This year to save me from tears, I am touting the ‘advent of technology’ hashtag. (Not particularly successfully it has to be said).
My best festive themes feature ‘raise a glass for our Google Glass project’, ‘choose your tools carefully with our Christmas TREE‘ and ‘be careful of your digital footprints in the snow’. Jo gamely joined me with some sterling ‘elf sciences work.
Picture taken by me in the street. No rights reserved.
My vision and strategy skills were tested during my trip to Online Educa in Berlin after Lufthansa left my luggage in Frankfurt and I stupidly, left my glasses and contact lenses in that luggage. I found myself taking a very myopic view of MOOC strategy, and trying not to fall foul of any immediate tripping hazards.
Luckily the luggage returned before I began my next leg to London.
At the conference I presented a high level overview focusing on the role of the public intellectual; the ways in which we can use digital initiatives to develop town and gown relations; the ways in which we add value to online courses; and the importance of research universities in sense-making in a maelstrom.
I used broad strokes to paint a colourful picture, but that may be becasue everything in the distance seemed slightly blurred.
Many friends and partners from the LERU universites were there, and there continues to be a wide interest in our experience at University of Edinburgh of living with MOOCs.
Virginia Woolf wrote ‘a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’*. A room of ones own is a luxury which few could afford at the time without help from husband or family.
As a woman who values enormously the space I have from which to write my blog, I am particularly keen to do what I can to lower the barriers and restrictions which stop any individual or group writing openly.
I was in Virginia this week to hear more about the ‘Domain of One’s Own’ project at the University of Mary Washington. The project provides all incoming freshmen with their own domain names and Web space. Students have the freedom to create subdomains, install any LAMP-compatible software, setup databases and email addresses, and carve out their own space on the web that they own and control. The University picks up the cost of paying for the domain as long as the student is a student. When they stop being a UMW student, they can choose to take over paying for the hosting or let it lapse. In the meantime they have learned valuable digital literacy skills and contributed web-based user-created content to all or any of their courses and activities. The university is not afraid of what the students might do in the space.
It seems to me that this approach is very much in line with University of Edinburgh’s recent ‘Digital Footprint’ campaign, and if we chose to follow it, would build on our commitment to developing the student experience. It is certainly one of the more interesting ways to link student use of the web to their time as part of the university community.
Screen shot of OpenSpires (C) University of Oxford CC-BY
Over the summer a couple of the interns we recruited to work at IT Services, University of Oxford have been working with IT Services staff and academic colleagues to create a new website which draws together in one place all of the Oxford massive online open collections (MOOCs), open educational resource (OER) initiatives, open science, open source and open data projects. Oxford began publishing OER in 2009. The work over the last 5 years includes everything from podcasts to crowdsourcing schemes, educational materials to whole digital archives.
The site serves as an excellent showcase of projects and initatives which have taken a proactive and deliberate approach to openness in line with the University’s mission to maintain and enhance its standing as a university of international reach in teaching, research and knowledge dissemination.
Unique creation by Sophie of Kellogg. Commercial use by negotiation.
Last night I dined at Kellogg again. Now that I am a visiting fellow rather than a resident one I was pleased to be invited to be guest Chamberlaine for the evening.
It was Scholars evening, so we celebrated the many generous gifts of donors to the College, some of whom are alumni, and others who just believe that the work of the College and the work of these individual students is worth supporting. I had lovely company at dinner sitting with social policy champion Amanda and Heather, Desmond Tutu Scholar and Wikipedia researcher.
I chose the importance of voting as the theme for my after dinner speech. We had a number of guests from Somerville College so I was able to make reference to Mary Somerville’s campaigns for women’s suffrage as well as the recent MCR elections, the Scottish independence referendum and the imminent general election.
I was also able to remind the current University of Oxford students that until 1950 as a graduate of that ( and this) university you would actually have had 2 votes in a UK general election. One for the area of the country where you reside, one for the university constituency.
The university constituencies, Oxford, Cambridge, University of London, the ancient Scottish universities and Queens Belfast all sent elected MPs to Westminster.
This was a wheeze started by the Scots and imported to England following the union of the crowns. It went on for a very long time. Several Cromwells, Pitt the Younger, Lord Palmerston, Francis Bacon, Issac Newton, Robert Peel and Ramsay MacDonald benefitted from the arrangement. Needless to say, it did nothing for the town and gown relations in any of the cities and was all ended by the Representation of the Peoples Act in 1948.
Flayed man holding up his own skin. (c) Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/7bxti3
A fun day out with my team at the eduwiki conference. The conference was opened by Peter McColl, University of Edinburgh Rector who spoke about the role of civic universities in promoting and contributing to the knowledge commons.
During the day we learned a lot about the various features and extensions which make Wikipedia a ideal platform for open practice in learning, teaching and knowledge dissemination. We noted that there was no activity from Scottish universities listed in the Wikipedia courses list. Several colleagues quickly signed up to become wikimedian campus ambassadors, so that may change.
There were a number of Wikimedians-in-Residence at the conference and we soon began to think of projects for a residency at Edinburgh if we can tempt someone to wiki with us. Martin Poulter (previously resident at Jisc) chose an article about the Edinburgh Resurrectionists as an example to use in the conference to show the talk pages and engagement options.
