A linked data-driven & service-oriented architecture for sharing educational resources

The two fundamental aims of managing educational resources are to enable resources to be reusable and interoperable and to enable Web-scale sharing of resources across learning communities. Currently, a variety of approaches have been proposed to expose and manage educational resources and their metadata on the Web. These are usually based on heterogeneous metadata standards and schemas, such as IEEE LOM or ADL SCORM, and diverse repository interfaces such as OAI-PMH or SQI. Also, there is still a lack of usage of controlled vocabularies and available data sets that could replace the widespread use of unstructured text for describing resources. On the other hand, the Linked Data approach has proven that it offers a set of successful principles that have the potential to alleviate the aforementioned issues. In this paper, we introduce an architecture and prototype which is fundamentally based on (a) Linked Data principles and (b) Service-orientation to resolve the integration issues for sharing educational resources

Open Educational Resources and Practices

In the last few years, Open Educational Resources (OER) have gained much attention. From January 2006 to December 2007 the Open e-Learning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS), a project co-funded by the European Commission under the eLearning Programme, explored how OER can make a difference in teaching and learning. The project aimed at promoting OER through different activities and products such as a European OER roadmap and OER tutorials. In this paper we present some results of the roadmap which provides an overview of the OER landscape and describes possible pathways towards a higher level of production, sharing and usage of OER. Moreover, the roadmap provides recommendations on required measures and actions to support decision making at the level of educational policy and institutions.The roadmap emphasises that the knowledge society demands competencies and skills that require innovative educational practices based on open sharing and the evaluation of ideas, fostering creativity and teamwork among the learners. Collaborative creation and sharing among learning communities of OER is regarded as an important catalyst of such educational innovations.The OLCOS project also developed free online tutorials for practitioners. The objective of these tutorials is supporting students and teachers in the creation, re-use and sharing of OER. To promote hands-on work, the tutorials advise on questions such as the following: How to search for OER? Which materials may be re-used and modified? How to produce and license own OER? The tutorials will be accessible and, potentially, will evolve beyond the end of the OLCOS project, because they are published on an open and successful Wiki based platform (Wikieducator.org) and can be updated by anybody.Originally published in eLearning Papers, No 7. ISSN 1887-1542. www.elearningpapers.eu

When two worlds don’t collide: can social curation address the marginalisation of open educational practices and resources from outside academia?

A canyonesque gulf has long existed between open academia and many external subject communities. Since 2011, we have been developing and piloting the public open scholar role (Coughlan and Perryman 2012) - involving open academics discovering, sharing and discussing open educational resources (OER) with online communities outside formal education in order to help bridge this gulf. In 2013 we took the public open scholar into Facebook (Perryman and Coughlan, 2013) to reach an international audience of autism-focussed Facebook groups in India, Africa and Malaysia, with a combined membership of over 5000 people. Performing the public open scholar role within Facebook led to our learning from group members about new resources produced outside formal education, for example by voluntary sector organisations, government and professional bodies. These resources are surprisingly numerous and compare favourably with those from universities. Seeking to source more such resources we conducted a systematic large scale search of free online courses, recording not only the number of learning materials available but also how easy it was to find them. We found that provision from formal education, especially universities, dominates the returned results when searching for free online courses. Consequently, resources from outside formal education, while they exist, are difficult to find. Indeed, most aggregators and repositories proudly state that the free online courses they list are from 'Top Universities', appearing oblivious to provision from outside formal education. We extended our research to cover e-textbooks and found a similar situation, with content from formal education again dominating provision. On the basis of these findings we suggest that the prominence of university-provided content within search aggregators not only marginalises externally produced resources, relegating them to even more obscurity than has been the case thus far, but also marginalises the open educational practices that were involved in the production of these resources. We propose that the OER movement’s questions about ways of involving end-users as co-producers may be answered by looking to external communities and, accordingly, we should be supporting and learning from these communities. In addition, there is a need for further research into the open educational practices of external subject communities, who are clearly more than just passive consumers of resources and are involved in both producing and adapting OER. Our research has also led to our further developing the public open scholar role to include curation as a part of the process, on the basis of evidence indicating that online content curation has the potential to help increase the discoverability of resources and awareness of open educational practices from beyond academia. In particular, we suggest that ‘social curation’ ( Seitzinger, 2014) - which foregrounds sharing curated collections as a component of the curation process - has a key role in this regard. We suggest that further research in this area could be beneficial, for example in exploring the potential for librarians to become involved in curating OER from outside academia

