#CALRG14 impact of #OER and #open course by @BeckPitt & @philosopher1978

From theory to practice: can openness improve the quality of OER research? By Beck (Rebecca) Pitt, Beatriz de-los-arcos, Rob Farrow (twitter Rob here) and (twitter Beck Pitt)

A GREAT session on OER and their impact. Two year project, which partnered up with other foundations. They have a fellowship scheme.

And for those interested in OER research hub videos, look at their YouTube channel (nice list of relevant multimedia content).

How can we make research better is a central question (and nice set of actions, that could be related to any open science/research as a practitioner I think - Inge note)

• all outputs from the project are CC-BY licensed
• share our data and evidence 
• blog progress of research and collaborations
• blog research findings
• use twitter to connect, network and disseminate
• continuous evaluation of work 

Research instruments available in the open

• ethics manual
• interview and focus groups
• sharing practices
• survey questions, etc.

And as such they also only publish in open access journals (hooray!).

OER impact map

School of Open course in progress
P2PUniversity / Creative commons initiative
courses include copyright for educatiors (both AUS and US)
Get CC savvy, open habits: making stuff with the daily create, intro to course.

They made a 4 week course on the subject of OER
based on participation (asking what people wanted to see)
interviews on open research practices and challenges
Course underwent an OU style review
Overall course review and check for consistency, use of external materials, etc.
After that an open review process (note to myself: of interest as a course development/assessment for open MOOC): community review.

course start date: 15 September 2014, and you can take all the materials as a third party and use the course inside your own institution (with CC and BY).

Course composition (one topic, each of the 4 weeks)

1. Week 1 =>what is open research?
2. ethics in the open
3. dissemination
4. reflection

Sharing two slidedecks: one from the talk by Rob Farrow (followed the one from Beck) and one from Beck.

Starting with the slidedeck from Rob on real OER impact (great slidedeck)

Open Research into Open Education: The Role of Mapping and Curation from Robert Farrow

This is not the actual slidedeck of this presentation, but with lots of slides that came up. My notes above hopefully compliment some of the ideas shared by Beck.

The Impact of Open Textbooks in the USA and South Africa: When? Why? How? from Beck Pitt