217,363 research outputs found
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From print to Web: issues in re-purposing for an Open Resources Repository
The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement has gained rapid support for its goals of universal access to education. The UK Open University's contribution is OpenLearn, a project funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation which, over the next two years, aims to re-purpose several thousand study-hours of existing learning materials for online delivery.
The UK Open University has gained a hard-won reputation for the quality of its learning materials and integrated Supported Open Learning model. However, these materials are, as a rule, developed within the framework of long courses that typically require between 300 and 600 hours of study. Furthermore, many of the courses are 'interdisciplinary' in that they are developed by teams that include members associated with different faculties. The courses are, therefore, generally structured in terms of themes that run throughout the course and may span a variety of academic disciplines. Also, despite the breadth of knowledge brought into play when a course is developed, the courses normally reflect pedagogical and disciplinary assumptions and views that are prevalent in the UK.
Based on the authors' experience of the OpenLearn project, this paper explores some of the key issues encountered when re-purposing resources. These issues include how to provide material not supported by tutorial guidance, the suitability of media components for conversion and the inter-relationship between the multimedia components. The paper will also briefly discuss the requirements for evaluation of the re-purposing process. The issues raised are potentially of relevance to other re-purposing initiatives
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Sharing practice, problems and solutions for institutional change
This chapter critiques the roles of different forms of representation of practice as part of an institutional change process. It discusses how these representations can be used both to design and to share learning activities at the various levels of decision-making in a university. We illustrate our arguments with empirical data gathered on change processes associated with an institution-wide change programme: the introduction of a new virtual learning environment (VLE). In particular, we describe a case study of the introduction of the VLE tools in a business course. We focus on two particular forms of representations to describe the essence of the innovation: a pedagogical pattern and a visual learning design. We argue that pedagogical patterns and learning design have emerged as parallel approaches to describing practice in recent years. Despite their very different origins, both provide complementary representations, which emphasize different aspects of the practice being described. We are attempting to combine these approaches. We briefly outline the Open University Learning Design initiative, of which this work is part, and describe its key underpinning philosophies. We believe our approach provides a vehicle for enabling a better articulation of design principles and the discussion of issues concerning the re-use of educational resources and activities
Smart School Budgeting: Resources for Districts
In an era of aggressive public education reform, school districts face increasing pressure to produce higher levels of student performance with increasingly limited resources. The economic downturn has forced many districts to tighten their belts, and careful thought must be given to how each and every dollar is spent. Optimally, district leaders should work with stakeholders in their communities to set goals, analyze current spending, provide transparency in their budgeting, and consider cost-saving and reallocation strategies. The Rennie Center has created a toolkit, Smart School Budgeting: Resources for Districts, aiming to assist district leaders in decision-making about school budgeting. Smart School Budgeting is intended to push school leaders to take a more deliberative approach to school budgeting. The resources presented in the toolkit act as a starting point for districts examining their own budgeting processes. The document is designed as a user-friendly summary of existing literature and tools on school finance, budgeting, and resource allocation that directs district leaders and school business officials to practical and useful information to shape resource decisions. Each section includes an overview of a critical topic in school budgeting, summaries of useful documents and resources, relevant case studies (if available), and a resource list with hyperlinked documents for easy access. The toolkit is organized around the following topics: introduction and context for school budget analysis; setting goals; types of budgets; strategies for analyzing spending; tools for budget analysis; and cost-saving strategies.This toolkit was released at a public event on October 3, 2012
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A Beginner\u27s Guide to Applied Educational Research using Thematic Analysis
Interest in applied educational research methodology is growing as educators and researchers strive to seek empirical evidence about what is effective teaching within distinctive contexts. However, for beginner researchers who are interested in conducting case studies within educational settings and are looking for an appropriate starting point, there is limited literature that shapes comprehensively the theory and application of a rigorous research design. This article outlines the theoretical foundation, philosophical assumptions and application of a research design suitable for implementation in educational settings. For researchers and educators pursuing a case study approach within a specific context, an inquiry framework provides the roadmap to navigate the journey. The main components of this systematic inquiry framework include the interconnected practices for: identifying the issue; collecting the data; preparing and engaging with the data; analysing thematically the data; interpreting the data analysis; and composing the research findings and generalisations. Throughout the discussion, examples are drawn from a case study to illustrate how the innovative design and the sixstage qualitative data collection and thematic analysis were implemented to investigate the prevalent roles that teachers play in generating environments for self-regulated learning. Finally, research design considerations are discussed to reflect high standards of ethical practice for reporting research findings and interpretations that can be trusted and contribute practically, theoretically and methodologically to educational research
Maximizing Competency Education and Blended Learning: Insights from Experts
