My colleagues Sheila and Wilbert have developed  five conceptual models of Distributed Learning Environment (DLE) for institutions. In the briefing paper, they discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each model and provide some examples of current applications. This timely work should be really valuable in helping institutions and educators to rethink how VLE and social software tools could be used effectively to support teaching and learning within institutions. For example, my colleague, Stephen and I in the IEC at the University of Bolton are developing a course for students who are studying a Masters degree in Educational Technology in universities in China. Both our Chinese partners and colleagues in IEC would like to explore new ways of teaching and learning in a technology enabled environment and the possibilities of developing online learning programmes collaboratively between institutions in the UK and China. At the moment, the University of Bolton is running a new Moodle elearning site and exploring how to integrate the Wookie server for plugging in various widget applications into the institutional VLE. This fits well with the “Model 1” of DLE which is illustrated in the briefing. For our Chinese online course, there are several aspects in relation to the course design and delivery and how this could be implemented through a variety of available technology:

1. The course will be co-designed and co-delivered by the IEC team and our partners in China, therefore Moodle will be used to prepare and develop course material collaboratively and monitor teaching and learning process and carry out assessment.
2. The course will be published online so that anyone can follow the course and join in the activities (in China or elsewhere), but only students from the partner university will be able to gain credits after successfully completing the course.
3. Learners will be encouraged to critically evaluate and use social software tools outside the institution VLE to build their personal learning environments. For example, they can post their blogs on WordPress, create group collaboration sites on Wiki and build shared resource collections with Delicious.
4. Presentations from lecturers will be pre-recorded with subtitles so that learners can watch wherever and whenever they want and hotseat sessions will be held online by using conferencing software or virtual classrooms to discuss issues with experts.
5. Widgets will be used to add additional functionality to the existing VLE to enhance teaching and learning experiences online. Furthermore, some specific widget applications will be developed to support learning activities which are designed to meet particular educational purposes for the course.

To me, this course provides a good case study for exploring how an institutional VLE can be extended to provide an open and shared learning space and a protected private space for preparing the course itself and carrying out the assessment. It also presents opportunities to investigate how widgets and web-based tools can be used to support both personalised learning and collaborative teaching and learning within and beyond institutions.

Last week, seven OER projects from the institution strand of UKOER pilot programme gathered together at Nottingham University to share the outcomes of the projects and common issues they are trying to address which I found very useful and stimulating. The meeting started with OER showcases in which each project presented two resources they have made available through their project. Some of the examples are available on the project websites and JorumOpen. Here is the list of the projects and the features of the resources that were presented:

1. BERLiN (University of Nottingham) – a 6 credits PGCE international course and resources created in the Second Life;
2. Unicycle (Leeds Metropolitan University) – virtual maths, a 6 credits course;
3. Open Exeter (University of Exeter) – a complete modular for self-paced learning;
4. OpenStaffs (Staffordshire University) - Individual images for reuse and repurposing;
5. OTTER (University of Leicester) - a framework for transforming teaching materials into OERS;
6. OpenSpires (University of Oxford) – Oxford seminars and public lectures-based resources;
7. OCEP (Coventry University) - diverse content types, such as Second Life machinima, looking into how one set of resources could be used in different ways.

The meeting also provided an opportunity for projects to share experiences and discuss issues on reward and recognition for producing OERs, developing sustainable OER models, resources discovery and copyright clearance, etc. There were several themes raised during the presentations and discussions:

