need to reconsider institutional policies that impact on institutional engagement with OERs. --Rob 21:15, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Philip Cullen: Philip is a board member of the. OER Foundation. I can only but endorse Robins comments as I am still a somewhat naive user but this is my start. Philip Cullen 15 Dec 2010.

Sue Thompson: I too support Robin's comments which reinforce my belief that education and educational institutions should be as open as possible to enable accessible education. Otago Polytechnic recently hosted a Self Assessment conference sponsored by NZQA, ITP Quality and Ako Aotearoa and many of the participants commented on our openness. We aspire to be even more open. -- Sue Thompson

Matt Carter - For me use of OER tools increases access to education and fosters collaboration and both are essential for success in todays world. I personally suspect the old addage that 'knowledge is power' is why there is resistance to use of OER - people think they might be losing control of their knowledge but that is a narrow minded view which doesn't work in today's society - we must teach our graduates to collaborate and learn from each other. So this is good for our students! Which needs to be the reason behind everything we do. --Matt Carter

Khyla Russell May the force be with us as we support this. -- Khyla Russel

Jean Tilleyshort While I agree that the use of open education resources has huge potential to save work, my evaluation of OERs that I have looked through is that they are very patchy in their quality and coverage. Until we have a more standardised qualification framework, there will continue to be very different courses in programmes of the same title or type, so I feel the most potential value in OERs may come from the sharing of learning objects around topics, rather than course design.

Opportunities for OER in your area
Add a subheading for your area, subject or portfolio and list bullet points for prospective opportunities for OER.

OER Foundation / International Centre for Open Education

 * Help connect local Otago Poly OER projects with international projects --Wayne Mackintosh 21:08, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Assist Departments and Schools to establish portal pages in the wiki, linked from the Otago Polytechnic landing page. --Wayne Mackintosh 21:08, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Provide support and ideas in designing for collaboration to maximise return on OER investment. --Wayne Mackintosh 21:08, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Assist Departments and Schools with integration of WikiEducator OERs with our Learning Management System. --Wayne Mackintosh 21:08, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Open Textbooks and Sustainability


 * Think about sustainability from an open education perspective. Flatworld Knowledge is a startup publisher of open textbooks and operates on revenue from optional products such as print copies and study aids. With 25 published texts and 50 more in the pipeline, the company's business model has proven viable thus far. In fact, Dr. Mason Carpenter, an author for both Flat World and Pearson, says the royalties on his open textbooks are tracking his other books. Robin Day 13 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Writing spaces is a project to develop a series of introduction to writing texts, uses a model similar to academic journals.  Authors submit chapters or articles, which are peer reviewed by an editorial board and published as a collection.  Like other scholarly works, these open textbooks benefit authors by increasing their visibility among peers and satisfying requirements for tenure at some institutions.
 * Open Course Library project which is jointly funded by the State of Washington and the Gates Foundation, will create open materials for the state's 81 largest community college courses. The materials will include not only open textbooks, but other openly licensed resources such as lecture notes, powerpoint slides and homework exercises.--Rob 03:59, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
 * College Open Textbook project--Robin Day 18:13, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Why open content is important --Rob 23:47, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Area, subject or portfolio goes here

 * One
 * Two
 * Three

Areas of improvement potential -- what can we do better?

 * Designing OER projects for collaboration in the sector from the onset --Wayne Mackintosh 07:37, 8 November 2010 (UTC).
 * Prioritising high impact OER developments (eg large student enrolment or "endangered species" courses where OER collaboration will support cost-effective course development for low enrolment courses. --Wayne Mackintosh 07:37, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Develop Staff understanding of OER and how this can change how we operate - there is a long way to go with this but modelling it and useing OER tools in our own work will increase exposure and understanding. --Matt Carter
 * Encourage more peer review and collaboration - most resources currently on OERs are not further developed once loaded (and an amazing proportion are never looked at according to Jorum - a British OER site)- Jean

Dimensions or aspects our OER implementation plan should cover?

 * Specify achievable targets. --Wayne Mackintosh 22:05, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * First up, a vision is needed for OER at OP, i.e.what would we like to be known for, in terms of OER. Then some strategic goals and associated measures of success i.e.how would we know we had achieved our goals. Then some priorities for development with associated short term objectives. (See below) -- Phil Ker

Dimensions of a vision for OER at OP


 * 1) connecting educators through leadership in collaboration -- Phil Ker
 * 2) making a difference through accessible, high quality learning resources -- Phil Ker
 * 3) fostering a culture of connectedness and increased ability to work together particularly for our distance students. -- Matt Carter
 * 4) contributing to the global evolution of a sustainable OER ecosystem --Wayne Mackintosh 03:54, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Strategic Goals


 * 1) Improve the quality of learning and assessment resources through collaborative development -- Phil Ker
 * 2) Improve productivity of staff through shared resource development and revision and reuse of existing learning and assessment resources. -- Phil Ker
 * 3) Reduce the cost (and time) required for course development at Otago Polytechnic --Wayne Mackintosh 03:54, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
 * 4) Improve the efficacy of professional academic development at Otago Polytechnic and the New Zealand Polytechnic sector through OER for Professional Academic Development --Wayne Mackintosh 03:54, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Could there be a goal round internationalisation? - it seems to me that OERs are a huge opportunity to ensure internationalisation of curriculum - Jean

Questions, clarifications and suggestions
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