Approximately a year ago we contributed a suite of learning resources into Jorum for HE consumption. They were tagged with AUOER . The video below depicts the contributions tagged UKOER into Jorum by everyone involved in that funded project. Stunning data visuals by Martin (Mashe) Hawksey.
This video explains the recent research conducted by Panos Vlachopolous, Kevin Brace (CLIPP), and David Pollard (LSS School). Essentially academic staff valued both localised and central support, and also used peers to assist their use of technologies. The results we interesting regarding the varying types and frequency of communications required to reach busy staff here at Aston, or indeed any university. The need for more localised support mechanisms points towards the potential of nurturing communities of practice, and the importance of subject specific “champions.”
You can now browse all the significant teaching and promotional projects which Media and Learning Technologies (CLIPP’s media service) has produced in the past three years on our Portfolio pages on the Aston University website. There’s a brief summary of each project and what we ended up delivering, as well as links to the video content itself (where possible).
I’m really pleased that we now have this resource as a testimony to what we can achieve, but it’s really just a small part of what we do. With every new project, we’re adapting and developing our skills and knowledge further, to ensure that we continually improve the creation of high-quality learning and promotional materials which effectively reach their target audiences. Please check the Portfolio pages regularly in the future as I will be adding not only the latest completed projects as we deliver them but also some of the classic work we did between 2004 and 2008, and hopefully even earlier.
Should you need any more information – or have any comments – about any of the projects on the Portfolio pages, then please don’t hesitate to contact me on 0121 204 4232 or at n.w.birch@aston.ac.uk.
Miguel Brechner opened the conference by discussing his 1 laptop per child project (Plan Ceibal). This had the desired effect of inspiring us to think about the positive effect technology can have on learning, and also managed to focus our minds on “doing more with less” in this challenging climate.
Various sessions were live streamed, and delegates interviewed for sound bites during the conference . Inevitably, the twitter back channels kept those peeking in, informed of our thoughts. Brian Kelly (UKOLN) and Martin Hawksey (MASHe) helped to archive the tweets using Twapper Keeper. The associated Summarizr makes a neat job of aggregating and displaying those archived tweets.
As you can expect, after not attending ALT-C for a few years, I was keen to fill up the days with interesting sessions. My highlights were:
This stylish video has been produced to highlight the potential of My Aston Portal (MAP) to all Aston students. MAP hosts a range of tools to support learning and personal development.
The video was crafted by our own Steve McHale from the Aston MLT department, part of The Centre for Learning Innovation and Professional Practice (CLIPP). Credit and thanks also go to CLIPP staff; Paul Gorman (The Captain), and the Zara Kendrick (Sidekick).
Intellectual Property Right
Image released by Joseph Robertson
University College Falmouth have released a free Intellectual Property Right course, IPR4EE, aimed at anyone who produces learning and teaching materials for students.
IPR4EE is an Open Educational Resources (OER) project funded by HEFCE and supported by JISC and the Higher Education Academy. It seeks to raise awareness of intellectual property rights for higher educational lecturers and staff developing online and/or openly available learning resources.
Aston is due to release a suite of resources under the O4B ‘Open For Business’ OER OMAC project. The CLIPP deparment have been busy repurposing existing learning objects to be released under Creative Commons licence, suitable for a range of subject disciplines. More of this later in the summer, when we’ve uploaded all learning objects.
All resources created by Aston will be deposited in Jorum under the meta tag AUOER
Yes you do! Well – we all require some TLC occasionally. Of course I’m referring to the new Technology and Learning Community web site (TLC): http://tlc.aston.ac.uk which provides advice and guidance on appropriate and potential uses of technology enhanced learning (TEL), here at Aston. It is aimed at all staff or students wishing to know more about a specific technology. TLC serves the needs of “those in the know”, who will appreciate the powerful search engine to quickly locate resources, and those who are just curious. The intuitive navigation structure also serves to encourage those new to TEL to discover and understand the potential of certain tools and applications. It is a public website, therefore we are incorporating resources, case studies, and guides generated by Aston, but also linking to effective practice and guides across the globe. It has been created to answer the important questions of; “why, what, and how do I exploit learning technologies to enhance the learning experience.”
