Sharing curation in Open Scotland

Open Scotland is moving to a new model of shared curation by a community of volunteers, modelled on the wonderful #FemEdTech. For each of the coming months someone has volunteered to write a blog post or two about their own part of the Open Scotland world and to tweet a bit. The hope is that this will enable a more active Open Scotland without placing more burden on too few people. As the volunteer for the first month in this new mode I thought I would reflect a bit on what I think that means.

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.

Open Scotland about page

“Cross sector” is key. That means Open Scotland is interested in all levels of education: pre-school, school, FE and HE, continuing professional development and all forms of lifelong learning, formal and informal. It also means engagement with teachers, learners, academics, technologists, lawyers, librarians, curators and others in the cultural sector, as well as institutional and government policymakers including politicians and civil servants. So, not only is Open Scotland cross sector, it is also multidisciplinary. But what does it mean to be so encompassing? What can we learn from other widely scoped activities, and what should we bear in mind when engaging with all those neighbouring communities and interest-groups?

Another multi-disciplinary community that I’ve worked with in the dim past is that around crystallography, and something caught my attention when listening to the podcast BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time programme on one of my crystallography heroes, Dorothy Hodgkin. It’s near the end, starting about 45mins in, leading to the following observations:

Georgina Ferry: “The culture of science today actually isn’t very like that*, and I was just rather interested to notice recently that Wellcome, which is the funder of […] a very large proportion of Biomedical Science in the UK today, has recently set up a new project to look at the research culture and to try to shift it in the direction of being more collaborative and kinder — they’ve used the word ‘kind’– and there’s really a sense that the way things have gone is just too far in the direction of being competitive, and I think Dorothy’s example shows that it is possible to do very great science without it having to be like that.”

[* Determining what precisely it is that science isn’t very like is left as an exercise to the reader]

Judith Howard: “I am pleased to say that crystallography is still like that. It is a very caring, sharing community. As we spoke earlier: we need each other, we need people who are good at machinery, computers, growing crystals, extracting the compounds from the biology in the first place. We do need collaboration. The ground that was laid by […] many of the early pioneers, that was the way that they worked. They needed help from each other; it continues that way. We work on completely different materials but we all use computers, often the same software, we’re sharing things and we are sharing advances. So if someone has an advance in one area we share it through our international meetings into another area, and we develop instrumentation by having ideas and sharing them and sharing them with the instrumental manufacturers as well.”

BBC Radio 4, In Our Time: Dorothy Hodgkin

We all know that historically not all parties have been kind when advances in crystallography have been shared, but there is something in what Judith Howard says that strikes true to me personally. For example, one of the first examples of open data / open science that I encountered was the Protein Data Bank, which has been running since 1971. I think the point about how, in crystallography, no one person will have all the skills and resources to solve a problem is one that is true more generally, it certainly aligns with the range and scope of Open Scotland that I outlined above, and I think her conclusion that we need collaboration is equally transferable. I took a look at the Wellcome’s Trust’s website for the work to which Howard was referring. I think it is this, Research culture: let’s reimagine how we work together. Interestingly, the reference I see to be kindness is where Robin Farrar, director of the Trust, he says “it can be hard to be kind“. That’s true especially in low-bandwidth communication such as Twitter, annual conference meetings, and papers and blog postings, limited as they are, respectively, by message length, infrequency and being essentially unidirectional. We really don’t need to add in any further toxic attitudes from overly competitive academics or vested commercial interests.

But it’s not easy. I think we do need a community that calls out errors when we see them; we do need to be careful not to amplify voices that represent interests that are at odds with openness, and that are abundantly capable of making themselves heard without our help. It means rewarding generosity. Making heard the voices that are too often silenced requires more effort than just providing a platform for everyone.

