Thanks to everyone who attended our call earlier today! The video is now available online and embedded below.
We focused on the theme of ‘Open Data as Open Educational Resources’. There were three speakers:
Leo Havemann: Birkbeck, University of London
Javiera Atenas: University College London
William Hammonds: Universities UK
Slides from Leo and Javiera’s talk are available as a PDF. Notes from the session are available in the etherpad.
Discussions centred on:
Leo and Javiera’s work which will pull case studies together of people using Open Data can be used in institutions as part of learning and teaching practice (see the Ideaspace to collaborate – http://www.idea-space.eu/idea/71/info – you will need to create an account and request to join).
The benefits of using Open Data to teach (dealing with real data with real issues and flaws) the challenges (finding it, knowing how to use it, data literacy, storing data – institutional repositories, getting librarians incvolved etc.).
If you have an idea for a focus for a working group session do let us know!
Our seventh Open Education Working Group Call will take place on Thursday 4th June at 1pm BST / 2pm CEST (note that this is a change to the previously advertised date). Call links:
The call will focus on the theme of Open Data as Open Educational Resources and will feature 3 guest speakers:
Leo Havemann: Birkbeck, University of London
Javiera Atenas: University College London
William Hammonds: Universities UK
There will be time to ask questions and to discuss how the topic could fit in to future plans for the group.
Theme outline
The scientific community agrees that open data is an invaluable to support researchers and scientist as it encourages transparent research practices but also, the use of open data as open educational resources can become an invaluable asset in academia, as by using these datasets in research centered curriculum or in scenario based learning activities students can improve their subject knowledge and research skills.
For us using real data from research projects enable a series of opportunities for students to collaborate with researchers across disciplines applying quantitative and qualitative methods, so they can understand good practices in data retrieval, collection and analysis, and that these research based activities can facilitate instances for independent research, teamwork and critical digital and data analysis skills.
The aim of this webinar is to identify academic practices and activities in the use of open data and to gather and discuss ideas that can be applied in HE, aiming to help students to develop a variety of skills, including data literacy, research methods, problem solving and citizenship skills. We are particularly interested in examples of where university research and data has been used as we we would like identify good practices for the use of open data in the arts and humanities, social sciences, engineering and physical sciences and biological and clinical sciences.
During the meeting we will be using an Etherpad for the agenda and notes. Please feel free to add your name and items to the agenda. Also add any questions you have for the speakers.
Once again we are planning to hold the meeting in Google hangouts but would really appreciate your Skype addresses in case we have any problems. There is an upper limit of 15 people for Google Hangouts but we will attempting to transmit in Google Hangouts on Air too – Open Knowledge are currently investigating other approaches. Please check out the hangouts spec in advance.
A great call yesterday. Thanks to everyone who attended!
This meeting was slightly different to previous calls as we had a ‘meta community session’ or ‘open open session’ – an opportunity for different Open Education groups come along and introduce themselves. Each person gave a 4 minute pitch on their group, what it does, who it’s audience is, when it meets (online or offline), it’s unique selling points etc.
During the meeting we used an Etherpad for the agenda and notes.
Here is a list of the groups represented:
OER Discuss
Presented by: David Kernohan
Link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=OER-DISCUSS
Notes: OER-discuss arose out of a Jisc programme, is UK focused. It uses a #ukoer hashtag on Twitter. It is primarily focused around practitioners and experienced people. There is some discussion around what makes the group unique and valuable here.
P2PU
Presented by: Bekka Kahn
Link: https://p2pu.org/en/
Notes: P2PU is a distributed organisation with 4 staffers from around world. They use a tool called discourse – learning tool. There is a community aspect of the organisation at http://www.community.p2pu.org. Creative Commons is a proud P2PU partner through the School of Open: http://schoolofopen.p2pu.org.
Open coalition
Presented by: Bekka Kahn
Link: http://open-coalition.org/
Notes: It is a loose affiliation of groups – housed at WikimediaUK
Association for Learning Technology Open Ed Special Interest Group
Presented by: Alastair Clark
Link: https://www.alt.ac.uk/get-involved/special-interest-groups/oer-sig
Notes: Alt-C is the main conference. The sig is work on the ground. Every 2 months there is a webinar. Membership – some overlap with OER-discuss, lots of newbies. OER conference in UK now very closely linked: “OER sig is conference glue”. Currently no chairs for OER16!
