Tony Lelliott (Saide), Andrew Moore (Neil Butcher, Associates)
OER Africa proposes to model an approach to continuing professional development by developing an asynchronous, interactive learning pathway/tutorial that unpacks the CPD approach used in the African context. Participants will engage with online learning pathway exemplars, including Finding and Adapting Open Content; Publishing via Open Access; Communicating Research Findings; and be challenged how the design principles might be applied to other CPD topics.
This activity can be completed at any time during (or after) the conference.
Instructions and materials for the activity will be added below by the authors. They will provide specific details on how to participate and what to share back as a response to the activity.
Tony Lelliott and Andrew Moore welcome to the OER Africa session! Have a look at the interactive video first. We will be collecting some data from you during the course of the video so please complete the survey’s etc. However, we are very keen to hear from you in more detail. Use this forum to strike up a conversation.
Tony, Andrew, thanks for this very interesting interactive video and chance to review the Learning Pathways: Open Education Online Tutorials. As someone who led the development of the Creative Common Certificate I enjoyed looking the approach you came up with.
I think these materials provide a lot of great practical advice for educators.
I particularly like the diagrams that show the sections and steps that make up each module of the learning pathway. That helps create a mental map of the learning.
My own experience of helping educators get comfortable with open education is that it is a progressive build. Starts with show me some open content that is high quality and relevant to my subject matter need. Then let me try that material in a teaching and learning context and see if it works. Then OK now I want to modify that content and make it specific to my needs. Then OK I’m ready to remix that content with other content. Then now I’m ready to create my own. Now I’m ready to share what I created. Now I’m ready to collaborate with others on using and improving shared resources that are mutually beneficial. I think it helps to think of learning about open education in this progressive build way.
While I get the benefits of making this learning autonomous without any facilitation I do think learning is social. As such an accompanying means for those engaged in learning these modules that enables them to interact with each other could be highly beneficial. In other words if there is to be no facilitation or involvement of an educator then peer to peer learning support is I think an important alternative.
Thanks so much for sharing this professional development initiative. I look forward to seeing the data and insights you get and learning how it evolves.
Excellent work that would be great to adapt for a K-12 audience. I agree with Paul, adding a discussion or sharing option would benefit all learners. In my experience, we have used a private Facebook group to do this. Thanks!
Your insights are appreciated! I agree with you about learning being best when it is a social endeavor, although as an adult I now prefer to learn as and when required and often there is social element to the process. The LPs were, however, designed as stand-alone, so that we could then layer on top the different CPD strategies we wanted to test. We could layer different types of interactivity, including social elements, facilitation etc. on top of the LPs knowing that the resources for learning were already in place. Different university contexts would determine the precise combination.
Happy to share the final report!
Thanks again
Andrew Moore
Thanks Joan. Point taken! In some of our pilots we embedded the LP’s into a Moodle Learning Management System and then added opportunities for participants to discuss via the forum functionality and also submit completed assignments so we could determine if the skill set had been mastered.
I do, however, like your idea of using popular social media platforms. This improves ‘immediacy’ making it more accessible and fun than a regular LMS.