Our new Short Courses Platform has met its first major milestone.
We have 18 early adopter courses and over 250 learners enrolled and using the new learning environment.
This allowed us to establish and test the basic platform configuration including notifications, basic learner/course set up, as well as the courses templates, training and guidance.
This is the first step in moving the University’s extensive credit short courses portfolio to the new Short Courses Platform.
The learners on our new platform will not have access to our closed Library collections, so all the courses will use open access materials on their resources and reading lists.
One of the things which has happened as a result of events all being online is that there are now more talking head videos, interviews, webinars and panel sessions to watch and review.
A picture I shared on Wikimedia has been given by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a gift to President Joe Biden.
Just goes to show that serendipitous things happen when you share openly.
President Biden and Dr Biden are visiting the UK this week. In preparation for the visit the Downing Street offices began searching for a thoughtful gift. They know that the Bidens have an interest in history and in the life of Frederick Douglass. They found my picture of a mural of Douglass on Wikimedia and contacted me.
I gave them a high-res version and the Prime Minister’s Office got it printed up and framed.
When I saw the mural I recognized the subject immediately. The artist is talented and the image is striking.
Frederick Douglass was one of the most photographed people of his time, many people were interested in him and he was keen to ensure that he was represented as an equal during such a difficult time in American history. During the 1800s he sat for more portraits than even Abraham Lincoln.
Frederick Douglass is part of the cultural history not just of the US, but also of Scotland. He came to Edinburgh several times, first in 1846 . He made a number of public anti-slavery speeches and wrote letters back to the USA from here. He considered the city to be elegant and grand and found the UK to be very welcoming. ‘Everything is so different here from what I have been accustomed to in the United States. No insults to encounter – no prejudice to encounter, but all is smooth. I am treated as a man an equal brother. My color instead of being a barrier to social equality –is not thought of as such’.
I was born in Scotland but I am a dual national by virtue of having an American parent. My US family are in Maryland and I am delighted to see this image of such an important American icon here in our public spaces. The fact that I am a dual national seems to be an added bonus for the gift to President and Dr Biden.
I took the photograph on an evening walk during lockdown just as the sun was setting. The mural is very close to the building where Frederick Douglass stayed while he was in Edinburgh. I shared it on Wikipedia so that more people could see it and enjoy it.
Some people on Twitter are being a bit rude about the traffic cone but I would remind you that both Edinburgh and Glasgow have a fine tradition of adding traffic cones to significant public art works and perhaps David Hume wasn’t using his.
At University of Edinburgh, now that we have near-comprehensive coverage of lecture recording facilities, we plan to give students across the University guidance on how to use recordings in their studies.
The excellent guide has been created by colleagues from other universities cited below. I recommend it. It’s available for adaptation and we have added to the ‘Do Not’ section: ‘Do not share, publish or sell recorded lectures outside the University of Edinburgh.’
Please cite these guides as Nordmann et al. (2018).Lecture capture: Practical recommendations for students and lecturers Preprint: https://osf.io/esd2q/
Emily Nordmann1, Carolina E. Kuepper-Tetzel2, Louise Robson3, Stuart Phillipson4, Gabi Lipan5 and Peter McGeorge5
1 School of Psychology, University of Glasgow, 62 Hillhead Street, Glasgow, G12 8QB
2 Department of Psychology, Scrymgeour Building, University of Dundee, Dundee, DD1 4HN
3 Department of Biomedical Science, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 2TN
4 IT Services, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL
5 School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, AB24 3FX
You may wonder why Media Hopper is called Media Hopper. You will know the following definitions of hopper:
hopper ( agric) : a container for a loose bulk material. hopper ( minecraft ): a block that can be used to catch item entities, or to transfer items into and out of other containers. channel-hopper( tv) : quickly changing from one channel to another to find something you want to watch. Grace Hopper ( rolemodel) : an inspirational computer scientist. She developed the implementation of standards for testing computer systems and components and coined the term “debugging” for fixing computer glitches when she removed a moth from her computer. Dennis Hopper (role model): just cool. space hopper ( toy ): just orange and bouncy.
As I was explaining to Vicki, our Digital Recruitment and Marketing intern just the other day, Media Hopper gathers together all the mixed up multitude of video material from all over the University; brings it into one place; channels it into our VLEs, websites, portals and courses; applies standards and metadata is very cool.
I think it’s important to name things after inspirational women when you can, and Grace Hopper fits the bill for me.
Vicki will now be using videos in Media Hopper to liven up our LinkedIn presence.
Open practice in action. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:University_of_Edinburgh_Spy_Week_Wikipedia_edit-a-thon_02.jpgThing 12 of our 23 things is OER.
I talk a lot about OER. Last week I was talking about it in Barcelona, this week I’m talking about it in Paris, in two weeks I’ll be in Berlin. I also write a bit about OER. On this blog and occasionally for case studies and articles. My work in creating a culture of openness is featured as a case study by OEPS. At the moment my homework is to write a case study for Gill and Fred to include in their new book.
I am also pleased to be able to make the case for new posts based on our institutional commitment to open. We have had support to extend contracts for our OER Adviser and our Wikimedian in Residence. We have also just signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Library at a time when they are working to open up huge swathes of their collections.
