Open education projects – through the lens of

innovation

Dr Vivien Rolfe@vivienrolfevivrolfe.com

University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

For OpenEd 2015 Conference, Vancouver 19-21 November 2015

Innovation is messy!

“Violent fondness to change andgreater eagernessafter novelties” 1

LATEST INNOVATION “IT” WORDSDisruptiveOpenSocialAmbidexterousGrassrootsDemocratisedRadical

1700s

Invention(new step)

Innovation(new application)

Imitation

X ©Bower &

Christiansen 3

Theories of disruptive

technology. Not a great fit for education?

1990s

Eric Von Hippel 5

Democratizing Innovation. People

innovating for themselves.

2015

1990s Innovationprocesses, knowledgemanagement, IPR,competitive advantage 4

Education innovation asdriver of prosperity?Didn’t achieve muchmore than a “shufflingof feet” 2

1940s 50s

"Laika (Soviet dog)". Wikipedia Fair Use

Research goals

• Review the impact of 5 OER projects through the blurry lens of innovation 3-7 years post funding.

• Conducted 8 staff interviews in March 2015.• Identified themes relating to innovation -

defined as novel or unexpected outcomes.• The aim was to share our findings and our

failings.

Rolfe OER15 Conference, Cardiff 2015. Rolfe paper submitted.

OER projects at De Montfort University, UK2009 Virtual Analytical Laboratory (VAL) – static HTML2010 Sickle Cell Open (SCOOTER) – WordPress blog / SEO2010 TIGER (Leicester, Northampton) – DMU repository2012 Biology Courses Midwifery – DMU repository2012 Biology Courses Forensics, Biomedical – WordPress / SEO

BiologyCourses

OER in multiple formats = accessible = discoverable

Rolfe & Griffin 2011 Guide to SEO

Emerging themes

People• Reliance on champion (3 mentions)…

– “Part of the problem was you scedaddled – the champion – I’m not blaming you, but the champion effectively had gone and there was no way other teaching fellows or NTFs were able to own it”

• But others had followed…– “It has changed my practice in terms of whenever I’m

doing anything I think how could this be an OER or how could it supplement what I’m doing”

New local partnerships

• Local partnerships….– “So we did that by working closely with a college,

Leicester College and getting their theatrical makeup students to make the injuries for our manikin”

– “I rang up the police and they actually came back to us and come out and told us the calculations that we need to make mock skid marks”

• OERs translated into Nigerian dialects…– “The particular university had already got their

project on sickle cell in schools which was a bit more about giving information to teachers, and had gone for the spirit of OER, adapted it, …”

• OER translated into Portuguese…– “It was a full blown socio linguistic evaluation

looking at the tone of the author…they’ve gone through several stages from a literal translation to a cultural adaptation”.

New global partnerships

Technology tussle

Creative and digital learners (7 mentions)…– “I think that they are used and there is great potential to do more and

students like being digital learners and media learners”– “The students themselves are filming each other doing simple tests”….

“And those local to us here are happy to come in during the holidays to develop something”

In a constraining IT infrastructure (9 mentions)– “The main problem is getting dedicated time to produce proper videos with

proper editing that is good enough to go out”.– “The team has a range of other pressures on them –we need a lecture

capture solution, we need a multimedia solution, a eAssessment solution, and the idea of open is kind of secondary. (Not as shiny). It’s a set of kind of cultural approaches, it is a mind set, it is not a shiny thing”.

– “We are effectively saying to say to staff we are going to narrow down your pedagogic choices based on our technology you have to use these two tools unless you go through the whole palaver of opting out”.

When OER goes bad

tdc1004

WhenGuinea PigsGoBad

• Difficulty of cultural translations for a health policy document in UK vs US….non-compliance with CC license but referenced.– “They appointed someone from their team to work on it and I hoped

it would be an adaptation in the full spirit of OERs and what it ended up as a document that really was entirely different but did link to the original OERs so there was some reference”.

• UK vs Ghana….non-compliance with CC license and not referenced.– “They didn’t seem to want to recognise the spirit of OER. Whether it

was at an early stage they hadn’t understood the principles although we spent long and long emails spelling it out”.

– “They wanted complete copyright control…not to share”.

When OER goes bad

Summary

• The technological approaches (WordPress Blogs, Social Media, SEO) provide a low-cost sustainable means of curating and distributing OER globally.

• ‘Bottom-up’ ‘champion’ approach works if people follow, but is vulnerable to change.

• OER ignites new partnerships – gives a reason to go and talk about education but a small fraction is vulnerable to abuse – not entering into the spirit of OER.

• Students and staff are the digital drivers of innovation but are at odds with institutional infrastructure/policy.

• Lots more.

Recommendation 1OER Research Hub Impact Hypothesis 12?

Impact via new partnerships? 6

Recommendation 2

• We need more evaluation and sharing of our experiences – good and bad.

• OER license terms can be misused anddamage partnerships.

• In negotiating, how can we ensure clarity of license terms with ‘high stakes’ OER?

Bedtime reading

1 Godin, B. (2008). Innovation: the History of a Category. Project on the Intellectual History of Innovation Working Paper. (From The Fable of the Bees, 1732).2 Nisbet, R. I., & Collins, J. M. (1978). Barriers and resistance to innovation. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 3(1), 1. (Referring to Trump).3 Bower, J. L., & Christensen, C. M. (1995). Disruptive technologies: catching the wave (pp. 506-20). Harvard Business Review Video.4 Johannessen, J. A., Olsen, B., & Olaisen, J. (1999). Aspects of innovation theory based on knowledge-management. International journal of information management, 19(2), 121-139.5 Von Hippel, E. A. (2005). Democratizing innovation.6 OERMAP.ORG. Impact hypotheses. http://oermap.org/hypothesis-list/7 Rolfe V and Griffin SJ (2011). A Guide to SEO http://www.sicklecellanaemia.org/teaching-resources/resources/scooter80/SCOOTER80a_SEO_Guidelines.pdf 8 Rolfe OER159 Rolfe Sustainability and vulnerability of OER. In press. Preprint here.

Thanks De MontfortUniversity staff, studentsand collaborators.

Thanks to funders#UKOER

And for this conference trip@UWECC BY SA Jacob Escott, Biology Courses