It was fun ( and not at all scary) to dig down into the bones of Wikipedia for #Halloween
The Book of Salvation Opened, 1772 http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/1zx3cb
The University’s mission is the creation, dissemination and curation of knowledge. As a world-leading centre of academic excellence we aim to: Enhance our position as one of the world’s leading research and teaching universities and to measure our performance against the highest international standards; Provide the highest quality learning and teaching environment for the greater well-being of our students; Make a significant, sustainable and socially responsible contribution to Scotland, the UK and the world, promoting health and economic and cultural well-being. As a great civic university, Edinburgh …will continue to look to the widest international horizons, enriching both itself and Scotland. (University Mission)
‘Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go.’ (Capetown Open Education Declaration)
The sharing of open educational materials is in line not only with University of Edinburgh’s mission but also with a global movement in which research- led institutions play a significant role. I’d suggest an OER vision for University of Edinburgh might have three strands, each building on our history of the Edinburgh Settlement, excellent education, research collections, social responsibility, enlightenment and civic mission.
1. ‘For the common good’: Teaching and learning materials exchange to enrich the University and the sector.
To put in place the support frameworks to enable any member of University of Edinburgh to publish and share online as OER teaching and learning materials they have created as a routine part of their work at the University. (E.g handouts, teaching materials, lesson plans, recorded lectures, research seminar content, blended-learning content, datasets, problem sheets and tools).
To support members of University of Edinburgh to find and use high quality teaching materials developed within and without the University.
2. ‘Edinburgh at its best’: Showcasing openly the highest quality learning and teaching:
To identify collections of high quality learning materials within each school department and research institute to be published online for flexible use, to be made available to learners and teachers as open courseware.(E.g. Recorded high profile events, noteworthy lectures, MOOC and DEI course content).
To enable the discovery of these materials in a way which ensures that our University’s reputation is enhanced.
3. ‘Edinburgh’s treasures’: Making available online a significant collection of unique learning materials available openly to Scotland, the UK and the world, promoting health and economic and cultural well-being.
Identifying a number of major collections of interdisciplinary materials, archives, treasures, museum resources to be digitised, curated and shared for the greater good and significant contribution to public engagement with learning, study and research. (E.g. Archive collections drawn from across disciplines e.g History of Medicine/Edinburgh as the birthplace of medicine/ Scottish history/ social change)
To put in place policy and infrastructure to ensure that these OER collections are sustainable and usable in the medium to longer term.
I suspect the expertise ( although not the resources*) to deliver each of these strands exists within the University through partnership between Schools and Information Services. This vision would build upon work, custom and practice already in place within the University but offers an opportunity to take a strategic approach to publishing open educational resources at scale. What else should be included?
*The annual cost of running MIT OCW is about $3.5 million
Two Men in an Interior . Sean Watson (c) University of Edinburgh ECA Collection http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/ex3a95
Last weekend I was in a conversation about the dearth of LGBT people in medical teaching cases. This may be because LGBT people never get ill and have no health, family or wellness issues. Or it might be that our curriculum doesn’t reflect diversity in society.
Never fear, I said, rather than start from scratch writing our own, lets go out to the OER-web to find materials which have been developed elsewhere that are available and licensed for us to use in our curriculum.
My colleague Jo quickly pointed out that the need for an ‘upperclassman facilitator’ might be a stumbling point if one were trying to replicate this teaching plan precisely. Luckily ,derivatives are allowed. We are free to remix, transform, and build upon the material . Phew.
The Custody is as Barbarous as the Crime. Francisco de Goya. ECA Library Image Collection http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/n25sfo
I was in a discussion to day where the suggestion was made that licensing materials as Creative Commons for re-use would promote plagiarism. I was able to refer to the online papers from the BIS 2013 consultation about open access which explains:
At least one commenter suggested that the adoption of CC BY “[(a)] offers virtually no protection against plagiarism … [and (b)] unfettered creative commons licensing would constitute a serious infringement of intellectual property rights and pose a threat to UK intellectual capital.”
As to (a), plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else’s work and passing it off as one’s own. Plagiarism is a completely orthogonal issue to copyright infringement, and there is simply no evidence to support a claim that CC BY would promote or encourage plagiarism in a way any other solution would not as well.
As to (b), CC licensing does not infringe IP rights; rather, it is a conditional permission for the public to exercise some rights on specific terms that can only enhance UK intellectual capital by making it more readily available for wide distribution and innovative use.
Vice Principal Professor Jeff Haywood delivered a keynote adress at recent ALT conference. In it he outlined a vision for the University of Edinburgh’s education in 2025. The vision includes digital education, lifelong learning, open educational resources (OER) and a significant growth in online delivery to on- and off-campus students.
To support such a transformational shift we will need to build on recent success, draw upon our values and mission as an institution to find ‘the Edinburgh way’, and plan for investment to support sustainable, scalable growth.
This week the LTW service managers in the many IS academic IT teams will meet as a group to begin to plan a roadmap of serious experiments, projects, support, staff development and infrastructure needed to make this vision a reality. We are looking closely at the many ‘flavours of openness’ in educational practice around the institution and discussing the investment needed in digital skills for teaching, learning and research. In his keynote Jeff stressed the need for the ‘serious experiments’ to be supported, evaluated and evidence based. The reactions from the audience at ALT ( an international association of learning technologists in higher and further education) was that bold moves were needed at institutional and policy level to support a university like ours to adapt, change and maintain our position on the world stage.
