Learning in a digital age/LiDA Course specification - Microcourse 3

Note: Course specification is based on Kanban board for micro-course 3.

Work in progress, expect frequent changes. Help and feedback is welcome. See discussion page.

1. Working micro-course title: Open education
   
2. Notional learning hours: 40 notional learning hours
3. Format: To be offered as cohort based open online learning course comprising approximately 25 hours and 15 hours for preparing the assessment. Course will be designed to support the open boundary delivery model where OERu learners can participate in parallel with full-fee registered students on campus.

Course aim

On successful completion of this course students will be able to:

• Develop and effectively apply knowledge of copyright, open licensing and license remix compatibility utilising open education practices to support tertiary learning in a global digital context.

Outcomes

• Define open education and related concepts of Open Educational Resources (OER), Open Access (OA) and Open Licensing in relation to academic study.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the ethical and sustainability challenges associated with universal and affordable access to higher education around the world.
• Apply knowledge of copyright and the associated public domain within the context of global access to digital information and strategies to avoid breach of copyright in a digital world.
• Apply knowledge of open licensing for creative works and open source software including remix compatibility among different types of open licenses.
• Develop and apply semantic markup skills for different technologies.
• Demonstrate an understanding of academic integrity in relation to copyright, plagiarism and fabrication.

Micro course topics

• Introducing the concept of open education and "free" learning online.
• Copyright, public domain, fair use and fair dealing in a digital age.
• International treaties (WIPO), digital rights management (DRM) and liability of Internet Service providers (eg Digital Millennium Copyright Act and international equivalents.)
• Open licensing of creative works and software (Creative Commons and Open Source Software licenses.)
• Academic integrity

Learning pathways

Why open matters in education

Learning outcomes

• Explore the concept of education as a fundamental human right
• Investigate access and participation in post-secondary education around the world
• Reviewed affordability, reliability and cost of access to the Internet on a global scale
• Review how the cost of tertiary education has changed over time in relation to massification of education
• Reflect on the affordances of digital technologies to widen access to affordable education

Overview

Today's digital technologies, and in particular social media, mean that it is possible to adopt a much more open approach to learning; sharing your learning resources, reflecting on your learning, and commenting on the learning of peers. This section will define what open education is and why it is important for learning. Open education covers a spectrum of things, from Open Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) through to use of social media to share and reflect on your learning and to communicate with peers.

Suggested resources

• UNESCO Institute for Statistics
• United Nations Declaration of Human Rights
• Student PIRGs reports on cost of text books

Learning challenge

• WENotes posts where appropriate.
• Forum activity debating whether tertiary education is a fundamental human right in the context of affordability of higher education

Proposed learning challenge

Learners are tasked to prepare a "declare yourself" blog post where learners introduce themselves and share what they would like to achieve on this micro course in the context of the cost of education and why they are participating in this OERu online micro course.

Open education and "free" learning online

Purpose is to discover what constitutes the concept of open education and the wealth of openly accessible learning materials to support learning for self interest as well as open resources supporting non-formal and formal learning opportunities within the context of rising student debt and affordability of higher education in today's world.

Learning outcomes

• Define open education and related concepts of OER, open access and open licensing.
• Review the range of digital open access resources that can support learning
• Explore the concept of "free range learning" and how this relates to informal, non-formal and formal learning
• Contrast and compare different forms of certification
• Consider what "free" means in a digital world in the context of risks and affordances.
• Draw up an inventory of "free" sites and reflect on how the service is paid for.
• Understand how the terms of service of different sites impact on what is permissible and your personal rights.
• Reflect on the global challenges of access to higher education and rising costs of study.

Suggested resources

• MOOC sites including Coursera, EdX, Future Learn
• Open access resource sites that support learning, for example Kahn Academy, Saylor, OERu, Merlot, TedX, DOAJ etc
• Forbes article: If you're not paying for it, You become the product (including practical demo of using an add blocker when attempting to access the site.)
• Support tutorial introducing forums.oeru.org

1. Extracts from the OER learning pathway but revised for this target audience.

Proposed learning challenge

• Consider topical discussion on the meaning of "free" in a digital world

Copyright in a digital world

Purpose is to discover how copyright works in a digital world and to compete an online interactive case study with formative feedback.

Learning outcomes

• Review the origins of copyright;
• Study the scope, ownership, rights, protections, exceptions and transfer of rights associated with copyright.
• Understand the international agreements and treaties which impact on how copyright functions internationally across national boundaries;
• Explore the relationship between copyright and website terms of reference.
• Identify strategies for avoiding copyright violations and applying fair use / fair dealing exemptions.

Suggested resources

• Youtube copyright school
• Remix and revise OCL4Ed materials on copyright for a student perspective
• Remix and revise OCL4Ed Copyright case study for a learner perspective
• How to avoid plagiarism

Proposed learning challenge

• Will be incorporated with the digital markup learning pathway.

Digital markup for publishing learning outputs

Purpose is to improve digital skills and understanding of consistent semantic markup so that documents are described conceptually rather than visually in different authoring environments focusing on media and ICT literacy

Learning outcomes

• Apply styles for formatting word-processor documents
• Acquire basic wiki-mark-up skills
• Justify the advantages of semantic mark-up
• Apply semantic markup skills to developing multiple choice questions.

Suggested resources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markup_language
• GIFT objective item format.

Proposed learning challenge

• Develop and publish two multiple choice items on copyright
• Publish blog learning reflection.

Open licensing

Purpose is to explore how open licensing works for creative works and open source software and to discover the implications of license compatibility for remix

Learning outcomes

• Understand how Creative Commons licenses use copyright to provide permissions to reuse, revise and remix creative works
• Identify the six creative commons licenses used for licensing creative works
• Distinguish between the legal code, commons deed and machine readable versions of the Creative Commons licenses
• Define free and open source software and open standards and corresponding mainstream open licenses for software.
• Correctly apply the correct license for derivative works based on license compatibility of open licenses appropriate for student learning contexts.

Suggested resources

• Remix and revise OCL4Ed materials on Creative commons targeting students.
• Remix and revise the OCL4Ed materials on Remix game to support learners in understanding compatibility of open licenses.

Proposed learning challenge

• To consider applying an open license to the learner's course blog (or not) and justifying the reasons for the choice. Blog post will be designed to require inclusion of an openly licensed image as well as third party text to test application of copyright in a digital age.

Academic integrity - Suggest moving to MC2

Learning outcomes

• To distinguish between plagiarism, fabrication and cheating
• To distinguish between legitimate copying and plagiarism
• To identify and apply strategies for avoiding copyright violations
• To familiarise learners with processes and technologies used by institutions of higher education to monitor academic integrity.

Suggested resources

1. Copying is not theft
2. Teaching your child to copy
3. What is plagiarism in the Digital Age
4. Varying degrees of plagiarism
5. How to not get caught plagiarising
6. Essays for sale - for inclusion on Ethics and plagiarism.
7. Is it piracy? How students access academic resources Is it piracy - How students access academic resources
8. Student practices in copyright culture
9. Drexel University code of conduct

Proposed learning challenge

• Contrast and compare honour codes of conduct and academic integrity policies from different tertiary education institutions and reflect on how this applies to open online courses.

Possible micro-course assessment

• Multiple choice assessment for copyright and open licensing - proposed (20%)