• Quality control: how should institutions control the quality of OERs provided by lecturers? On the one hand, quality is very critical from the marketing perspective since these resources are showcases of universities’ courses. On the other hand, if the goal of OERs is to promote sharing, reusing and repurposing, then the quality of the resources should be judged by the end users rather than institutions.
• Centralised and distributed models: it has been reported that some projects have adopted a centralised model which means that staff have been employed by the project to provide technical and other supports for procuring and releasing OERs. However, there are concerns about whether universities would continue fund this support when the project finished. One of the projects adopted a distributed model for which no additional staff has been recruited and the responsibilities for producing OERs have been located to representatives from different faculties. It is hoped that these people would continue to do so after the OER programme ends.
• Shrinking credits: there have been concerns about producing 360 credits equivalent teaching and learning resources at the end of the programme. Some projects found they are struggling to meet this requirement. One of the reasons mentioned was “shrinking credits”. For example, a lecturer may promise to provide 30 credits course materials, however, when the course materials turn to OERs, it might turn out to be much less than 30 credits. This is understandable, when we talk about credits which involve content, teaching and learning process and assessment. In this sense, if it is content alone, credits may be not the most appropriate way to measure the OER projects. However, it is agreed that the UK OER programme does expect to make significant amounts of teaching and learning resources freely available.

According to The New Media Consortium the Horizon Report 2010, open content is expected to reach mainstream teaching and learning within one year or less. In this case, what these institution projects have learned from the UK OER pilot programme would be really valuable to this movement.

I attended the Open Learning conference held by Nottingham University last week. It was a really impressive event which brought together presenters and academics from the University of Nottingham, OER Africa and the JISC UK OER programme. The key note speaker Catherine Ngugi, project Director of OER Africa, gave an inspirational talk about “Open Educational Resources in Developing Countries”. She reflected their experiences in supporting institutions in Africa and other countries to create effective collaboration partnerships for developing OERs on health education. She also outlined how the concept of OER could benefit higher education systems, institutions, academics and students on the continent and around the world. Luke Mckend from Google introduced Google’s YouTube Edu initiative and demonstrated how to use Google data analytic tools to gather useful information for educational usage and how to track where the users come from and how they interact with YouTube’s hosted videos, which I found to be very interesting and useful.

One of the themes of the conference was open learning at the University of Nottingham. Professor Christine Ennew, Pro Vice Chancellor for Internationalisation and Dr Wyn Morgan, Director of Teaching and Learning from the University shared their vision and strategy for making learning materials available openly. A number of academics from Nottingham university also reported the progress and actions on provision of OERs in the University, including The JISC funded BERLiN project, Nottingham’s OER repository “u-Now” and technologies used to support Open Learning at the university, such as “Xerte Online Toolkits”, a tool for creating rich interactivity and “XPERT” for sharing and discovering of OER via RSS. The conference also provided opportunities for a number of other JISC UK OER projects to showcase their work, share ideas and discuss some common issues across different institutions. Jackie Milne from JISC Legal provided advice on IPR and considerations for making material available openly.

It is clear that more and more institutions in the UK and worldwide are joining the OER movement and more and more academics are publishing their course materials on the web for people to use freely anywhere in the world. However, to me, the most inspiring thought from the conference was how we should think about OER beyond resources, institutions and nations. Professor Andy Lane from Open University in his presentation pointed out that designing for Open Learning needed to consider that learners want whole courses with pay as you go and on – demand accreditation. Neil Butcher, Strategist for OER Africa, introduced two OER-related innovative programmes from African universities. One of the universities is developing an entire online distance learning programme based on high quality OERs available worldwide and all learning materials will be delivered to learners’ mobile devices. The university expects the programme to be self-sustaining in 4 years. He suggested that the UK OER community should engage with this demand and build partnerships and networks to make best use of the potential of OERs. I came away thinking that for OER the potential seems boundless and with no limit.

Wilbert followed up with a talk on the newly realised Google Wave preview and Wookie (audio). In his presentation, he discussed the similarities and differences between wookie and wave as widget platforms, as well as the different levels of interoperability between them. He also demonstrated how to input widgets from Wookie to Wave and the other way round. Finally, Ross McLarnon and Alan Brown from Youth Media, showed the Youthwire desktop widget platform that has been adopted by many universities and colleges. They have recently developed a prototype Wookie integration that enables users to select and use Wookie widgets within the Youthwire platform (audio). Lastly, Andrew Savory from the LiMo Foundation talk about developments in widgets in a range of Linux based mobile phones, and particularly how the BONDI specification improves interoperability and functionality in that area. An important part of that work is the open source, Eclipse based BONDI Software Development Kit that is enabling widget development (audio here).

