Frontpage Digital Literacy PGCert Module
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This page pulls together information about "sister" project - "Digital Literacy and Creativity" project where the team are developing a module focusing on DL for PGCertHE. It is used by RP and Isabelle Brent to plan and carry out a Review of DL OERs for Tutors in HE
Digital Literacy and Creativity for university teachers (PG Cert Module): A Review of OERs
1. About the DLCUT Project
This is one of the Open Material for Accredited Courses (OMAC) Strand 2 projects running parallel to DeFT (same timescale Oct 2011 - Oct 2012) - the Outline Project Description is:
'The aim of this project is to produce an online module ‘Digital Literacy and Creativity’ using OERs accredited at 30 M level credits by universities as part of their PG Certificates for university teachers. The project will enable the collection, development and release of open educational resources (OERs) which support accredited professional development programmes that meet the UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and supporting learning in higher education (UK PSF). The specific focus of the materials is on the ways ICTs/digital technologies can be deployed creatively to support, teaching, learning and administration. A key goal of the project is to raise the level of digital literacies in the workforce of educators and to raise the status and quality of teaching.' - see bid. I have created a new page to update you on the development of the module.
Note: the development of a module for teachers is also one of the outcomes of the DeFT project and here there is a useful overlap between the two projects.
2. The UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF)
An important context for the module is the UKPSF. Any accredited module for HE Teachers should be aligned with and where possible directly mapped to the UKPSF. These standards identify Areas of Activity, Core Knowledge and Professional Values (see attached). Under these standards Digital Literacy could be considered to be covered under (but not restricted to):
- Area of Activity A4: Develop effective learning environments and approaches to student support and guidance
- Core Knowledge K4: The use and value of appropriate learning technologies
The JISC Briefing Paper on Digital Literacy addresses reviews previous work in supporting teachers in DL and makes recommendations for enhancing the DL of teachers.
3. What constitutes an OER in this context?
Firstly there is some tension between the concept of OER and Digital Literacy in the DeFT project and elsewhere. By OER Richard and Anna mean pedagogical strategies and compound objects (a kind if black box for learning) as well as discrete individual learning objects. Taking this broad definition the OERs that need to be identified in relation to the DLCUT project are those to do with generic teaching and learning. Therefore while repositories of discrete learning object type OERs, such as Vital, and MIT, might be useful to list in any review it is important to note that they are identified only once as repositories and that their constituent objects (the individual OERs) are not relevant in most cases (although it is possible that these repositories might contain generic resources that might be relevant).
4. What do we mean by Teacher Education?
From above you can see that while the DeFT project is mainly addressing Teacher Education from the point of view of the school sector and that of teacher training in HE, the DLCUT project is looking at University Teachers, and as such will be aligned with the kind of PGCerts in L and T in HE that many HEI offer to academics that are new to teaching. However there is a link between the two and increasingly the baseline for DL is moving in the sense that the criteria we apply to judge a teacher in HE as digitally literate are becoming applied to school contexts and even as far as learners in school contexts.
5. What is the plan and what is the timescale?
IB to produce a review of OERs available for teachers (primarily those in HE) including a list of OERs each with a brief description, a link to the source, metatags (including classification or category). These OERs can be located anywhere in the world but their application needs to match the needs of UK teachers.
Alongside this list of OERs this work will require a list of categories that emerge as the list is compiled.
This work to be complete by end of March 2012.
6. What is the format of the Review?
The review will offer a typology of OERs for L and T in HE (ie for HE tutors) of which a subset will be for teacher trainers / trainees -
The review will include a collection of (links to) OERs in this context, classified and tagged according to an emergent typology
7. What remains uncertain and to be resolved? (RP and IB to use as a scratchpad)
i) How do we differentiate OERs for DL? Is this learning about DL, learning through DL, developing ones own DL, developing DL in others (learners)?
ii) what is enough? scale and scope of the review? How many OERs to be identified? How complex a typology?
Comments (6)
Richard Pountney said
at 10:45 pm on Mar 13, 2012
Hi Isabelle - here are my initial thoughts and notes - please add a list of questions.
Isabelle Brent said
at 8:29 pm on Mar 14, 2012
Hi Richard,
These are just clarification points:
3: What constitutes an OER in this context?
Where do you stand on the inclusion of materials without CC license ('grey' OERs)?
5. What is the plan/timetable?
The reference to teachers 'primarily in HE' - does this mean those attending HE to do teacher training at all levels of education (including PGCE) or those taking the PGCerts in HE?
Richard Pountney said
at 10:22 am on Mar 15, 2012
Hi Isabelle -
Not sure on 'grey' OERs - perhaps we might need a position on what is bona fide especially if we are recommending these to others and we want some assurance of their provenance and reliability ... can we take on a case by case basis initially and then decide? I.e. collect for now but leave off tagging these until we know the scale of this? Or is the issues to do less with the reliability and more on licensing for re-use??
The Review of OERs is for HE tutors in the first instance - the subset is those training to be teachers in HE but this is not the main focus.
One thing we haven't discussed is the format of the review - we know we will classify types - a typology of OERs in the context of L and T for HE tutors - will there be a collection of OERs (i.e. links to OERs)? I guess so but indicative rather than comprehensive.
Anna Gruszczynska said
at 11:31 am on Mar 15, 2012
Re: grey OERs - you might want to see our soon to be published paper on the research methods OERs which addresses this issue (Brent et al.:) http://digitalfuturesoer3.pbworks.com/w/file/51911794/Obstacles%20to%20creating%20and%20finding%20OERs.doc
Richard Pountney said
at 12:10 pm on Mar 15, 2012
Ah.... stuff I don't know about :-) I love that ... so not sure why IB is asking me about this. I guess it must trans-atlantic transactional translation?? Can we also all check we have seen this also http://ci.olnet.org/ - evidence hub for OERs
Isabelle Brent said
at 7:46 pm on Mar 15, 2012
Here is an example - http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resources/
I know this falls into the 'micro'type teaching resources that you don't want for this project, however the TES resources section is a good model of a well organised and used repository freely available to teachers (it also has a rating system that Anna might be interested in after all our efforts :). But I have searched through and there is no mention of the specific copyright so under some criteria is not going to be considered an OER. I suspect many resources will fall into this category which makes their re-use (or at least the ability to alter them) questionable. However without including them it is going to be a very short Collection! I think a section justifying our selection is all we can do whilst continuing to flag up the need for more consistent copyright information.
At this stage and with the duration of the project I think links to OERs is the only way to go. The TES is a repository like MERLOT where teachers upload files and I think we would have to request that contributors need to upload again in order to create a Collection which will only be tenable with a very limited Collection.
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