Digital skills for collaborative OER development/Design blueprint

Metadata

• Level: 3rd year Bachelor Degree Level
• Discipline(s): Learning design, open education and digital skills
• Notional learning hours 40 hours
• Credits 4 credits of a 15 credit course towards a 120 credit credential
• Credential(s): Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education at Otago Polytechnic
• Hashtag: DS4OER

Intended target audience

This course is designed for existing or future educational practitioners. The intended target audience for this course includes:

• Teachers working in the school sector,
• Lecturers working in community colleges, polytechnics and universities,
• Trainers working in the vocational education and corporate training sectors,
• Pre-service teachers, lecturers and trainers.
• OERu course developers and volunteers

Prerequisite knowledge

• Knowledge of open educational resources and creative commons licenses is recommended. However, learners without detailed knowledge of OER or Creative Commons licenses will be able to successfully complete the course with self-study of these concepts.
• The course is recommended for learners who have completed the OERu Open Content Licensing for Educators course.
• Working knowledge of office software, file management and web browsing skills.

Course aims

1. To acquire and demonstrate digital skills including social media skills for open and cooperative design, development and publishing of an OER course site on the open web.
2. To establish and build professional networks.

Outcomes

1. Design and publish a storyboard using online digital tools for OER learning pathways
2. Design and publish an open design course blueprint
3. Develop a course description suitable for publishing information about a prospective course on the web
4. Develop basic wiki skills for cooperative development of OER
5. Search, find, adapt, remix and legally share openly licensed images
6. Search, find, adapt, remix and legally share openly licensed rich media (for example audio and video)
7. Sequence and chunk information for publishing an OER learning pathway
8. Integrate pedagogical features into OER course materials
9. Use social media tools for peer learning and support
10. Publish two learning pathways as part of a course website on the open web.

Development and delivery approach

This is the third of four micro courses for the Open Education Practice elective of the Graduate Diploma in Tertiary Education at Otago Polytechnic. The four micro courses are:

1. Open content licensing for educators: Which focuses on copyright, OER and Creative Commons Licenses
2. Dimensions of openness in education': Which covers the concepts of open education, open learning, open educational practices, open policy, open source software and open scholarship.
3. Digital skills for collaborative OER development: Which focuses on the digital and social media skills used for open design and development of OER learning materials.
4. OER development project: Builds on the resources developed in the digital skills for collaborative OER development with greater emphasis on pedagogical design elements and community service learning.

The course will be assembled from existing OERs and implement a "pedagogy of discovery" where learners are encouraged to find their own resources to support their learning.

The course promotes a learn-by-doing approach. It will comprise a series of learning pathways designed to achieve the stated learning outcomes incorporating learning challenges for each pathway where learners practice and refine their skills. Integrated activities for peer-learning interaction (microblogs, blog posts and discussion forum posts) are embedded in the course design. Where appropriate, interactive case studies will be used to facilitate learner-content interactions and simulated dialogue with course developers. The course will also include digital skills challenges for searching, adapting and publishing OER images and rich media for inclusion in the materials. Learners will also publish their own course websites.

The course presumes average computer literacy using standard office applications, web-navigation and the ability to register accounts for open web services. Digital and social media literacy skills relevant to finding and remixing OERs and peer-sharing of the learning journey through collaborative design will be embedded in the course with corresponding self-study support tutorials to promote capability development in these areas.

Assessment strategy

There is one assignment for this course comprising two elements:

• Publishing two learning pathways developed during the course (Weight 70%. Learners will be assessed on the application of their digital skills for collaborative development by evaluating the published materials online).
• Learning reflection including evidence of cooperation (Weight 30%. Learners will be required to link to evidence of their collaboration and interaction during the course.)

The learning challenges will be designed as building blocks for the final assessment. Using an open model, learners will be able to refine an improve their contributions based on peer feedback and remixing ideas published by fellow learners before final assignment submission.

Interaction strategies

Student-content interactions

• Each learning pathway will incorporate a short video signpost that will be used to provide students with an orientation or stimulus for each of the major topics.
• Learners will work through a series of learning pathways designed for independent study.
• Each learning pathway will incorporate one or more learning challenges. These substantive e-Learning activities require learners to execute a sub-component of the design sequence and sharing outputs and reflections with fellow participants.
• These learning challenges function as building blocks for the final course assessment.
• Authentic development of OERs and corresponding use of digital technologies.

Student-student interactions

• Students will be able to interact via a number of MOOC-like technologies which will be harvested using an aggregated timeline for the interactions:
  • Microblog activities and posts.
  • Discussion forum posts
  • Personal blog posts and comments
  • Ask OERu, a community-based question and answer forum.

Student-support interactions

• Students will be encouraged to use a the peer-support question and answer forum for addressing support questions.
• Self-study help tutorials will be provided for the main technologies used in the course.