Open Education itself has a voice that needs effort in amplifying. It lives in close proximity to many other “opens”: Open Access, Open Source Software, Open Science, Open Data, Open Standards. All of these are of interest to Open Scotland, and we have a lot to learn from experiences in these fields, but I think we also need to assert that Open Education is distinct from those fields, especially when it comes to policy and strategic actions such as funding. Some of us have experience of programmes that have dealt with teaching and learning materials and research outputs within the same framework, where the research interests dominated. A conclusion then was that teaching and learning was not well served by being subsumed into programmes that largely focussed on research materials. In HE at least research is seen as more attractive and more prestigious than teaching (consider the phrases “research opportunity” and “teaching load”); the same can be seen in attitudes that lead to teaching money going research focussed higher education often at the expense of FE and life-long learning.

I don’t claim that this post represents Open Scotland’s view, if indeed it makes any sense to talk of an Open Scotland view, but I do welcome the Open Scotland Code of Conduct for shared curation which seems to be written to the same tune. I don’t have the answers to how Open Scotland addresses these issues, but I do look forward to it growing as space for collaboration, amplifying those voices that need it, and representing open education as an equal partner with other open endeavours.

Author information: Phil Barker is an independent consultant with Cetis LLP, working in technology to enhance learning and information systems for education. He specializes in Open Education, especially resource description and discovery.

OER20 Call for Proposals

The OER20 Conference, which will take place in London on 1-2 April 2020, has launched its call for proposals. The theme of the conference is The Care in Openness and the conference co-chairs are Mia Zamora, Daniel Villar-Onrubia and Jonathan Shaw.

Covering issues of privilege, equity, precarity, power relations and public interest, OER20 will put the spotlight on both the value and limitations of care in Open Education.

The co-chairs are particularly keen to hear from people who have an interest in the following indicative areas of practice:

  • Openness in the age of surveillance
  • Sustainable open education communities
  • Open education for civic engagement and democracy
  • Criticality and care in open education
  • Caring pedagogies and designing for diverse communities of inclusion

Wildcard proposals that specifically address the conference themes in relation to open practice, research and policy are also welcome.

For further information and to submit a proposal, visit the conference website: OER20 The Care in Openness.

Open Scotland Shared Curation Invitation

In an effort to revitalise the Open Scotland initiative, and to build on the Scottish Funding Council’s College and University Sector ICT Strategy 2019 – 2021, which commits to the aims of the Scottish Open Education Declaration, we are proposing to explore a shared curation model similar to the one used by the #femedtech network. We hope this will encourage more people to get involved and to ensure that Open Scotland represents all sectors of education in Scotland.
Curation will involve posting a minimum or one blog post about any aspect of openness in education to the Open Scotland blog and tweeting relevant open education news using the #OpenScot tag. Open Scotland does not currently have a dedicated twitter account but we would be happy to set one up if you feel it would be useful.
We welcome curators from all sectors involved in education in Scotland including further and higher education, schools, adult and community learning, training, professional development, galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM), health services, and the third sector.
All aspects of openness in education are in scope, including but not limited to:
  • Open education practice
  • Open educational resources
  • Open policy
  • Open assessment practices
  • Open textbooks
  • Open source software
  • Open standards
  • Open online courses
  • MOOCs
  • Wikimedia projects

Blog posts could highlight open initiatives from your own sector or institution, or interesting developments from across the world. We also welcome information about up and coming conferences and events, and reports from events around Scotland and internationally.

If you are interested in volunteering to curate Open Scotland for a month, please sign up using this shared spreadsheet: Open Scotland Curation, or contact either Joe Wilson (joewilson@joewilson.net) or Lorna M. Campbell (lorna.m.campbell@icloud.com). Please share this call for participation with any colleagues who might be interested.

College & University Sector ICT Strategy commits to OER

The Open Scotland blog has been quiet for the last eighteen months but there have been some significant developments in open education in Scotland in the intervening period, most notable of which is the Scottish Funding Council’s College and University Sector ICT Strategy 2019 – 2021, which commits to the aims of the UNESCO OER Action Plan and the Scottish Open Education Declaration.

The Strategy was developed by the Further and Higher Education ICT Oversight Board, co-chaired by Gavin McLachlan, Chief Information Officer and Librarian to the University of Edinburgh and Dr Ken Thomson Principal and Chief Executive, with input from Jisc, UCSS-ISSC and others.