The task is to find OER to use in my work. I enjoy finding OER to use in my blog and presentations. Other OER I use in my work tend to be the OER about OER such as:
We are lucky to be able to learn from best practice at other institutions. The excellent Jane Secker ( UK Copyright Literacy) has been doing some research to find out what the issues are. She has surveyed UK HE institutions.
The position regarding copyright ownership is enshrined in statute – the Copyright Designs and Patent Act 1988. Section 11(2) provides that copyright created in the course of an individual’s employment vests in the employer. Often this statutory right is backed up with provision in a contract of employment but our University of Edinburgh standard contracts are not explicit in this regard. As a result academic colleagues can sometimes be a bit surprised by this.
I expect we will need to support our colleagues with advice something like this ( adpated from Birkbeck)
Can I use copyright material in my lectures?
You may sometimes wish to use copyright work (e.g. an image, video clip or piece of text) belonging to another person or organisation in the course of your teaching. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988) currently states that copying for educational purposes is permitted, so long as it is not undertaken by a mechanical process. This essentially means you cannot scan, photocopy, or record (using lecture capture) copyright works without explicit permission from the owner.
In terms of lecture recordings, your options are as follows:
Pause the recorder
Edit the recording later
Provide links to the relevant material instead
Use Open Educational Resources (OER)
Just record audio
Are there exceptions that would allow copyright works to be used?
Showing a video, such as a clip from a film and playing music is permitted under the law, so long as it is solely for the purposes of education and the lecture is not recorded.
Similarly, you can use small amounts of copyright material for the purposes of ‘criticism and review.’ Clearly, good practice requires acknowledging your sources, and stating where it is being used for criticism and review. In this case the work can be included in a recorded lecture.
What am I allowed to include in a recorded lecture?
The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) Higher Education Licence allows small amounts of published copyright works (books and journals) to be copied for teaching purposes. This includes illustrations and images within the works.
In addition, if material that you find online is licensed under Creative Commons (CC) – a less restrictive form of copyright – then you will be able to show this material in a lecture that is being recorded. Again, the source should be acknowledged.
What about material from YouTube?
The copyright in material that you might show from sites such as YouTube lies with the creator of the video, so you would need to obtain permission directly from them (YouTube cannot grant this on their behalf). Some of these materials may be available for educational use or under a CC licence. Although it is permissible to show these recordings for educational purposes, and to provide links to the material, you should exclude this content from a recorded lecture. This can be done by pausing the recording whilst the clip is being played.
Although easy to download, online images are frequently subject to some sort of copyright, and unless you own the copyright yourself, it is usually NOT legal or acceptable to download them and use them in your recorded lectures.
There are several ways that you can legally use images in your recorded lectures:
Use images where their copyright has expired
Many sites e.g. Flickr, allow you to use images under a Creative Commons (CC) licence – all CC licences mean the copyright owner must be attributed.
Contact your Subject Librarian – they will be able to sign post CC subject specific image sources
Create your own
Obtain permission to use them from the copyright holder
What about other cases when you can show material you don’t own in lectures?
There are several other instances when you can use copyright material, including:
When the copyright period in the material has expired
When University of Edinburgh owns the copyright of the material e.g. publicity material, other learning and teaching resources produced by the University.
When you have specific copyright clearance ( under licence via the Library) to use the materials in this way.
What are the risks associated with using copyright material?
You are responsible for making sure that your recorded lectures do not infringe copyright. University of Edinburgh, however, is at risk of prosecution for infringing copyright, either within recorded lectures, or by uploading materials to a VLE, public folders, or another website.
Although it may be legal to use these materials within a class, it does not necessarily make it legal to include them within a recorded lecture and/or upload these to a VLE.
Picture taken of me at #ald16eduni . No rights reserved by me.
Back in the days of Web 2.0 we used to describe things as ‘perpetualy beta‘. For me this perfectly describes Wikipedia. It’ll never be finished: we must add to, and improve it, early and often. Users are co-developers and it’s developed under open source principles of collective intelligence.
Yesterday I wrote a provocation piece for the Dangerous Women Project. Today a bunch of colleagues and students engaged in dangerous practice and we were featured on the telly. I’m the one wearing the Creative Commons badge.
By Centre for Research Collections University of Edinburgh – Gerardi Mercatoris Atlas, sive, Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47041923
A 17th Century map of Iceland became our most popular OER for football fans during Euro 2016. The image ‘Gerardi Mercatoris Atlas, Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura ‘ which belongs to our Centre for Research Collections was added to Wikimedia in February as part of our Wikimedian in Residence partnership project. It was then used to illustrate an article about Iceland on English and German Wikipedia. It has now been viewed more than 2 million times.
Iceland’s Euro2016 matches were on 14 June (1-1 with Portugal), 18 June (1-1 Hungary), 22 June (2-1 victory over Austria), 27 June (2-1 win over England), and 3 July (2-5 defeat to France). Around each of these events people all over the world were keen to learn about this surprising nation. Viewing numbers ( numbers of hits) show appreciable spikes for the matches against Portugal, England, and France.
This week I’ll mostly be in Budapest for EDEN16. The conference is called ‘Re-imagining Learning Environments’. It’s my first time to EDEN, and I’ll be keynoting in the theme: ‘Opening up education’. I’ll be talking about the initiatives , projects, examples of good practice and the new business models we are championing at University of Edinburgh.
Our new Short Courses Platform has met its first major milestone.
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