This is an archived page from OKHE 2016/7, to preserve references and content for past participants. See the main page for the latest materials.
PGCert participants from 2016/7 can access the recordings and slides here.
In our final session we will be thinking about how the internet has played a part in the openness agenda and what that means for higher education though the lens of identity.
We will take a theoretical, environmental and a practical view of openness through the viewpoints of a number of guests — and of course through your own experiences.
Participants reading this before the Topic 3 session: please explore this post and the reading beforehand, and come with views! You will meet and hear from our guests and other participants. We encourage discussion in the session and online; please comment on this post with any thoughts before/after the session.
Being ‘open’ online
You may have considered how your online identity is relevant to openness in HE, whatever your role. The accounts below are intended to help you to explore this. Your experience may overlap with one or more of these, or it may be very different.
The first assessment allows you to talk about openness and your own practice — whatever this means to you.
Openness online with students
If you work with students in any way, are you ‘discoverable’ through networks other than your institutional contact details, and do you allow students to contact you in this way? Facebook and other social networks/messaging tools are often used by students informally for study groups and discussion, but is it right for staff to use these spaces to communicate with students too?
A number of past participants discussed topics in this area in the sessions, and Carly wrote about it in a couple of posts.
What do you think about the topics which Carly raises? What policy — if any — do you follow around online interaction with students? Is it written or unwritten? What are the risks and opportunities?
Openness in teaching and learning
Are you aware of Open Educational Resources (OER) or Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)? Many participants focussed on teaching and learning rather than research last year, and we hope that this balance continues. You are free to choose what aspect of ‘open’ you write about. The posts below may help you to get a better understanding of this area if it is less familiar to you. Or — if this is very relevant to your work, it may help you to explore it further.
Simon wrote about OER use in Higher Education and one of the course leaders, Chris, wrote about OERs and ‘open’ in the context of resources.
Have you used or created OER/MOOCs? How relevant are they to your work? What do you think of them? What do you agree/disagree with in the above?
Openness, social media, and your career
It can be hard to keep track of your online profile, and it may even surprise you what is out there. If you would like to consider how being ‘open’ on social media might relate to your profile, try the Social Profile Checker (external tool). It was developed for undergraduate students but it is a useful starting point, and quicker (/less awkward) than searching for yourself repeatedly.
A number of participants took this further and talked broadly about social media use in academia — whether to engage with students or for career reasons. See these posts for example from Sara, Kate and Lucinda.
Do you feel pressure or motivation to ‘be open online’ as a member of staff in HE? To what extent do you do this, and how do you feel about it? Do you consider yourself to have a professional online profile?
Openness in research and publishing
Scott Taylor from the University of Manchester Library talks about whether the internet has changed the way we share research. If you are a researcher, think about where, how and why you publish — and the extent to which this is linked to your career. What are your motivations/barriers?
Guests
Danny Kingsley
Dr Danny Kingsley is the Head of the Office of Scholarly Communication at Cambridge University. With responsibility for compliance with open access and research data management requirements, and a mission to explore and experiment, the OSC is a world leader in developing support for the research community in a rapidly changing landscape. Before moving to the UK, Danny established the Australian Open Access Support (now Strategy) Group which was an advocacy organisation providing advice and support to government and institutions on open access issues. After finishing her 2008 PhD looking into researcher attitudes to open access, Danny worked for the Australian National University as the Manager of Scholarly Communication, developing policies and the university’s institutional repository.
As a science communication expert and a scholarly communications manager, Danny will discuss how technologies have transformed the ways in which research is disseminated and used, and provide a personal perspective on the ongoing challenges. Read Danny’s blog, ‘The value of embracing unknown unknowns’ below.
Doug Field
Doug Field received his PhD from the University of York in English Literature, where he focussed on the writer James Baldwin. He taught at Staffordshire University between 2006 and 2012, the year that he joined the University of Manchester. He sits on the Editorial Committee of Manchester University Press and he is the co-founding editor of the James Baldwin Review, an annual peer-reviewed journal published by Manchester University Press. He is a former managing editor of Modernism/ Modernity and a former book review editor of Callaloo. He is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement & is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Doug will talk about how openness has influenced how he disseminates his research, and what it means to him personally as an academic.
Steven Hill
Steven Hill is Head of Research Policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Prior to joining HEFCE Steven was Head of the Strategy Unit at Research Councils UK, covering a range of research policy issues, and had several roles in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, working on evidence-based policy making. Earlier in his career Steven was a university lecturer at the University of Oxford where his research focussed on plant physiology and biotechnology. Steven will discuss the wider landscape of higher education, and how national policy has come into play, to influence how research is published and shared.
Ian Hutt
Ian Hutt is the Head of Distance Learning Operations for the University of Manchester and has been responsible for the University’s MOOCs programme since it began in 2014.
He has been involved in the design and delivery of online learning for 15 years, both in the commercial sector and higher education. After completing his PhD in Medical Biophysics at the University of Manchester, Ian worked in commercial eLearning development for a number of years on projects for the BBC, Dyson, Shell, Fujitsu and the Royal Bank of Scotland, among others. In recent years he has been involved with the technical and learning design of some of the University’s flagship blended and distance-learning programmes as well as leading successful projects in the areas of augmented reality and online assessment.
Ian will talk about how Manchester is reaching more people through the development of its MOOCs and its distance learning plan.
Reading
- Kingsley, Danny A. and Kennan, Mary Anne (2015) “Open Access: The Whipping Boy for Problems in Scholarly Publishing,” Communications of the Association for Information Systems: Vol. 37, Article 14.
Available at: http://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol37/iss1/14 - Veletsianos, G. (2013). Learner Experiences with MOOCs and Open Online Learning. Hybrid Pedagogy. Retrieved from http://learnerexperiences.hybridpedagogy.com.
- Wiley, D. & Green, C. (2012). Why Openness in Education? In: Oblinger, D. G. (ed.) Game Changers: education and information technologies.<http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/pub72036.pdf>[Accessed 30 March 2015]