OER-Research Hub
Presented by Beck Pitt
Link: OER-Research Hub: http://oerresearchhub.org and OER map: http://oermap.org
Notes: OER Research Hub gathers research on the impact of open educational resources (OER) on learning and teaching practices.
Software Carpentry
Presented by: Greg Wilson
Link: http://software-carpentry.org/
Notes: The Software Carpentry Foundation is a non-profit organization whose members teach researchers basic software skills. We run workshops all over the world, provide open access teaching materials, and run an instructor training program. This is where our instructors are, http://software-carpentry.org/workshops/previous.html is where we’ve been, and http://software-carpentry.org/pages/dashboard.html is the state of our lessons. Lots of instructors – uses Github – online training course – also work on educational psychology – why open is better.
Open Policy Network
Presented by: Cable Green
Link: https://openpolicynetwork.org
Notes: Co-ordinated by Creative Commons. Also Institute for Open Leadership: https://openpolicynetwork.org/iol/. The products of grants should be openly licensed – all publicly funded should be openly licensed
All data cc0. We move the money and change the environment. Sub grants to OPN members in next few months – call for global experts. How to JOIN the Open Policy Network: https://openpolicynetwork.org/about/#join. 14 fellows at the inagural IOL. Will be hosting the second IOL in late 2015 / early 2016 – likely in eastern Europe-ish.
Cetis and Open Scotland
Presented by: Lorna Campbell,
Links: https://lornamcampbell.wordpress.com/ CETIS, http://www.cetis.ac.uk/ and Open Scotland, http://openscot.net/ & LRMI: http://www.lrmi.net
Notes: Cetis is the Centre for Education Technology and Interoperability Standards. We are a technology advisory service based in the UK, but providing education technology consultancy services internationally. Cetis works in the area of open standards, open education technology, and open education policy and practice. Cetis provided the technology strategy and support to the UKOER Programmes and produced an open book Into The Wild synthesising the programmes’ technical outputs. We have recently worked on the Leanring Resource Metadata Initiative with Creative Commons and the Assoication of Education Publishers and are now taking this work forward with the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. Cetis is also one of the founding partners of the Open Scotland initiative. Open Scotland is a voluntary cross sector initiative that aims to raise awareness of open education, encourage the sharing of open educational resources, and explore the potential of open policy and practice to benefit all sectors of Scottish education. We have also produced the Scottish Open Education Declaration, and open community draft based on the UNESCO / COL Paris
ICORE: International Community for Open Research and Open Education
Presented by: Christian Stracke
Links: http://www.ICORE-online.org
Notes: ICORE = International – need to combine open research and open education, pushing people to go for openness – joining with UNESCO and OCD. Open discovery space in showcasing how open education can work – biggest initiative on open education. Organisers of LINQ conference.
Openwords
Presented by: Marc Bogonovich
Link: http://openwords.com/
Notes: Foreign language app for – all content open source, revenue models for open data
Presented by: Paul Paul Bacsich (apologies – couldn’t make call)
Link: http://www.poerup.info/
Notes: For general information it may be useful to you know that we are just starting a study project for the European Parliament on “Adult Education and OER in the EU” (for which we seek input, though just 8 out of 28 EU countries will be studied in any detail) and just finishing the final report on SharedOER for the EU’s Joint Research Centre IPTS unit. There is a bit more on the wiki page http://poerup.referata.com/wiki/Beyond_POERUP. POERUP and Beyond will be attending OER15 (at least 4 papers on POERUP and related topics) and hope to send someone to Open Education Global in Banff in April where we just heard we have two papers accepted.
Wikimedia
Presented by: Fabian Tompsett, Wikimedia UK (apologies – couldn’t make call)
Link: https://www.wikimedia.org/
Notes: Wikimedia is a global movement whose mission is to bring free educational content to the world. Wikimedia education programme: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Education
GO-GN
Presented by: Robert Schuwer (apologies – couldn’t make call)
Link: http://oer-unescochair-ounl.ning.com/
Notes: The Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN) is an initiative from the UNESCO Chair in OER at the Dutch Open Universiteit, initiated in collaboration with the UNESCO / COL Chair in OER at Athabasca University (Canada).