While recognising that colleges and universities have diverse academic profiles, local contexts and campus infrastructures, the strategy focuses on activities and services, including infrastructure, collections, advisory and production services, that may benefit from being organised at a national level.

The strategy covers:

  1. Skills,
  2. Economic Development and Innovation,
  3. Digital Public Services,
  4. Data,
  5. Information Security,
  6. Infrastructure
  7. Digital Participation and Inclusion

In section 7. Digital Participation and Inclusion the strategy states that:

In line with the UNESCO OER Action Plan, we will promote the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Badging initiatives to support both formal and informal learning that is equitable, inclusive, open and participatory. We are committed to the aims of the Digital Participation charter and the Scottish Open Education Declaration.

The strategy’s aims and objectives for Digital Participation and Inclusion are:

  • make Information Services open and accessible, ensuring they are represented and visible to students and staff at forums and that IS staff are actively engaged in institutional life to better understand users’ needs and requirements;
  • support the use of open licences for all educational resources created with public funding;
  • promote common ICT core skills and online learning (over and above core educational requirements) to develop personal digital skills, embedding relevant elements from the EU and Jisc frameworks to promote the development of learner and staff skills, and
  • involve students in the design and development of student-facing digital platforms, ensuring they meet usability and accessibility requirements, and address the 5 Digital Rights.

Although the strategy stresses that participation in any sectoral or national service is on a voluntary basis, this cross sector commitment to the aims of the UNESCO OER Action Plan and the endorsement of open licenses for educational resources created with public funding represent a significant development for open education in Scotland.

In order to build on the platform provided by the strategy and to highlight the sector wide benefits of engaging with OER and Open Education we are planning to reactivate the Open Scotland initiative in the coming months, so please check the blog for further updates. If you would like to get in involved with the Open Scotland initiative, or to contribute news items or case studies about OER and open education to this blog, please contact lorna.m.campbell@icloud.com or joewilson@joewilsons.net

Response to World OER Congress Action Plan

The following comments were drafted by Joe Wilson and Lorna M. Campbell and submitted in response to the World OER Congress Action Plan on behalf of Open Scotland and the University of Edinburgh. The draft Action Plan, Outcome and Recommendations is available in English and French here http://www.oercongress.org/woerc-actionplan/

1. Capacity of users to access, re-use and share OER

Awareness and skills to use OER:

a) Key educational stakeholders (teachers, teacher trainers, educational policy makers and librarians) should be provided with capacity building to raise awareness on how OER can enhance teaching and learning.

b) Systematic and continuous capacity building (in-service and pre-service) on how to find, modify, create and share OER should be an integral part of teacher training programmes. This would include capacity building on digital literacy to identify, share and use OER. The support of governments, educational institutions and teacher associations for this is important.

UNESCO / COL should consider codifying baseline standards for capacity building; e.g. understanding copyright, how to use open licences, describing content for resource discovery.

Sharing OER:

c) Legal frameworks of educational institutions should support the development and use of OER by teachers.

Add “and professional bodies” here.

f) A 360° continually updating function should be introduced that allow OER creators to inform users on updates as well as users to suggest updates and modifications of OER.

This seems unrealistic.

g) Institutions and/or teachers should aim to use OER-based teaching materials as an integral rather than as a peripheral element of curriculum.

This is an important point.

Finding OER:

h) Indexing of OER resources (including in national OER repositories) should be further developed to support the identification of existing OER.

i) OER repositories should have clear action plans with performance indicators to encourage goals such as accessibility, interoperability with other repositories, usage and sustainability.

j) Effective meta-analysis and data mining practices should be encouraged for OER retrieval.

There is too much reliance here on dedicated OER repositories. OER repositories are just one way to manage and disseminate content. Web platforms, local repositories, and content aggregators also have an important role to play. Don’t let a single technology approach drive policy and strategy. Better encoding of machine readable licences will help to improve resource discovery. Look at the work of Schema.org and LRMI. Work with search engines to optimize OER discovery.