In May 2014, CompetencyWorks brought together twenty-three technical assistance providers to examine their catalytic role in implementing next generation learning models, share each other's knowledge and expertise about blended learning and competency education, and discuss next steps to move the field forward with a focus on equity and quality. Our strategy maintains that by building the knowledge and networks of technical assistance providers, these groups can play an even more catalytic role in advancing the field. The objective of the convening was to help educate and level set the understanding of competency education and its design elements, as well as to build knowledge about using blended learning modalities within competency-based environments. This paper attempts to draw together the wide-ranging conversations from the convening to provide background knowledge for educators to understand what it will take to transform from traditional to personalized, competency-based systems that take full advantage of blended learning
Emerging technologies as cognitive tools for authentic learning
Employing emerging technologies in learning is becoming increasingly important as a means to support the development of digital media literacy. Using a theoretical framework of authentic learning and technology as cognitive tools, this paper examined student responses to the infusion of emerging technologies in a large first year teacher education unit over two full iterations, using a design-based research approach. This paper describes the pedagogical context of the intervention, the methodology used, and it presents an analysis of themes emerging from the data relating to the use of emerging technologies
Immigrant Integration: Educator Resource Guide
Recommends ways for district administrators, school administrators, and teachers to promote immigrant integration in schools in critical areas, including school enrollment, classroom instruction, student assessment, and family and community outreach
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Models for Learning (Mod4L) Final Report: Representing Learning Designs
The Mod4L Models of Practice project is part of the JISC-funded Design for Learning Programme. It ran from 1 May – 31 December 2006. The philosophy underlying the project was that a general split is evident in the e-learning community between development of e-learning tools, services and standards, and research into how teachers can use these most effectively, and is impeding uptake of new tools and methods by teachers. To help overcome this barrier and bridge the gap, a need is felt for practitioner-focused resources which describe a range of learning designs and offer guidance on how these may be chosen and applied, how they can support effective practice in design for learning, and how they can support the development of effective tools, standards and systems with a learning design capability (see, for example, Griffiths and Blat 2005, JISC 2006). Practice models, it was suggested, were such a resource.
The aim of the project was to: develop a range of practice models that could be used by practitioners in real life contexts and have a high impact on improving teaching and learning practice.
We worked with two definitions of practice models. Practice models are:
1. generic approaches to the structuring and orchestration of learning activities. They express elements of pedagogic principle and allow practitioners to make informed choices (JISC 2006)
However, however effective a learning design may be, it can only be shared with others through a representation. The issue of representation of learning designs is, then, central to the concept of sharing and reuse at the heart of JISC’s Design for Learning programme. Thus practice models should be both representations of effective practice, and effective representations of practice. Hence we arrived at the project working definition of practice models as:
2. Common, but decontextualised, learning designs that are represented in a way that is usable by practitioners (teachers, managers, etc).(Mod4L working definition, Falconer & Littlejohn 2006).
A learning design is defined as the outcome of the process of designing, planning and orchestrating learning activities as part of a learning session or programme (JISC 2006).
Practice models have many potential uses: they describe a range of learning designs that are found to be effective, and offer guidance on their use; they support sharing, reuse and adaptation of learning designs by teachers, and also the development of tools, standards and systems for planning, editing and running the designs.
The project took a practitioner-centred approach, working in close collaboration with a focus group of 12 teachers recruited across a range of disciplines and from both FE and HE. Focus group members are listed in Appendix 1. Information was gathered from the focus group through two face to face workshops, and through their contributions to discussions on the project wiki. This was supplemented by an activity at a JISC pedagogy experts meeting in October 2006, and a part workshop at ALT-C in September 2006. The project interim report of August 2006 contained the outcomes of the first workshop (Falconer and Littlejohn, 2006).
The current report refines the discussion of issues of representing learning designs for sharing and reuse evidenced in the interim report and highlights problems with the concept of practice models (section 2), characterises the requirements teachers have of effective representations (section 3), evaluates a number of types of representation against these requirements (section 4), explores the more technically focused role of sequencing representations and controlled vocabularies (sections 5 & 6), documents some generic learning designs (section 8.2) and suggests ways forward for bridging the gap between teachers and developers (section 2.6).
All quotations are taken from the Mod4L wiki unless otherwise stated
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Open educational resources - new directions for technology-enhanced distance learning in the third millennium
Open Educational Resources (OERs) are an innovation giving new opportunities for learning and distance education. OERs are typically provided as courses but also include smaller units of learning and their components of audio, text or image files made available on the internet free of charge; usually under a Creative Commons License (Creative Commons, 2007). This license takes the approach of 'some rights reserved' for the materials replacing the 'all rights reserved' attitude of standard copyright (Lessig, 2004). Distance education based in OERs removes limits and offers the possibility of widening participation in education. This can include hard-to-reach groups which have little or no access to education or, for example small businesses and individuals who feel they could benefit from professional development and access to current knowledge about a topic of interest. The release of OERs can be a 'public good' for educational inclusion purposes, but they also could mark the first steps towards a revolution on the way people learn. So far, access to knowledge as taught at university level has been restricted to academic institutions. These institutions not only 'create the knowledge' but also have regulated the ways in which it can be accessed. A pattern is in place of establishing course registration procedures, charging fees, conferring grants, assessing performance and awarding degrees, These mechanisms form part of a traditional system of education that can be found all over the world
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