In the afternoon, the participants were divided into two groups: one focusing on widget development and application, the other one on widget engines and plug-in. A number of issues were raised during the discussion, such as communication between widgets and how widgets could be developed to support content distribution.

One of the most important outcomes of this meeting was that the group agreed that we shouldn’t only think about widget server and plug-in development, but that we need to shift our focus to teaching and learning use cases and think about what educators and learners really want from widgets. Therefore, it is necessary to involve some lecturers who are interested in using Widgets in their teaching into the conversation. Ideally, they can bring some use cases and cooperate with widget developers to explore what types of educational practice is enabled by widgets so that widgets developers can then write widgets to meet appropriate educational purposes.

If you are interested in this work and would like to join the Widgets Working Group, more information is available on the CETIS wiki.

Two weeks ago, I joined my colleagues, Oleg Liber, Director of JISC CETIS and Sarah Holyfield, Communications Director of JISC CETIS to present at the 8^th International Educational Technology Forum in Xuzhou, JiangSu province, China. The conference is organised by the National Colleges and Universities of Educational Technology Direction Committee and it provides a platform for experts and scholars in China and abroad to discuss the latest issues on the use of technology in education, and to learn from practice, exchange ideas and share mutual interests. About 500 experts, researchers, teachers and students frome China, UK, US and Japan attended the conference. Professor Liber was invited to give a keynote lecture on “Cybernetics and Education: Insights from the Viable System Model” with a focus on Cybernetic Modelling as an approach to designing educational technology intervention. I gave a presentation on Open Educational Resources initiatives and the UK JISC-funded OER Programme at the conference.

I also attended the Chinese Government Funded Educational Technology Programmes & Innovative Use of Technology in Education conference which was organised by the Higher Education Press in Beijing on 24^th August. The speakers from different Chinese universities reported findings from their projects and research on use of technology to enhance teaching and learning. I was invited to give a presentation on the UK OER Programme and Innovation in HE and this provided an opportunity to discuss some mutually interesting issues with Chinese colleagues, such as copyright, interoperability and standards, etc. Not surprisingly, some other presentations at the conference also looked into models for sharing educational resources and the various barriers that prevent sharing and using teaching and learning resources, etc.

After the conference, we visited East China Normal University, Shaanxi Normal University and Beijing Normal University, all of these are universities which specialise in teacher training, and we ran seminars with staff and students from the Institute of Educational Technology in each of them. In these seminars, Sarah gave an overview of JISC and CETIS’s missions and aims, along with their programmes and activities to the audience of Chinese colleagues and students. Oleg talked about the major projects and development work that CETIS and the Institute for Educational Cybernetics (IEC) are working on, and the Inter-disciplinary, Inquiry–based learning programme (IDIBL)based at the IEC at Bolton; I then followed up with an input about the UK JISC-funded OER programme and the main challenges this is addressing. These seminars also initiated very interesting discussions with Chinese colleagues and students on various topics, and there is clearly a great deal of interest among colleagues in China in the whole question of Open Educational Resources and what these imply.

It was very impressive to learn that universities in China have developed a comprehensive degree system for teaching, learning and research on education technology in order to service the needs of using technology to extend access to education and improve the quality of teaching and learning in China. In the field, there are 224 universities with bachelor degree programmes, 83 universities offer master level programmes and 8 universities are qualified for PhD programme, whilst 6 universities provide research fellowships. It is clear that the rapid development of education technology as a subject in Chinese universities also poses big challenges on curriculum design and student recruitment. For example, how to keep up with changing technology; how to meet students’ expectations and the needs of the job market in the field.

During the visit, we discussed a wide range of issues with the Chinese colleagues, learnt from different perspectives, shared mutual research interests, and explored opportunities for developing collaborative research projects and partnerships. Sarah and I will write more about our visit to China and what we have learned.

Finally and most interestingly, we found a street storyteller using an old fashion technology –“Magic Lantern” to present Chinese history stories which attracted many people (different age, gender and culture) who came to visit the modern Shanghai.