A good example of a lightweight approach to OER aggregation is the Solvonauts open source OER search engine http://solvonauts.org/

2. Language & Cultural issues

OER made available in diverse languages and adapted to the related cultural context where it is used is vital for uptake in local contexts. Furthermore, for OER to be used by educational systems, issues related to the sharing and accepting of knowledge from different sources need to be addressed.

b) Harness technologies that overcome the language barrier such as online translation systems.

Look at the MediWiki Content Translation tool https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Content_translation Engage students in content translation, this can be a valuable learning experience and also involves them in the creation of OER.

A good example of this approach is the University of Edinburgh’s Translation Studies MSc which includes a Wikipedia translation assignment http://thinking.is.ed.ac.uk/wir/2017/01/05/wikipedia-assignment-translation-studies-msc/

3. Ensuring inclusive and equitable access to quality OER

OER needs to be accessible to all learners, including those who have disabilities, those that are economically disadvantaged and within a framework that ensures gender equity. Electricity and connectivity remain challenges in many parts of the world. For this reason, it is important that it is possible to find/use/modify and share OER using diverse ICT environments, including on mobile devices, or even to the extent possible, off-line Furthermore, in order for OER to be used with confidence by the educational community mechanisms to ensure confidence of the quality of resources should be in place.

g) Ensure systems for peer-review quality control of OER

We need to rethink what peer review actually means in the context of open educational resources – feedback from learners and teachers is may be more useful than more traditional peer review mechanisms. Don’t presume that peer review is the only way to measure quality.

4. Changing Business Models

Globally, the traditional business model for commercial textbook publishing has come under economic pressure to evolve because of the technological development and the digitization of content. The changes experienced by the publishing industry are affecting its market paradigms and business models (Rodrigues, Chimenti, Nogueira, Hupsel, & Repsold, 2014). There is a need to identify innovative solutions and develop new business models, so that the interests of the OER community and educational publishers are addressed.

Business models should focus purely on reforming traditional models of textbook production. Business models should incorporate drivers to encourage teachers and learners to engage with open education, e.g. professional recognition for creating and reusing OER. This needs to be embedded in teaching standards.

d) Charging for hard copies of OER materials, use of paid advertisements, and other means for income generation to sustain OER-based education.

It’s important to educate teachers and learners about the non-exclusive nature of open licences. Also, open licences should not be seen as a barrier to working with innovative technology providers.

5. Development of supportive policy environments

Mainstreaming of OER requires the creation, adoption, and implementation of policies supportive of effective OER practices. In this regard, funding flows are more likely to follow from policy directives, and policies can be applied for both bottom-up and top-down approaches.

b) Policies that support awareness raising on the benefits of OER; funding for evidence based research; incentives for following good practices; and the fostering of supportive strategies and practices to support the use of OER by the educational community.

Evidence based research is critical for supporting the adoption of OER policies. However research into the benefits of OER shouldn’t focus purely on cost savings. Research also needs to focus on benefits to learners and teachers, improved quality of learning content, and improved learning experience.

i) Policies which recognize OER’s contribution to knowledge creation, similar to the publication and sharing of research, provide institutions with strong incentives for the adoption of OER.

The focus needs to remain on OER policies but it is important to relate OER policies to Open Access & open data policies.

Examples of OER Policy development:

1. Scottish Open Education Declaration http://declaration.openscot.net/ is an open community declaration based on the UNESCO OER Declaration which broadens the scope of the guidelines to encompass all aspects of open education, rather than OER specifically. The Declaration is hosted on an installation of Comment Press and all those with an interest in open education are encouraged to contribute. The Declaration is managed by the Open Scotland initiative.

2. University if Edinburgh OER Policy http://www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/openeducationalresourcespolicy.pdf This policy is based on a policy originally developed by the University of Leeds as part of the UK OER Programme. This policy was subsequently adapted by the University of Greenwich and Glasgow Caledonian University before being adopted by the University of Edinburgh, so the policy itself has become a reusable OER.

