Tag: OER

Developments for DLRCP

This last revision cycle brought several different changes to pieces of my DLRCP Final Proposal document.

Early on, gamification did not feel like the right fit for the theoretical framework, and somewhat complicating. Had the DLRCP and the OER that I’m proposing have some other focus than explicitly teaching games, it might have been clearer to think and write about. As it was previously, I was, in the writing, ongoing trying to clarify whether any/and/or each game reference was about the framework of gamification, or about the OER and games themselves. I persisted with gamification as the framework until the initial round of revision due to inexperience and being unwilling to make what I was perceiving to be a large change. Initial revision with my Advisor (thanks, Jordanne!) gave the permission I needed to change the framework to that of place-based learning.

Place-based learning (Gruenewald, 2014) is a better fit as a framework as all the pieces of this project relate to and can be understood in that context. I would have liked to have included some Indigenous perspective around place-based learning in the proposal itself, but found myself unsure as to what might be inappropriate use of that knowledge and worldview, and did not incorporate it in the end. The beautiful thing is that in trying to understand whether/how it would fit meant that I’ve spent the last two weeks or so reading about Indigenous issues in academia, worldviews, connection to place and research methodologies (particularly Kovach [2009], Meyer [2013], Shawanda [2020], and Simpson [2014]). It’s been a wonderful reason to have some very enlightening conversations with colleagues and friends, and has helped me uncover more understanding of my own colonial ways of thinking, and how endemic colonialization is in this culture (and our schools). I’m getting better at seeing in terms of relationship, but it is taking time. Each thing I read gives a new perspective, a better understanding and peels back another layer to reveal clearer thinking.

The unfortunate side effect is that Indigenous worldviews and sense-making continue to be erased in my own work due to my own discomfort with including it poorly.

Through conversation with Jordanne, and growing understanding of methodology, I made a shift from modified action research to that of exploratory research (Stebbins, 2001). Because of the timelines and goals in my project, I’ll not really get to go through a cycle of action research, and the project I’m building is not one that would be implemented in my own workspace, but in an adjacent one. Exploratory research, particularly innovative exploratory research keeps the focus narrow, with the purpose of creation of a product (in my case, a [hopefully] effective OER).

Finally, the methods by which I hope to do the primary research piece have shifted from survey into semi-structured interview. Survey was, after further consideration, a limiting way of gathering the kind of information that I’m after. Semi-structured interview allows for more generative conversation, hopefully mitigating my own limitations and allowing the participants to expand the data in ways that I could not have foreseen.

I’m excited about this next piece, getting into the gathering and building aspects of the project.

Cheers.

References:

Gruenewald, D. A., & Smith, G. A. (2014). Place-based education in the global age: Local diversity. Routledge.

Kovach, M. (2009). Indigenous methodologies : Characteristics, conversations, and contexts. ProQuest Ebook Central. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ubc/detail.action?docID=4672931

Meyer, M. A. (2013). Holographic Epistemology: Native Common Sense. China Media Research, 9(2), 94–101. http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=88863314&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Shawanda, A. (2020). Baawaajige: Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health, 1(1), 37–47. https://doi.org/10.33137/tijih.v1i1.34020

Simpson, L. B. (2014). Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 3(3). https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/view/22170

Stebbins, R. A. (2001). What is exploration. Exploratory research in the social sciences, (pp, 2-17). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Research Dissemination – initial thoughts

Well I’m a little late to this, but have been giving it quite a bit of thought.

I’ll be doing a Digital Learning Research Consulting Project (DLRCP) exit pathway, building an Open Education Resource (OER) grounded in place-based learning, cultural identity and games as cultural referents. In a nutshell (and as I said on Padlet), my DLRCP will be an OER aimed at teachers K-8 of playground games from different cultures and countries, initially focusing on the cultures represented in the current settling immigrants of the Kootenays. The intention of the project is that the games be taught in typical school settings so that when children come from other places, they find a cultural touchstone already there, a place to start to meet their peers, a place for emergent language and connection.

My plan is to consult with local groups (both an immigrant settlement group, our local school districts, and individuals as the research develops and am hopeful that I can leverage some of this network to share the OER on completion.

I’ve been in conversation with one of our local Superintendent of Schools, and she asked how long before it could be implemented (which is hopeful for getting it promoted as a tool in our local area).

The BC Teacher’s Federation (BCTF) has many different social justice and anti racism action groups and initiatives. There are regular professional development workshops held throughout the year, indexed to the BCTF website. My intent is to contact the BCTF to share my findings and the final project through them by late September 2021.

