Connecting practices: Education as part of UCL’s open agenda [O-069] Members : OER19

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Thu, Apr 11 2019, 4:00pm – 5:00pm

Authors: Claudia Yogeswaran, Clive Young, June Hedges, and Leo Havemann

Room: CA101

Theme: Open ecosystem

Type: Reflective practice presentation (20mins)

Description

Session Description

UCL, in building on its founding commitment to “open education for all”, is exploring ways to embed open educational practices across the institution. Our presentation will provide an overview of the Open Education (OE) project: how it fits under the institution’s broader Open Science agenda and underlying ambition to make itself open. We will also discuss the development of a comprehensive support infrastructure which equips the community with information and digital literacy skills relevant for their academic pursuits, and why this is needed to underpin the move to openness.

The OE project has, since early 2018, taken a three-pronged approach to infuse open learning and teaching practices across the curriculum:

• Policy
• Infrastructure (inc. repository)
• Practice

In addition to our activities to launch a repository for OER, develop an OE policy, and establish an Open Education Working Group (under UCL’s Open Science Platform agenda), a key enterprise is our focus on shifting the culture of teaching and learning within the institution to incorporate more “open” elements and establish sustainable, flexible, and cohesive approaches to such open practices. This includes engaging with relevant departments, creating awareness about OE and the project across campus, and showing that open practices add value to the university and to academics.

We have also recognised the need to develop training skills and information/digital literacy workshops related to UCL’s Open Education needs, and ensure that they remain linked as part of the larger open agenda. Under the direction of the institution’s Connected Curriculum/research-based open pedagogy (UCL Teaching and Learning, 2018), UCL students and staff, from undergraduate level, become involved in the dimensions around sharing, publication, and creating networks – and understand the ways their work can act as exemplars of teaching output and have greater impact. By providing the relevant support models we can nurture an environment where education and research is open and accountable to a larger audience.

By delivering an account of our methods to embed open pedagogical practices we hope to enter into discussion, with audience participants, on what (other) OE models have been devised and implemented to create sustainable frameworks for open teaching and learning practice. In particular, we are keen to explore models which harmonise the different institutional agendas pushing us to openness (open access, open research, open education, open science, etc.). A Twitter hashtag, #OpenModels, will be used to capture the audience’s responses and will support the discourse.

All session materials will be made available under an open licence through the UCL OER repository from the date of the conference and onwards.

References

UCL Teaching and Learning. (2018). Connected Curriculum: a framework for research-based education. [online] Available at: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/connected-curriculum-framework-research-based-education [Accessed 30 November 2018].

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