Assessing OER impact across varied organisations and learners: experiences from the "Bridge to Success" initiative

and detailed analysis of how resources impact learning. Simultaneously, it is inherent in the concept of OER that resources are to be used in different contexts and in varied ways. Encouraging institutions to appropriate resources to their needs is important to the effective application of OER. A major challenge is to develop research practices that can effectively evaluate this heterogeneous usage and impact. In this paper we consider experiences of assessing impact from Bridge to Success: an initiative in which online courses in mathematics and study skills, originally developed at the Open University UK, were remixed for a US audience and made available as OER. The released materials were subsequently used in more than 16 US-based institutions including colleges, universities, high schools, and projects to help the long-term unemployed. The materials were used in a variety of ways. In some cases, units of these open online courses were used as supplementary materials, whilst elsewhere the courses were used in drop-in labs and face-to-face sessions. In several contexts, the materials were provided to a cohort of students to help them prepare for formal assessments. In others, underachieving students were specifically targeted and advised to use the resources. This variety of pilot contexts provided a challenging dimension to understanding the value of the OER intervention to the learner. Understanding use is seen as a key component in the further development of OER (Atkins, Seely Brown & Hammond, 2007). However approaches to this where institutions have been encouraged to contextualise materials to their own needs are currently limited. We explore different approaches to evaluating this type of impact across contexts. Analysing data on frequency and type of access, learning gains, institutional enrolment and persistence of students are critical areas for this type of research, and require an understanding of institutional and learner characteristics, in addition to the varied ways in which the materials are facilitated. Openness creates challenges for researchers to collect and link data about all kinds of use. For example, institutions collect information on enrolment, assessment and retention in different formats: this data can be sensitive or difficult to share. In addition, to truly understand impact, researchers need to be able to distinguish different forms of resource use and connect this to specific user groups. The paper evaluates our experiences by defining the types of impact data required by a range of stakeholders, and the achievements and challenges in delivering this information as part of the Bridge to Success initiative. A wide range of quantitative and qualitative methods were used in researching the impact of the initiative, but limitations exist in our current ability to understand use and to link this to the requirements of the different contexts of use. Based on both the successes and failures we had in monitoring impact we outline suggested approaches towards an effective general model for assessing OER impact

Appropriation of mobile cultural resources for learning

Copyright © 2010 IGI Global. This article proposes appropriation as the key for the recognition of mobile devices - as well as the artefacts accessed through, and produced with them - as cultural resources across different cultural practices of use, in everyday life and formal education. The article analyses the interrelationship of users of mobile devices with the structures, agency and practices of, and in relation to what the authors call the "mobile complex". Two examples are presented and some curricular options for the assimilation of mobile devices into settings of formal learning are discussed. Also, a typology of appropriation is presented that serves as an explanatory, analytical frame and starting point for a discussion about attendant issues

Accelerating positive change in electronic records management: an empirical toolkit of solutions

The AC+erm project aims to investigate and critically explore issues and practical strategies for accelerating positive change in electronic records management. The project’s focus is on designing an organisational-centred architecture from three perspectives: people, process and technology. This paper introduces the project, describes the methodology (a systematic literature review, e-Delphi studies and colloquia) and presents solutions for improving ERM developed from the people and process e-Delphi responses. ERM is particularly challenging and the solutions offered by the Delphi participants are numerous, and range in scale and complexity. The only firm conclusion that one can draw is that the majority of the solutions are people-focussed ones. The Cynefin framework is introduced as one approach for providing a conceptual overview to our findings on ERM. The sample solutions presented in this paper provide a toolkit of ‘probes’ and ‘interventions’ for practical application in organisations

Diverse perceptions of smart spaces

This is the era of smart technology and of ‘smart’ as a meme, so we have run three workshops to examine the ‘smart’ meme and the exploitation of smart environments. The literature relating to smart spaces focuses primarily on technologies and their capabilities. Our three workshops demonstrated that we require a stronger user focus if we are advantageously to exploit spaces ascribed as smart: we examined the concept of smartness from a variety of perspectives, in collaboration with a broad range of contributors. We have prepared this monograph mainly to report on the third workshop, held at Bournemouth University in April 2012, but do also consider the lessons learned from all three. We conclude with a roadmap for a fourth (and final) workshop, which is intended to emphasise the overarching importance of the humans using the spac

Wicked Problems and Gnarly Results: Reflecting on Design and Evaluation Methods for Idiosyncratic Personal Information Management Tasks

This paper is a case study of an artifact design and evaluation process; it is a reflection on how right thinking about design methods may at times result in sub-optimal results. Our goal has been to assess our decision making process throughout the design and evaluation stages for a software prototype in order to consider where design methodology may need to be tuned to be more sensitive to the domain of practice, in this case software evaluation in personal information management. In particular, we reflect on design methods around (1) scale of prototype, (2) prototyping and design process, (3) study design, and (4) study population

Supporting Real-Time Contextual Inquiry Through Sensor Data

A key challenge in carrying out product design research is obtaining rich contextual information about use in the wild. We present a method that algorithmically mediates between participants, researchers, and objects in order to enable real-time collaborative sensemaking. It facilitates contextual inquiry, revealing behaviours and motivations that frame product use in the wild. In particular, we are interested in developing a practice of use driven design, where products become research tools that generate design insights grounded in user experiences. The value of this method was explored through the deployment of a collection of Bluetooth speakers that capture and stream live data to remote but co-present researchers about their movement and operation. Researchers monitored a visualisation of the real-time data to build up a picture of how the speakers were being used, responding to moments of activity within the data, initiating text conversations and prompting participants to capture photos and video. Based on the findings of this explorative study, we discuss the value of this method, how it compares to contemporary research practices, and the potential of machine learning to scale it up for use within industrial contexts. As greater agency is given to both objects and algorithms, we explore ways to empower ethnographers and participants to actively collaborate within remote real-time research