My name is Ronald Macintyre, presently I am the R&D Manager for a Scottish Government funded programme called Open Educational Practices Scotland, it is sector wide aimed at raising awareness and building capacity in the development and use of free open online material (see here). It is hosted by the Open University in Scotland. I arrived here by accident, my own background is in Widening Participation, and openness emerged as a solution to working with organisations looking to create content to help people distanced from education. I have approached the opportunities and challenges of working in this space as a design problem, looking at what educational practice can learn from participatory design and broader work on action research.
On twitter I am @roughbounds, it is the English translation of the area I live in the West Highlands of Scotland. I will be joining you from my croft where I live with my family, when not sitting in front of a screen I like books made from paper and being outside. A creature of habit I walk my dog at 11am, and play football on a Wednesday at 7.25pm, but not this week.
The Porous University
This phrase leaked out, it came out as an ad lib during a conference presentation where I introduced an idea I have been developing around “the hidden tariff”. I suggested curriculum development was filled with assumptions, routines, tacit ways of knowing, these are often hidden, simply the “way we do things round here”. Unless we are mindful of this, when we take curriculum and, using the affordances of low transaction costs associated with digital media and/or open licences, these hidden assumptions are reproduced in the open, acting as hidden barriers. Barriers typically experienced and accentuated by others things that might distance someone from education.
Seeing the accidental phrase in a tweet about the presentation made me realise what I was talking about were not just concerns about how HE opens up curriculum, for whom and how to ensure content is relevant, useful and used in a just and equitable manner. It was about more than how HE uses open to push out, it concerned how things seep into the academy. About recognising expertise and knowledge is not solely owned and then released by HE. It was about how open HE is to “the world” reaching in, openness as two way, about technology and of courses licences, but importantly the cultural changes and pedagogies.
See you Wednesday 2nd November, same time, same place. 8-9PM (GMT) #LTHEchat
I’m supposed to be retired now, but haven’t quite made it yet. I’ve been around in higher education learning and teaching for a long time, and written a few books over the years. I remain passionate about the importance of feedback in helping learning to happen successfully, and believe that feedback needs to be a dialogue, and that this is often best achieved face-to-face – but harder to ‘evidence’. I also believe that feedforward (to influence future actions) is by far the most important part of feedback, hence the importance of the language we use and the timing we achieve.
Isobel Gowers started teaching whilst a post-doc at the University of Sheffield. With an interest in equine and human joint disease she became a lecturer at Writtle University College in 2009, where she is now Head of Learning and Teaching. In this diverse role she is responsible for developing and monitoring the Learning, Teaching and Assessment Enhancement Strategy, providing staff and academic development to about 60 academics and is also responsible for the strategic management of the library.
Dawn Alderson has been involved in Education since the 90s; a qualified teacher, Dawn has worked across education sectors in England & Wales that involved classroom teaching, university teaching as well as completion of research projects undertaken for local and national government-education initiatives. She has read for a few degrees full-time/part-time/online; published a number of outputs as well as delivered talks overseas, and presented at conferences in the UK. While education per se, is her specialist subject; she has expertise in child development, educational technology, research methods, pedagogy and curriculum design.
Robert Dragan is an education and technology enthusiast, who has began programming and developing educational apps from an early age. His interests include social
Linda Robson is a Lecturer and Staff Tutor based in the School of Engineering and Innovation at the Open University. She manages a team of 40 Associate Lecturers delivering 5 modules to around 1000 students. She also provides staff and academic development, both face to face and online, to Associate Lecturers from across the University.
– 8-9PM (GMT+1) #LTHEchat
