{"id":707,"date":"2010-04-20T10:50:10","date_gmt":"2010-04-20T09:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/?p=707"},"modified":"2010-04-20T10:50:10","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T09:50:10","slug":"content-collaboration-and-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/2010\/04\/content-collaboration-and-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Content, Collaboration and Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I’m at the Beyond Borders event in Oxford, in the very nicely equipped Said Business School. After a welcome from Melissa Highton, first up is Andy Lane talking about ‘OpenLearn<\/a>‘ at the Open University.<\/p>\n

Andy first asks ‘why make educational resources open’? There was a growing momentum behind OER worldwide (led by MIT) and the emergence of creative commons licenses made it possible to clearly state how materials could be used\/reused. The idea of Open Educational Resources fitted well with the OU’s committment to social justice and widening participation – as well as the opportunity to build markets and reputation.<\/p>\n

It was hoped that OERs might bridge the divide between formal and informal learning. It costs a lot to create good content – so any opportunity to reuse content and allow more time to be spent in areas where more value could be added – e.g. personal support.<\/p>\n

Openlearn is in the process of moving to more ‘short form’ content – bringing in content previously hosted on open2.net<\/a>. This short form content might be delivered via a number of routes – YouTube, iTunes, etc.\u00a0At the same time there will be long form content for both learners (in the ‘Learning Space<\/a>‘) and for educators (‘LabSpace<\/a>‘). This will be complimented by OLNet<\/a> – focused on Researchers.<\/p>\n

LearningSpace<\/a> (long form content) is delivered using the Moodle VLE. Not just a way of delivering open resources, but also somewhere that some experimentation can take place in terms of content format, content creation tools, delivery methods etc – some of which will feedback into the OU’s core VLE product.<\/p>\n

OU believes this approach helps bridge informal and formal learning – the learner comes first, content is the hook, and delivers flexibility with a mix and match approach and self pacing. Only about 126,000 people registered – many fewer than the number of people who are browsing the site.<\/p>\n

It is a huge challenge to understand how people are using the material. Example of Daniel Conn from the Times<\/a>. On Open Learn seeing both ‘volunteer students’ and ‘social learners’.<\/p>\n

Andy now talking about LabSpace – examples of teachers collaborating on aspects of creating educational resources – e.g.:<\/p>\n