29.1 Systems for supportive open teaching  (Page 5/6)

Overall, it is taking time for everyone to get to grips with the ideas and praxis of co-creation and sharing as much as the technologies and we often have to mentor folk as they find their way (but we are capturing and will be writing up what works and what doesn’t work as soon as we can). But momentum is building and usage is growing every week and folk are using stuff in ways we had not imagined and I have not even talked about Laerning Clubs - I will leave folk to look for themselves to see what these are on OpenLearn,

5. ken udas - december 9th, 2008 at 5:45 am

Andy,

Thank you. First, I am looking forward to the report. In addition, I would like to follow-up a bit on your thoughts or plans that you have to elicit more activity or contributions through OpenLearn, particularly through co-development and reuse. That is, it seems that many of us see much more potential in OER and OCW than we are realizing. I know this is a bigger question than OpenLearn, but:

• Do you agree that we have a lot more potential to realize, and if so
• How do you think this might be achieved – what are some of the factors (are you planning anything relative to OpenLearn)?

Cheers&Thanks! Ken

6. andy lane - december 9th, 2008 at 9:24 am

“I know this is a bigger question than OpenLearn, but:

- Do you agree that we have a lot more potential to realize, and if so

- How do you think this might be achieved – what are some of the factors (are you planning anything relative to OpenLearn)?”

@Ken Yes there is a lot more potential to realize but it will be a long time a-coming. The reasons for delay are changing cultures, the potential stems from the very openness or OERs. Many promises have been made or expected from ICTs, e-learning etc but impacts have been less than expected. While some of that is down to hype I think a major factor has been the entrenched exclusivity of teaching practice - generally only the students see it and through the eyes of a learner, not a teacher. One of the most significant impacts at MIT appears to be the way faculty are now adjusting their courses and lectures in the light of seeing what fellow faculty are teaching (even if that is only the content) . So not only might they be making a little extra effort to make their own content look ‘good’ they are adjusting it to the hoped for benefit of the students. None of this involves direct cooperation or collaboration but it does lead to enhanced coordination through the openness of the content. Then there are the similar inter-institutional effects and the increased scope to draw upon or point to resources from elsewhere. But detailed reworking or mash-ups are still the preserve of the dedicated few at the moment because it is best done as a team and does need that more overt recognition from promotions etc to make people devote the time and energy to it. However, the very openness of the content to all, not just other teachers means that teachers will not be able to ignore it in the way they could pre-defined collection or repositories because their students or others did not know what was available elsewhere.