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
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):
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?