New Recommendation

Ensure open education, OER and open licensing is embedded in all teachers training and professional development programmes to ensure that all teachers develop the digital skills to create and use open educational resources, engage with open education and develop their own open education practice. Examples of good practice

Example of OER Good Practice

1. 23 Things http://www.23things.ed.ac.uk/

23 Things for Digital Knowledge is an award winning (LILAC Credo Digital Literacy Award 2017), open online self-paced course run by the University of Edinburgh.

The course, developed by Charlie Farley of Educational Development and Engagement, is designed to encourage digital literacy and to be of use to a broad audience within and beyond the institution. The aim of the course is to expose learners to a range of digital tools for personal and professional development as a researcher, academic, student, or professional. Learners spend a little time each week, building up and expanding their digital skills and are encouraged to share their experiences with others.

The judges of the Credo Digital Award for Information Literacy described the course as “a superb resource which builds digital literacy through a well-designed combination of information, discovery and social interaction. It is very flexible in how it can be used, with bitesize chunks of learning, and accreditation through badging for those who wish to work through the whole course. It therefore appeals to a wide range of learners.”

All course content and materials, unless otherwise stated, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY) and the University actively encourages others to take and adapt the course. The course has already been used by many individuals and organisations outwith the University of Edinburgh and it has recently been adapted for use by the Scottish Social Services Council as 23 digital capabilities to support practice and learning in social services.

2. LGBT Healthcare 101 http://open.ed.ac.uk/lgbt-healthcare-101/

Digital story interviews with LGBT+ volunteers, ‘LGBT+ Healthcare 101’ presentation, and a secondary school resource, created by and for University of Edinburgh medicine students. The resources were created as part of a project to address a lack of awareness and knowledge of LGBT+ health, and of the sensitivities needed to treat LGBT patients as valuable skills for qualifying doctors.

Resources for the LGBT+ Healthcare 101 course, created by Calum Hunter, Matthew Twomey, Derrick NG, Navina Senthilkumar and Eleanor Dow. Released under a CC BY licence.

3. Open Scotland https://openscot.net/

Open Scotland is a cross sector initiative supported by the Association for Learning Technology’s Scotland Special Interest Group. The aim of this initiative is to raise awareness of all aspects of open education and explore the potential of open policy and practice to benefit all sectors of Scottish education. Scotland has a distinctive and highly regarded tradition of education, however policies to support and embed open education are in their infancy and, to date, there have been no open funding calls to support open education across the sector.

Despite the absence of top down strategic drivers, a considerable number of open education initiatives have emerged across the Scottish education sector including MOOCs, OER repositories, OER guidelines for staff and students, and adoption of Open Badges. Building on these developments, and experiences gained from supporting open education programmes elsewhere in the UK, Open Scotland aims to encourage the sharing of open educational resources, embed open educational practice and lobby for policies that support open education at the national level.

Inspired by the UNESCO Paris OER Declaration, Open Scotland has also launched the Scottish Open Education Declaration, which builds on the principals of the UNESCO declaration, but expands its scope to encompass all aspects of open education practice. The Scottish Open Education Declaration, http://declaration.openscot.net/ is an open community draft, which all those with a commitment to open education are encouraged to contribute to.

An interview with Joe Wilson from the European OER Regional Consultation

An interview about open education and OER with Open Scotland’s Joe Wilson, recorded at the UNESCO European Regional Consultation in Malta earlier this year.

The report from the European Consultation is available here: Regional Consultation on Open Educational Resources OER for Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education: From Commitment to Action. Papers from the other regional consultations are also available on the OER Regional Consultations website.

 

UNESCO European Regional Consultation on OER Report

A guest post from Joe Wilson, reporting on the UNESCO European Regional Consultation on OER in Malta.