Score
Presented by: Antonio Martínez-Arboleda (apologies – couldn’t make call)
Links: Score: http://www.open.ac.uk/score/ and http://www.open.ac.uk/score/fellows
Notes: SCORE was based at the Open University and funded by HEFCE as a three year project (2009-2012) to support individuals, projects, institutions and programmes across the higher education sector in England as they engage with creating, sharing and using open educational resources (OER).
Our next meeting will be in approximately 2 months. Details to follow.
This meeting will be slightly different to previous calls as we will be having a ‘meta community session’ or ‘open open session’ – an opportunity for different Open Education groups come along and introduce themselves. Each person will give a 5 minute pitch on their group, what it does, who it’s audience is, when it meets (online or offline), it’s unique selling points etc.
We’ll then have a general chat about the challenges of sustaining an open education community reflecting on areas including national policy, funding, getting people onboard, bringing in new members etc.
Once again we are planning to hold the meeting in Google hangouts but would really appreciate your Skype addresses in case we have any problems. There is an upper limit of 15 people for Google Hangouts but we will attempting to transmit in Google Hangouts on Air too – Open Knowledge are currently investigating other approaches. Please check out the hangouts spec in advance.
There were some really juicy topics discussed at the 5th Working Group Call held yesterday!
Unfortunately we had some issues with the video and the sound quality of the later part of the video isn’t very good. If anyone has any Audacity skills and would be willing to improve the audio it would be much appreciated!
During the meeting we used an Etherpad for the agenda and notes.
The main discussion topics were:
Community: Marieke will be moving on to other projects later on in the year and is keen to spread the co-ordination of the group out a little. Javiera has offered to spend more time supporting the working group in the new year! There followed a discussion over the challenges of ‘building a Community’ and overlapping communities. Quite a few related open education communities were identified including: Open education graduate community, UNESCo group, OER discuss, P2PU, GO-GN (Global Open Educational Resources Gradute Network), ALT’s OER SIG committee. It was suggested that the Open Education Working Group hold a ‘meta community day’ or ‘open open day’ and try to bring some of these communities together.
Open data use in schools: Marco Fioretti gave talk on the possibilities of open data use in schools for teaching. He suggested collecting and using open data as part of normal school work – using open data in school for raw materials eg. figures from open corporates. Marco explained that currently schools teach with data but it is old data or made up data out of text books, possibly on a scanned PDF. It is not reuseable data, it rarely raises the interests of children – and is doing nothing to improve interest of young people in politics or future government. This means that many young people don’t care about activism. Marco argued that this was different from expecting teachers to learn programming, teaching stats is something they are already doing. Marco has explored these ideas in a workshop at GD Camp in Warsaw (see slides below). He has now started to collect practical examples on the topic – how teachers can begin to use open data through example lesson plans etc.
Some of the suggestions from the attendees included: support for universities to start releasing data so academics can reuse that as real data for students understanding complex problems; School of data using open data as examples, for example on understanding budgeting; having learners work on real world problems by contributing – citizen science activities. Note that Mozilla carry out interest based learning, so the learners define what is important to them and then learn web literacy competencies and skills from that lens. Issues identified include teachers being too busy and feeling incompetent in this area. There was a discussion on possible project proposal ideas related to supoorting teachers.
Unfortunately Rayna Stamboliyska couldn’t make it to tell us how plans are coming along with her ‘data expedition for children’. Hopefully she we be able to join us at the next meeting.
Translating CC: Javiera Atenas explained her concerns over Creative Commons resources being predominantly available only in English. She would like to see co-ordinated translation of resources and user friendly content – “switch flags and have the page available in other languages”. It was discussed if some of the translations are already available but need to be surfaced e.g. Transifex CC or CC Chose. Duolingo has learners translate the web while learning a new language – so people are effectively contributing to open translation efforts. Javiera will be leading a campaign in this area. [blog post to follow!]
Lyon Declaration: Bernard Nkuyubwatsi talked about Lyon Declaration and its implication on the post 2015 education. The Lyon Declaration is an advocacy document that will be used to positively influence the content of the United Nations post-2015 development agenda. It was drafted by IFLA and a number of strategic partners in the library and development communities between January and May 2014. Bernard also shared that the Government of Rwanda is considering an open education policy [blog post to follow!]