Amber Thomas, David Kernohan, Mark Stiles, Tom Franklin, Chris Pegler, Liam Earney and I will present a symposium, entitled “OERs matters – vision, reality and uncertainty” at ALT-C on 8^th September. In this symposium, we would like to explore a number of key issues related to the rapid development of OER initiatives, including whether:

• only prestigious institutions can make a business case for large scale OER initiatives?
• the learner can gain rich learning experiences as much in OERs as they would in more traditional settings?
• publicly-funded OER repositories are still needed even if everything is available on Youtube/slideshare/Flickr etc?

The symposium will be chaired by Oleg Liber, Director of JISC CETIS. A debate about the pros and cons of OERs will involve the following prestigious panel:

• Pollyanna Pegler, Academic, who is so keen on learning objects and sharing reusable online materials that she is writing her PhD on this subject. Because she is completely comfortable finding, adapting and reusing online materials Pollyanna struggles to understand the reservations of colleagues who prefer to stick with what they know.
• Professor Ogden Wisden, Academic. As for the idea of Open Educational Resources, he has been laughing at the concept for around 15 years, watching the promoters of self-publication change the name and publish their half-baked concepts unsuited to proper teaching.
• Quentinna Yan, Teacher, a self-motivated, keen learner, she is loyal user of MIT and OpenLearn and has studied a number of courses provided by those universities without any fee. She enjoys teaching herself everything she needs to know by using OERs and doing her learning when and where she wants.
• Professor Will Pileham-Highe PVC. He is sceptical that a move into OER would offer a realistic return on investment in his university. He is very concerned about recruitment and retention and is unsure of how OER might help him achieve his goals.
• Joe Zawinul, Government. His responsibilities cover the use of technology to save universities time and money, and he believes that sharing academic materials online would make it cheaper and provide better results than traditional lectures and tutorials.
• A representative of a commercial publisher, who is under the pressure of meeting sales targets, re-aligning business models, negotiating rights frameworks and developing innovative online services for the digital age. For him, OER might be great, if you can find a way to play the game without losing money.

We would like to invite you to join the symposium and participate in the discussion to share your thoughts and ideas. We hope that the debate will help to clarify some of the most common concerns on OER initiatives. We will also challenge the participants to think more deeply about the impacts of OERs in HE, as well as further explore and discuss these issues in the OER pilot programme.

Based on the literature review and analysis of the current cloud computing service provisions and applications in institutions, we are also busy producing a briefing paper to introduce cloud computing to educators and help them to gain a better understanding of the conception of cloud technology and its impact on teaching and learning in institutions. The briefing is near complete, and will be presented in printed form later. We very much welcome you input and suggestes at this stage. For more information about the CETIS cloud computing activity group contact Wilbert Kraan at w.g.kraan@ovod.net or Mark Power at mpower6@gmail.com.

I attended the JISC /Academy Open Educational Resources Programme start-up Meeting at the Congress Centre in London last Tuesday. The meeting brought together all funded projects from three programme strands (Individual, Subject and Institutional), JISC/Academy programme managers and JISC programme support services to share and discuss various aspects and issues of the OER pilot programme.

To me, the day was very interesting and useful. Firstly, it was to develop a shared understanding of the purpose of the pilot programme and clarify some “myths” about the OERs projects. Following an introduction to the event by David Kernohan, Tish Roberts gave an overview of the programme. In her presentation, Tish emphasised that successful projects need to be sustainable beyond their funded life, and they also need to explore changing process and policies so that the release of materials becomes an important part of academic practice in institutions. Secondly, the meeting provided guidance on programme management, support and dissemination. Heather Williamson talked about budget, staffing, programme meetings and project reporting. She also pointed out that the projects need to share “when things go wrong”. A range of existing JISC services, including JISC Legal, Jorum, CETIS and InfoNet demonstrated a variety of support functions provided for the projects which cover technical, legal, strategic advice, toolkit and support for the deposit and aggregation of materials. Patrick McAndrew from the OU “SCORE” project shared the lessons learned from OpenLearn and how to support OER projects through OLnet and the community of practice. The evaluation and synthesis for the OER programme intends to develop a common framework tool to look at individual, subject and institutional aspects. Helen Beetham explained that this approach is to encourage shared evaluation. Finally, the event gave delegates an opportunity to get to know one another. The strand meetings provided a small and relaxing environment for successful bidders to talk about their projects and discuss some common issues.

