I am pleased to announce  that the Learning from WOeRK Project Final Report is now available through our website. It provides an outline of the project journey and outputs and reflects on our experience and  lessons learned. The report draws heavily on the reflections gathered through the evaluation process by our Evaluator Helen Beetham, which has provided some pithy quotes to illustrate the report.  Many thanks to all of those who contributed to the report.

We are now in the final stages of our project, finishing off and publishing the few remaining resources.  Our project team have produced some excellent resources, which I would encourage colleagues to investigate by visiting the resources section of this site: http://cpdoer.net/collections/  Structured around three key areas there are OER supporting the work-based learning process and professional development; those focused on research skills to support work-based learning; and those supporting leadership and management including coaching and mentoring.

On Tuesday we held an off campus University OER development day. The day involved members of the Learning from WOeRK project and EDOR teams, as well as our evaluator Helen Beetham. During the day we aimed to:

1. outline the work of Plymouth University based OER projects
2. share OER development experience and practice
3. consider some of the pedagogical issues surrounding the development and use of OERs, including for the workplace
4. identify good practice, contributing to an OER on the development of OERs and recommendations about the future development of OER at the Plymouth University
5. support to an OER community of practice.

 Programme

After introductions we started with a brief overview of the Plymouth University based OER projects provided by Learning from WOeRK and EDOR members.  This was supported by a short PowerPoint, a Newsletter and posters displayed during the day.

This was followed by a Connect 4: EduDating  activity,  providing an opportunity to meet colleagues and share some brief information. The form developed to record this information and including the contact details of all the team members is published on Sharepoint

At the end of the morning we were invited to reflect on and share our experiences of OER development. This was videoed and will form part of the future OER on OERs being developed by Claire Gray and Julie Swain

In the afternoon we were joined by Mel Joyner who facilitated a session in which our community of practice was able to reflect on some of the wider issues surrounding OER development, use and strategy. In summary Mel identified a number of key issues that arose during the session, including:

• authority 
• audience
• sustainability
• accountability
• profitability

To finish off the day we were given a short amount of time working in groups to produce some inital recommendations for key stakeholders:

• University managers
• Developers
•  Intermediaries – employers and those working with employers

Feedback seemed to be very positive about the day; I certainly found it really helpful. There is such a wealth of experience in this group, and a willingness to try out new things. The benefits were not only from the programmed activities, it was also great to have time to talk over coffee and over lunch.  Thanks to all for their contributions.

Earlier this week the project formally launched its collection of OERs to support Continuing Professional Development at the University’s Technology Enhanced Learning Day.

Following a workshop targeted at employers the collection was launched by Dr. Hilary Duckett, Associate Professor in the Plymouth Business School and one of the Development Leads for the Learning from WOeRK project.  Thanking the project team for their hard work she encouraged employers and those engaged with employers to use the collection. She then cut into a large cake bearing an image of a Learning from WOeRK OER.

 Postcard: CPD Collection information

Video: Launch and cake cutting

This week the project team were engaged with a number of important events at the University. On Wednesday we were involved with the Technology Enhanced Learning showcase. We delivered a presentation offering an overview of the four OER projects that Plymouth has hosted and the range of resources that they have made available under open licence:

• The phase 1 C-change project
• The EDOR project 
• The OF project
• The Learning from WOeRK project

Presentation: Open Education Resources – Overview of Projects at Plymouth University

Newsletter: Open Education Resources at the University of Plymouth

Project Poster: Learning from WOeRK

The information seemed to be well received and there was perhaps a little surprise at how much was available.

We followed this initial session with an employer focused workshop as part of the launch of the collection (http://cpdoer.net/collections). This mainly involved members of the University with employer facing roles and the Students Union training team. Placement staff  could clearly see the benefits of directing placement providers to the resources and the Students Union were excited about using the resourcesto support their own management and sabbatical training.

Introductory presentation:  Free Open Educational Resources to support Continuing Professional Development

Employer activity:  Links to help explore the CPD Collection

Project evaluation

Helen Beetham, a key member of the OER Synthesis and Evaluation team, has been undertaking an internal evaluation role for the project since February. Bringing her experience and insight of OER to the project she has been a tremendous asset.