Our next meeting will be in approximately 2 months. Details to follow.
Once again we are planning to have guest speakers, and our topic for this time is open learning and teaching practices.
Marco Fioretti, freelance writer, popularizer, activist and teacher, will talk about using open data in schools. See his recent blog post for more details.
Advisory Board member Rayna Stamboliyska, also board member of Open Knowledge France and founder of its Open/Citizen Science workgroup, is in the process of setting up the very first ‘data expedition for kids’. Rayna will tell us how plans are coming along and hopefully spark a discussion on innovative approaches to learning and the implications for open education.
If you are interested in coming along to the meeting and would like a reminder leave your details using the Google form (also embedded at the end of this post).
You can join the call by joining the Google Hangout or by watching the Google Hangout on Air – links to follow.
During the meeting we will be using an Etherpad for the agenda and notes. Please feel free to add your name and items to the agenda.
As usual call falls in to two parts:
Firstly they will be an opportunity for us to get to know each other. During the first half of the call people will be able to introduce themselves and give a brief overview of the open education related project and activities they are involved with (think of it as a quick lightning talk – so mega quick!) You don’t have to speak if you don’t want to, there’s no pressure. But if you have something you’d like to share then this will be the time. At this call we hope to have quite a few members of the working group for you to hear from.
Secondly there will be a chance for us to get the group active. The second part of the call will allow us to get down to business and here we will discuss future activities, ideas for events etc. The talks mentioned earlier should start some interesting debate here.
Once again we are planning to hold the meeting in Google hangouts but would really appreciate your Skype addresses in case we have any problems. There is an upper limit of 15 people for Google Hangouts but we will attempting to transmit in Google Hangouts on Air too – Open Knowledge are currently investigating other approaches. Please check out the hangouts spec in advance.
Thanks to everyone who attended the 4th Open Education Working Group Call! We went for a slightly different approach this time and had two guest speakers along – which went down really well! We had over 20 people watching and 8 in the Google hangout.
A video of the call is embedded below and available on YouTube.
During the meeting we used an Etherpad for the agenda and notes.
Introduction to the Wikimedia OER conference – 12/13 September – in German but with an international track
Update from Tore on the Standardisation discussion that took place at the last meeting – where should more informal discussion take place re: standards and IPR?
Not very easy to decide on appropriate angle – how do we engage the stakeholders who have influence in this field? Questions to ponder on: What would be the aspect of standards that are closest to the heart of OER / Open Education enthusiasts – and that would bring the discussion on open standards forward? Data sharing of LA data? Metadata description of OERs? IPR descriptions (well, that one is done via CC?)….
Agreement that short talks are good for the Working Group calls – all ideas to be sent in to education@okfn.org
The two great talks were:
Martin Ebner from Technische Universität Graz on the potential of Learning Analytics for open education using the examples of e1n mal e1ns and Schule Tugraz [Slides]
We have a date for your diaries: our fourth Open Education Working Group Call: Tuesday 8th July 3:00pm – 4:00pm BST.
As requested at the last call, for this call we will have two invited speakers:
Martin Ebner from Technische Universität Graz will talk about the potential of Learning Analytics for open education [Slides on Slideshare]
Mick Fuzz from Floss manuals will talk about Duct Tape University – an OER discovery and publishing tool for learning communities
Hopefully both brief talks will lead into more general discussion about discovery and data, their importance for open education and the connections between them.
If you are interested in being involved leave your details using the Google form (also embedded at the end of this post).
During the meeting we will be using an Etherpad for the agenda and notes. Please feel free to add your name and items to the agenda.
As usual call falls in to two parts:
Firstly they will be an opportunity for us to get to know each other. During the first half of the call people will be able to introduce themselves and give a brief overview of the open education related project and activities they are involved with (think of it as a quick lightning talk – so mega quick!) You don’t have to speak if you don’t want to, there’s no pressure. But if you have something you’d like to share then this will be the time. At this call we hope to have quite a few members of the working group for you to hear from.
Secondly there will be a chance for us to get the group active. The second part of the call will allow us to get down to business and here we will discuss future activities, ideas for events etc. The talks mentioned earlier should start some interesting debate here.
