Community of Practice

To accompany the grants process, a Community of Practice was formed to enable those on the projects to discuss aspects to open education. Sessions were conducted once month and each started with a theme. 

July - Accessiblity

The focus of the first Community of Practice session was accessibility. This was prioritised so that the principles of accessibility could be taken into account during the design phase of OER creation. Initially, the participants introduced their projects as a way of introducing themselves and their work to the group. Following from this, the discussion focused on accessibility and included examples of accesible resources and a guest appearance from the Inclusive Digital Environments Accessibilty project team.

Resources highlighted:

BCCampus accessibility toolkit 2E

Affordable learning Georgia OER accessibility series and rubric

August - Open Educational Practice and Pedagogy

This session included a discussion on open educational practice as an umbrella term and the variety of open resources that can be used in open education. Open educational practice is the usage of open resources in teaching and learn – and that isn't limited to just OER. It can also include resources such as open data and open access articles. At this session, Dr Ben Whitburn discussed the use of an open textbook in his unit -  Opening Eyes onto Inclusion and Diversity.

Resources highlighted: 

hypothes.is for web annotation

Hegarty B (2015) 'Attributes of Open Pedagogy: A Model for Using Open Educational Resources', Educational Technology, 55(4):3-13.
 

September - Attributing, Copyright and Licencing

A discussion of attributing, copyright and licencing is essential to participation in OER usage and creation. In this session, the use of the attribution creator was discussed. Astrid and Kate from the copyright team attended to discuss copyright and licencing relevant to OER. Copyright generalities were discussed along with specific questions from the project teams.

Resources highlighted:

Creative Commons Atttribution Builder

The OEL Toolkit

Which Creative Commons licence is right for me

October - Impact

Designing and creating OER requires commitment from the contributing academics. In this session the impact of OER was considered from the academic viewpoint of demonstrating impact using both qualitative and qualitative data. 

Resources highlighted: 

36 Indicators of OER Impact

Metrics to consider for OER

 

Image CreditsArek Socha from Pixabay, Goumbik from Pixabay and Jordan McDonald on Unsplash.