Training for impact : the socio-economic impact of a fit for purpose health workforce on communities

Across the globe, a "fit for purpose" health professional workforce is needed to meet health needs and challenges while capitalizing on existing resources and strengths of communities. However, the socio-economic impact of educating and deploying a fit for purpose health workforce can be challenging to evaluate. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of six promising strategies and interventions that provide context-relevant health professional education within the health system. The strategies focused on in the paper are:1. Distributed community-engaged learning: Education occurs in or near underserved communities using a variety of educational modalities including distance learning. Communities served provide input into and actively participate in the education process.2. Curriculum aligned with health needs: The health and social needs of targeted communities guide education, research and service programmes.3. Fit for purpose workers: Education and career tracks are designed to meet the needs of the communities served. This includes cadres such as community health workers, accelerated medically trained clinicians and extended generalists.4. Gender and social empowerment: Ensuring a diverse workforce that includes women having equal opportunity in education and are supported in their delivery of health services.5. Interprofessional training: Teaching the knowledge, skills and attitudes for working in effective teams across professions.6. South-south and north-south partnerships: Sharing of best practices and resources within and between countries.In sum, the sharing of resources, the development of a diverse and interprofessional workforce, the advancement of primary care and a strong community focus all contribute to a world where transformational education improves community health and maximizes the social and economic return on investment

UNDERSTANDING INFORMAL LEARNING IN VIRTUAL PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITIES OF TEACHERS IN KAZAKHSTAN

Reinforced internationally in the context of educational improvement, teachers’ professional networks, as a source of social capital, have been conceptualised as an integral part of teacher professionalism, as well as an essential element of successful educational change, and in the context of what Van Dijck, Poell and De Waal (2018) call “the platform society”, the use of social media platforms within professional networks of teachers has become an agenda for both research and practice. Therefore, with the overarching aim of understanding how to promote informal learning of teachers in virtual professional communities in Kazakhstan, this study explored this phenomenon within the conceptual framework identified by a review of related concepts, in particular a triangle of learning factors, namely, the need for professional connectedness, knowledge sharing self-efficacy, and knowledge sharing and receiving. This parallel mixed-method study was carried out in 29 schools of Kazakhstan by collecting teachers’ self-reported practice with the help of a paper-based questionnaires (n=440) and face-to-face interviews (n=41). An emergent trend within the identified findings is that teachers in Kazakhstan use social media within professional communities in order to obtain knowledge, which is manifested in an overlapping mixture of news, information, opinion, experience and resources, suggesting that virtual professional communities are one of the spaces for informal learning since they provide the opportunity to gain public and/or personal knowledge related to the teaching profession. In line with the identified conceptual framework, the results of the study provide a partial explanation for teachers’ engagement in virtual professional communities in the context of informal learning. The study suggests that both the need for professional connectedness, as part of professional identity and commitment for learning, and knowledge sharing self-efficacy are positively associated with knowledge sharing and receiving. As well as identifying contextual types of virtual professional communities, the study identifies some of the contextual factors associated with the need for professional connectedness in the research context, such as professional isolation of teachers in rural schools, the need for mentoring support, and the context of educational change, and contextual sources of knowledge sharing self-efficacy, such as professional comparison and sense of professional connectedness. Finally, in contribution to the growing body of research, the present study also argues for the importance of face-to-to face collaboration within and beyond schools in order to promote professional knowledge exchange within virtual professional communities. The research has clear implications for research and practice in the fields of teacher professional learning, particularly in Kazakhstan, hence it is believed that present study can help future efforts to support informal learning in virtual professional communities

Sustainability and Justice: Challenges and Opportunities for an Open STEM Education

Open educational resources, or OER, are teaching materials that reside in the public do-main and are available under an open license. While the creation of high-quality materials and cyberinfrastructure to share these resources is important, OER are much more than static resource repositories. Vibrant OER communities function as collaboration hubs and often include librarians, instructional technologists, instructors, education researchers, funders, open-source software developers, and college administrators. Together, these in-dividuals work as a community to respond to changes in the education landscape, support student learning impacts both in terms of cost savings and student retention, and solve issues related to broadly sharing open resources on the web. This essay provides general information about OER, describes communities developing OER for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education, and presents insights about sustainability chal-lenges. The sustainability challenges are organized according to multiple dimensions: cultural and social, economic and financial, and technological and environmental. In addition, OER provide important opportunities to address and promote social justice and open and accessible education philosophies. Knowing more about the OER landscape, sustainability challenges, and educational justice opportunities can help instructors use and contribute to this growing movement to reshape the landscape of undergraduate education