Once again we are planning to hold the meeting in Google hangouts but would really appreciate your Skype addresses in case we have any problems. There is an upper limit of 15 people for Google Hangouts but we will attempting to transmit in Google Hangouts on Air too – Open Knowledge are currently investigating other approaches. Please check out the hangouts spec in advance.
Thanks to everyone who attended the 3rd Open Education Working Group Call! We were slightly down on numbers, possibly due to a later start, but did have 3 members of the Open Education Working Group Advisory Board attend – which was great!
During the meeting we used an Etherpad for the agenda and notes.
For this meeting much of the discussion focused on one of the activities defined in the last meeting: Pre-standardisation discussion in the area of open learning.
The standardisation area is complex, there is competition within domain and there are many players involved including industry, governments and European commission. There is also lots of flux in the standards world at the moment.
However in Europe there are no activities that could be currently referred to as pre-standardisation.
It is this early discussion that the Open Education Working Group could facilitate
There is currently a lack of critical mass of people who are interested in this area.
There is also a need to articulate how open standards can help open education – where is the added value for individuals? i.e. metadata to help searching and filtering of content. This could be covered in the Friday Chats and the Open Education Handbook.
In reality there are probably multiple venues needed for this space but the Open Education Working Group could offer “Conversations in a context” – things feed in to discussions elsewhere.
Key areas include: CC & LRMI & Schema.org & publishers
Currently standardisation is focused on projects – what happens between the projects – how do we keeping the community going? Potentially there could be a funded project in this area.
There was discussion about whether it is worth having an online event on the mutual relationship between open data, open education and open standards – possibly to early for this – but maybe later.
Tomorrow there will be a seminar on the LACE project at on Tuesday 13 May 2014 starting at 13.00 BST.
It was agreed that further discussion needs to had and key players identified
Other topics:
Slidewiki: A summer competition has recently been launched. It would be good to have attendees of OKFestival create Slidewikis. We could also work on a generic set of slides on standardisation activity.
OKFestival: The Open Education Working Group Open Maker party has been accepted – which is good news!
Call structure: It was proposed that we have a topic on Learning Analytics for the next meeting. Marieke and Adam to investigate an appropriate speaker for the session. Marieke will circulate some Working Group Call dates so we can plan into future.
The next call date will be posted on the blog as soon as possible. If you are interested in being involved leave your details on the form below.
Thanks to everyone who attended the 2nd Open Education Working Group Call! It was great to see some people returning.
We had 12 people in the Google Hangout but unfortunately a technical hitch means that we didn’t managed to record the session.
Attendees in etherpad
During the meeting we used an Etherpad for the agenda and notes.
The main decisions outcomes were:
Advisory Board: An open call was made to the community for nominations for the advisory board, over 30 nominations were received. These were assessed by the Open Knowledge Foundation and the following people have now confirmed: Rayna Stamboliyska, Bernard Nkuyubwatsi, Karien Bezuidenhout, Lorna M. Campbell, Louis M Coiffait and Cable Green. Full details will be posted on the web site soon.
Membership: There are plans to create a mailing list for members. Members of the Open Education Working Group Working Group are publicly listed individuals who volunteer time to evangelise about open data, content and/or knowledge in the Open Education field. Members coordinate the activities of the Working Group with the support of the Open Knowledge Foundation community team.
Activities: Activities
LRMI– pre standardisation area – beyond metadata – we could maybe brainstorm current standards initiatives
Multilingual activity, translation of less used languages
Lobbying for change of mindset
Activity around language we use to describe open education (non-specialists) – issues and concepts – common language
Policy level collaboration (unesco) – large organisations working together – maybe something for advisory board – holistic perspective
Call structure: Now that the working group structure is in place it would be good to focus in on a couple of activity areas/issues. Suggested that next time we pick one or two of the activity areas above and that individuals can offer input statements (couple of minutes). Jan has offered to something on internationalisation. The next call will be scheduled at a time so the US can participate – probably 5pm GMT. The US influence has been noted and it would be good to have some new people participate. Marieke will circulate some Working Group Call dates so we can plan into future.
The next call date will be posted on the blog as soon as possible. If you are interested in being involved leave your details on the form below.
Open Education Working Group 