The idea for this project was originally conceived when I was part of an interdisciplinary, international group of artists and activists exploring how story and culture intersect with identity in youth work, how knowing our backgrounds allows us to know ourselves. I’ll be in touch with that group as my proposal is developed, and know that they will be happy to promote and share the research and the project in their circles, through Erasmus+ and Nomadways project spaces. It is through this group and local contacts that I hope to extend the OER itself into the future as a contributor library.

Really, thinking through this has been helpful. There are several groups that I’ve worked with in my capacity as a graphic recorder and illustrator that I believe will be helpful in getting the word out, and I’ve now started a list of groups and people to contact as I get closer to completion.

Still developing my ideas around the research question part. Some rough ideas:

Research question:

  • Effectiveness of place-based learning on belonging and integration in child immigrant populations through games as cultural referent (not a question yet, I realize)

Sub questions:

  • Assessment criteria for effectiveness of project in school setting (thanks Deb, for this suggestion)
  • Best practices for OER teaching materials/accessibility/clarity

 

I’m left with a couple of questions around our ethics approval, and people that we might speak to about the project. I’ve previously worked with a group in Chios, Greece, who educate child refugees (primarily from Syria) in and around refugee camps in that area. I’d love to hear their perspective on this as a method of creating community in a foreign place – and am not sure if our ethics approval covers conversations with people from other countries (if the organization will not require its own ethical review) or not.

Right now it’s all rolling around in my head, very fuzzy and ill-defined. I look forward to any feedback folks might have and welcome any recommendations.

Cheers!

I very much enjoyed reading Tony Bates draft chapter about Open Pedagogy as it is something I think about regularly in my work. His references to the need for a framework of maintenance and extension of existing Open Education Resources (OER) is something that comes up when looking at supporting people in the Human Services program I instruct in. My colleagues and I endeavour to keep textbook costs low and course materials widely accessible, and are familiar with the inherent challenges that this brings.

Bates (2019) discusses possible ideas for stewardship of OER in section 11.4.3 – which made me think about existing, working models, like those of the origins of the idea of ‘Open-source’ software. Though they didn’t start this way, today these are huge communities of people decentralized and distributed across the globe who contribute to the build, maintenance, development and learning commons around a single thing such as Moodle, GIMP, or Linux. People involved in these massive projects contribute their expertise in this distributed build framework, working singularly and in groups on debugging, building, tutorial creation and product support (among other things). While it may seem counter-intuitive to compare maintaining software with maintaining a set of OER, I believe that there are enough similarities to make the comparison relevant. 

Both Open Software and Open Pedagogy have evolved organically within the framework of the Internet, somewhat entwined as the philosophy of ‘Open’ (freely sharing resources in keeping with academic principles of freely sharing information) grew into the movement that it has become today. As Open Pedagogy becomes better understood and more people are reaching for free distribution and dissemination of knowledge, the time is coming to shape the building of Open Pedagogy and with that, looking at existing working models is valuable.

I think that small educational institutional settings (like the one I instruct in) have specific challenges when it comes to the development and use of Open resources. Individual subjects have smaller and smaller numbers of subject matter experts (SMEs) as the subject becomes more specialized, and many traditional SMEs don’t have computer skills or the types of Instructional Design (ID) skills needed to build and maintain a commons of information in any coherent, helpful or distributable way. 

Bates talks about consortiums, that “a consortium of teachers or institutions creating common learning materials within a broader program context, that can be shared both within and outside the consortium.” (Bates 2019, Section 11.4.5). I wonder about the ability of smaller institutions to survive and grow in this context. My own institution is small, with small class sizes – the idea of our 8 member Human Services Staff taking on the build and maintenance (even with strong student involvement) of an open knowledge repository and project/portfolio space is not realistic. Even if we were part of a larger, distributed network, this would be a challenge. Looking to central resources such as BCCampus to support us in builds of these kinds of projects is possible, but an additional time commitment for instructors who are already teaching very full course loads. 

I’m curious as to whether there are specific subjects for which it is easier to build and maintain OER that are relevant, useful and fully accessible without cost (there are always hidden costs in web hosting, domain names, and web maintenance)? What could be ways for small Colleges to partner with Universities to network in the creation of centralized Open resources for the benefit of our students and instructor edification? I’d love to hear from you as to what might work moving forward. Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

Reference:

Bates, A. W. (2019).Chapter 11.4 Open Pedagogy. In Teaching in a Digital World. 2nd ed. BC Campus.