Knowledge-Sharing Practice as a Tool in Organizational Development in Nigerian Higher Educational Institutions

AbstractUnderstanding knowledge management is key to understanding organizational development and innovations. Inadequate knowledge-sharing practices in Nigerian educational institutions has impeded innovation and management development. The purpose of this qualitative modified Delphi study was to seek consensus among administrators from Nigerian educational institutions and scholars from Nigerian universities regarding knowledge-sharing practices that nourish innovation in Nigerian higher educational institutions. The organizational development framework was used to guide the study. Data collection included a nonprobability purposive sampling of 25 participants and three rounds of surveys administered online. A consensus was reached on eight factors after coding and thematic analysis: setting knowledge-sharing expectations, developing a culture of respect, holding staff accountable, enforcing a zero-tolerance policy, confidentiality of reporting, communicating expected knowledge-sharing behavior, open communication, and investigating inappropriate knowledge-sharing behaviors. The implications for positive social change include better knowledge-sharing practices for the organization and its communities. Findings may also be used to promote the use of organizational resources due to a better understanding of collecting and sharing knowledge within Nigerian higher educational institutions

Knowledge-Sharing Practice as a Tool in Organizational Development in Nigerian Higher Educational Institutions

AbstractUnderstanding knowledge management is key to understanding organizational development and innovations. Inadequate knowledge-sharing practices in Nigerian educational institutions has impeded innovation and management development. The purpose of this qualitative modified Delphi study was to seek consensus among administrators from Nigerian educational institutions and scholars from Nigerian universities regarding knowledge-sharing practices that nourish innovation in Nigerian higher educational institutions. The organizational development framework was used to guide the study. Data collection included a nonprobability purposive sampling of 25 participants and three rounds of surveys administered online. A consensus was reached on eight factors after coding and thematic analysis: setting knowledge-sharing expectations, developing a culture of respect, holding staff accountable, enforcing a zero-tolerance policy, confidentiality of reporting, communicating expected knowledge-sharing behavior, open communication, and investigating inappropriate knowledge-sharing behaviors. The implications for positive social change include better knowledge-sharing practices for the organization and its communities. Findings may also be used to promote the use of organizational resources due to a better understanding of collecting and sharing knowledge within Nigerian higher educational institutions

The realities of ‘reaching out’: enacting the public-facing open scholar role with existing online communities

A core tenet of the open educational resources (OER) movement has long been that 'the world's knowledge is a public good' (Smith & Casserly, 2006, p.2) and should be available for everyone to use, reuse and share. However, this vision of openness and of the connection between OER and social justice, which McAndrew and Farrow (2013) observe is currently re-emerging, is limited by the fact that OER-provision is typically top-down, driven by higher education suppliers with the needs of higher education (HE) in mind. As a consequence, the OER that are released can be hard to find for potential users outside HE and often fail to meet those potential users' needs in respect of the content, size, format and level of the OER. Seeking to increase the impact of OER and open educational practices (OEP) beyond higher education we conceptualised a new role for academics - the public-facing open scholar. The role involves academics working with online communities outside HE to source OER to meet the specific needs of those communities. Having developed detailed guidelines for performing the role we piloted it within a voluntary sector child welfare community in order to explore its viability. To date, our pilot findings indicate that the role of public-facing open scholar is both viable and well-received by the case study community. However, the pilot process, conducted in a community which requires all participants to be anonymous, has also highlighted the need to be aware of the impact of privacy constraints when choosing a community with which to work. In addition, the pilot indicated that listening to a community's needs involves more than noting requests for advice and includes attentiveness to a community's culture and typical modes of participation. This, in turn, can help the public-facing open scholar to fit in with the community and gain members' trust. The implications of these findings are wide-ranging. Voluntary sector online communities offer one platform for the public-facing open scholar to realise the transformative potential of open education, raising awareness and increasing the use and reuse of OER by people outside HE. However, the scope for the role is not limited to the voluntary sector and academics could find opportunities to perform the role in many different types of community. Furthermore, whilst we have concentrated on the role of the individual academic, institutional dimensions are also relevant. For example, higher education institutions which formally recognise the public-facing open scholar role as an important component of academic output, rather than an activity which is in tension with the demands of paid employment, may themselves be seen as taking on the role of a benevolent academy that is contributing to a global movement for free and open access to knowledge