In the spring she conducted a focus group with members of the development team and interviews with a range of key people, including senior Teaching and Learning managers. Her report was presented to the June meeting of the Project Management Group, an abridged version of which is available here.  (Interim Evaluation Report-PDF)

The report structure reflected project and programme level evaluation questions and was illustrated with some pithy quotes.  She noted a number of strengths, helped identify areas needing further work and highlighted some interesting feedback:

Strengths:

• project management and overall progress
• guidance materials
• links in to University strategic priorities and senior management team
• Interprofessional approach to OER development

 Actions identified:

• to continue to closely monitor the progress of OER release against targets (360 credits)
• to seek to enhance the Community of Practice, focusing around shared knowledge of OER production/release for WBL contexts
• to consider alternative ways of seeking learner feedback with the delayed introduction of the CPD shell framework

Quotes from focus group and interviews:

‘With economies being as they are, these materials could almost be seen as a taster, or bridge into employers.  Because there are some real generic OERs that we are developing that would be of huge value to organisations that can’t afford training departments”.

‘The bigger organisations always seem to get the knowledge. The smaller organisations, the SMEs, don’t. This opens the door to them getting the knowledge… [And] economic growth, recovery and so on… is going to come from the SMEs’

‘Originally I thought it would just be ‘my lecture notes on the web’ but it’s all the thinking that goes on behind that. When you lecture you could talk for ten minutes about a single quote that you might have on a slide. But when you’re using it as open learning materials, you have to articulate that narrative, that audio that runs alongside it. That shows you the thought process that goes into the teaching that you do. Until you actually verbalise and record it, you don’t realise that it’s an art rather than a science.’

 Helen has now taken on the role of External Evaluator as Professor Lesley-Jane Eales-Reynolds had to stand down from the role.

The Learning from WOeRK project is fortunate  to be able to work with other OER funded projects at Plymouth, the EDOR project and the OF project.  These projects also include members of the C-change team, so we are able to bring together  a wealth of experience.  We have been working together on a number of institutional awareness raising events, including an informal update and demo of our resources to our Teaching and Learning Committee, our CPD Committee and our Teaching and Learning Directorate.  We hope to extend this into key faculties who already have OER activities underway.  To support these events, and drawing on feedback from the OER discussion groups, we produced an introductory newsletter, “Open Educational Resources at the University of Plymouth”.

Our projects plan to work together on a paper to the University’s November 2011 Teaching and Learning committee, pulling together our collective experience and findings and presenting  a number of  key recommendations.

Here is the interview I did with my ‘evaluation buddy’, John Casey from the Arts Learning and Teaching Online (ALTO) project based at the University of the Arts. We are both managing projects funded through HEA / JISC Open Educational Resources (OER) phase 2 programme. 

We met last week to share our experiences and ideas and thought it might be of wider interest if we recorded our discussions. The idea was that we would both ask each other a set of simple questions about the progress and experience of our projects in order to share our learning and reflections with the rest of the UK OER programme, and indeed others interested in OERs. I have found it really helpful meeting with John, who is very experienced in this field. The evaluation buddy system has really worked well for us.

John’s responses to the same questions are also available: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CJcROq8j8s

‘Artefacts, products & practice as credit’ was a HEA Seminar that took place at the University of Westminster, London on Monday 23 May 2011. The seminar provided a forum to explore the place of assessment of prior experiential learning (APEL) and practitioners of APEL came from universities throughout the country. The size of the group was limited to around 30 people which made discussions possible.

APEL is very much part of the CPD framework and Learning from WOeRK project as the basis for both is an understanding that the workplace is a valid place for learning and generating new knowledge and understandings. Invited speakers covered topics around different types of ‘evidence’ for learning, ie artefacts, products and practice.

A common theme with APEL assessment is reflection and there were some interesting perspectives aired as to how best to help learners reflect on their work experience. One speaker looked at universities as places for work based learning for academic staff. APEL is certainly a valuable activity and vital if we are going to embrace part-time learners and grow WBL but it’s difficult to get away from the fact that APEL can be highly labour intensive as each claim needs to be dealt with on an individual case basis. Universities are currently looking at their budgets very carefully and as HE is geared mainly for mass education then what place does APEL have in this scheme. I asked this question at the meeting and one point that did emerge was how impersonal HE can be in a mass education model. One person even said that her daughter had just finished at university and in the three years there she hadn’t spoken to a single lecturer on a one to one basis. This, of course, could have been as much due to the character of the student as to the system that doesn’t promote more personal interactions. When there is such a high focus on the student experience there must be a way for more individualistic interactions, especially for APEL processes. It would be good to hear your thoughts on how the square can be circled.

This is a video of Stephen’s presentation at OER 11 in Manchester, May 2011.