Presentations from the day are available here. Nick and Tom also provided very useful summaries about the event on their blog posts.

At the CAL 2009 conference in Brighton last week, I gave a presentation entitled “Developing a Framework for Understanding and Evaluating the Impact of Open Educational Resources”. This presentation was partly based on Adam’s blog about Open Educational Resources and the Zachman Framework as well as some of the latest thinking and discussions on the rapid development of intuitional OER initiatives internationally as well as JISC/HEA pilot OER funding programme with colleagues at CETIS. Given the complexity of the OER initiative itself and the nature of the transformation process of the OERs, we need a more structured way to capture different views and expectations from various players involved in the OER development process and a useful tool to examine institutional strategies in relation to OER approach and their impact on current and future practice in HE.

Zachman framework is the most widely known framework in the Enterprise Architecture context and it is designed to address the complexity and transformation process in enterprise architecture and examines the key business, information, application and technology strategies and their impact on business functions. Applying the Zachman approach, I derived an analytical framework for OERs and it is illustrated below:

In the table, the four rows present different points of view from various players related to OERs, namely: the planner, owner, designer and user. The information provided in each cell could become knowledge to help us share and understand different perspectives from different players in the process. For example, the motivation factor, requires the planner, owner, designer and user to come up with answers to the “why” question, i.e. why is there a need for OER? Why are the various choices made? It concerns the translation of goals and strategies into specific ends and means.

In the first row, the planner identifies the education vision and mission in relation to OER in general. In the second row, these are translated into the specific goals and objectives that apply to an institution’s operation. In the third row, they are converted to technical capacity and constraint. Finally, in the fourth row, they become specific project functions which meet the user’s needs and interests. The same process applies to the other questions.

The major implication of the framework is its explicit recognition that OERs are developed by distinct groups with different point of views. These views include a social policy perspective, an organisation and business oriented perspective, a technical perspective and a social cultural and pedagogical perspective. It is important to bridge the gaps between the perspectives and this is the key towards institutional transformation. Therefore, from the beginning, we should be recognizing these are different views and expectations; from the beginning, we should be dealing with multiple players, locations and requirements and so on As a result, a shared perspective of OER can be produced answering “why, what, when, where, who, and how” at the planning stage of the programme. The framework also allows ownership of activities and data to be established, and these should be traced throughout the programme and appropriately integrated in the development process. Furthermore, the framework provides a potential mechanism for a detailed analysis of the OER programmes. It can provide a rich picture of what it is the programme about so that we can construct our explanations of an OER initiative in the appropriate context and find out what works for whom in what condition.

The UNESCO Open Educational Resources Community launched a discussion on access issues regarding OER from 9 to 27 February. The first week’s discussion focuses on identifying and classifying the main barriers in accessing OER. A range of issues have been mentioned so far, including access in terms of:

· ability and skills; (Does the end user have the right skills to access?)

· file formats; (Are the file formats accessible?)

· local policy / attitude; (Do attitudes or policies pose barriers to using OER?)

· languages; (How well does the user speak the language of the OER?)

· disability; (Does the OER meet WAI accessibility criteria?)

· licensing; (Is the licensing suitable / CC?)

· awareness; (Lack of awareness is a barrier to OER.)

· discovery; (If the OER is hidden, not searchable, not indexed, it’s hard to find.)

· infrastructure; (Lack of power/computers makes access hard.)

· internet connectivity / bandwidth; (Slow connections pose a barrier to access.)

In the second and third weeks, participants are invited to share their experiences in working around these issues and to discuss possible solutions. For further information on Access2OER and participation in the discussion, please visit http://oerwiki.iiep-unesco.org/index.php?title=Access2OER.