This website is being continually enhanced, and is being built for the use of Aston staff and students, so it is imperative that we get your feedback for improvement. Contact Kevin Brace in CLIPP to give us your ideas. The “Community” aspect of the web site is part of the ongoing work. Broadly speaking we will aim to create features to enable discussions around particular tools. Watch this space. Being a public site, we also want others in academia to benefit from the resource. Send us your comments, link to us, and suggest content. Sharing resources and knowledge is vital in this current economic climate.
Moving to Blackboard 9.1
For those wishing to know more about our impending move to Blackboard 9.1, please access the new resources added to the TLC Blackboard page, to find all those answers to your pressing questions.
CC cleared image : attribution: not quite clear on the concept
The above image was sourced using the FLICKRCC image search engine. This effectively allows you to quickly locate and use (under Creative Commons) images shared by the FLICKR photo sharing network.
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During a recent OER SCORE workshop organised by the OU we learned more about their strategic plans to create Open Education Resources (OER) suitable for repurposing. An annual budget of approximately 80 mi££ion for their online learning resources, provides a focus for continual rationalisation. Their Open Learn and LabSpace initiatives continue to be refined and updated, and provide a rich source of learning objects open to all. Whilst not quite on the scale of the ground breaking MIT OpenCourseWare program, the OU continues to pave the way for the rest of UK HE to emulate. Here at Aston University we are working on an OER project called “Open For Business” lead by Oxford Brookes University, who have developed the impressvie RADAR repository.
The long running HEFCE-JISC funded OER programme enters its second phase with many Learning Objects (LOs) being placed into Open JORUM . Another project gaining wider use is the innovative HUMBOX repository aimed at primarily humanities disciplines. This recent JISC OER webinar is worth a look to find out more about current projects. While the launch of the JISC Infonet Infokit covering OER should be your one stop shop to learn all about this area of creating, sharing and repurposing LOs. Whilst the JISC/HEFCE Web2Rights wiki compliments the Infokit by providing a wealth of articles and resources to help academia develop more shared learning resources within the confusing confines of copyright compliance.
During our day at the OU, Mrs Bernie Attwell (OU copyright expert) ran a session explaining the main areas of copyright compliance using a greeting card analogy. This workshop video by Bernie is the best explanation I have ever seen covering the intricacies of copyright compliance. The greetings card exercise can be accessed online, to run in your own workshops, to reinforce copyright guidance.
Dr Peter Seville from LHS has been working on a CLIPP funded project involving Turnitin, titled ‘What are the pedagogic Benefits of Turnitin’.
On the 4th March 2010, Peter attended the ‘Academic Pharmacy Group Conference‘ run by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.
The conference is a meeting of pharmacy academics from all pharmacy schools in the UK – somewhere in the region of only 25 schools. The professional body (RPSGB) is currently in the process of splitting its functions to form two separate bodies: the General Pharmaceutical Council (the regulator) and the Professional Leadership Body (CPD, professional support, etc). At the same time, new education standards are being implemented – the MPharm degree is an accredited programme, and students must meet the exacting standards set out by the regulator. A Student Code of Conduct, mirrored on the Code of Ethics for Pharmacists, was introduced across all schools in October (also attached). In this, plagiarism is explicitly addressed (under section 6) – indeed, it is the only “You must not” statement in the entire document.
Plagiarism was considered at the conference in a number of sessions including “Introduction to the New Education Standards” and “Experiences of Student Fitness to Practise“.
Peter will be giving a presentation about his CLIPP project at the Best Practice day here at Aston, taking place on the of 8th June 2010. A timetable for the Best Practice day will be available shortly.
In a novel move to support students and teaching staff in the Spanish department of the School of Languages & Social Sciences, staff from MLT have been acting as consultant producers on Dr Marco Aponte-Moreno’s final year video production project.
His students are tasked with writing a short film script and planning for it to be videoed and edited, all the while with Spanish as the working language. A film crew from MLT will film each script and edit it into the finished article, with a view to entering those videos into student film competitions.
Producer Nick Birch has already provided support and advice to each of the three groups on how to make their scripts filmable, and the filming is slated for the end of February 2010.
This project follows on from a CLIPP project which we completed for Marco in 2009 (when we made a ‘behind-the-scenes’ documentary about that year’s student video) and develops it to provide real technical and educational support to staff and students.
CLIPP is the Centre for Learning, Innovation and Professional Practice. We are a department of Aston University.
If you would like to know more about us please visit the CLIPP web site.
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