OER CosnultationsIt was a great privilege to be invited as one of 70 participants from 25 countries gathered in Malta to contribute to the UNESCO European Regional Consultation on Open Educational Resources in Malta. This to shape the inputs for the 2nd World OER Congress to be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia 18th-20th September 2017. I hope the remaining regional consultations for the Middle East/North Africa, Africa , Americas and the Pacific Region are as productive as our gathering. The consultation events are ably supported by the Commonwealth of Learning and funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. You too can take part in the consultation by completing the survey here: http://rcoer.col.org/surveys.html

The theme of the World OER Congress is OER for Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education; From Commitment to Action. This to move the global education system on from the Paris Declaration of 2012 calling on all governments to make a commitment to OER. The aim to use OER policies and practice to meet the United Nations aims of achieving a set of sustainable development goals for Education by 2030.

We were tasked with :

1. Reviewing the progress of OER in Europe since the World OER Congress 2012
2. To identify strategies for maintaining OER
3. Agreeing a set of action points to be presented at the next Congress in September

Our outputs providing strategies, examples and models for the creation of a sustainable open educational infrastructure and mainstreaming open educational resources will be fed into the Congress but will be published here as they are pulled together and there will be a collection of interviews from the consultation events published here.

I was invited as Co-Founder of Open Scotland and I carefully prepared our inputs with Lorna Campbell my co-conspirator and Scottish colleagues from the Association of Learning Technology before setting off.

I’ll share the key parts of my report here and some reflections from the group I worked with who were tasked to focus on the barriers to the creation, sharing, use and re-purposing of Open Educational Resources at a national level.

In terms of Scottish approaches, the formation of Open Scotland and the creation of the Open Scotland Declaration has positioned Scottish Education as thought leaders in building both grass roots support for open educational practice and for encouraging policy shifts at national and institutional level and this is still garnering Scotland and Scottish education with global recognition.

The OEPS project has produced some open assets that could do much to drive open practice across Scotland https://oepscotland.org/resources/open-courses/ While the Open University’s broader offering for learners http://www.open.edu/openlearncreate/ offers them access to a rich set of online courses and allows providers the opportunity to build their own courses on the OU platform.

There are some other green shoots around the UK. The continued healthy support across the community for conferences like #OER17 , the FELTAG coalition supporting blended learning and the sharing of developments. Some set backs too, it is hard as yet to see the new Jisc Content and App Store as a serviceable replacement for JORUM.

However, while Scottish Government investment has been made in the Open University led OEPS project and some large global institutions like Edinburgh University have taken up the challenge to embed both open educational resources and a broader set of open educational practices across their operations for the public good and some others notably Glasgow Caledonian University are forging ahead with policies that will support OER, momentum is slow.

Why is the case – these are my own thoughts on Scottish Landscape and updates the last review of Scottish activity from October 2016.

Some of the global arguments for the adoption of open educational practices and resources do not have the same traction in Scotland. Scottish Education is not a text book driven system in Universities, Colleges or Schools – so the economic case for the adoption of Open Textbooks or more open practice around the development and sharing of resources does not have the resonance it might have in other countries where national administration’s buy text books.

The levers in Scotland have to be around our life long learning system, our belief in education as a social good, open to all and around the social benefits of OER to all in the system.

Universities continue to conflate OER with lots of other policy initiatives and developments – We have a MOOC so we must be making and sharing OER ( rarely the case). We have an open research policy and we have policies and practices around open data. ( no realisation that OER is different). There are few formal staff development programmes around the creation, use and repurposing of OER and only a few policy levers to encourage their consideration.

Colleges – Recently regionalised and finding their feet have forgotten traditions of developing learning materials collaboratively and when they remember they tend to do this in closed communities as content clubs. If you do a dig into the public contracts Scotland you can see a growing trend over last six months for Colleges to buy large collections of commercial content. They are trying to make more courses available on line and playing catch up, by buying in the learning content. The entry level and CPD standards for lecturing staff are due to be refreshed but the current standards are weak around developing skills around embedding digital practice and make no mention of OER.

Schools – No real recognition that sharing learning materials is a good thing and to a degree still struggling with the notion that teachers create learning materials. In Scotland we have a superb platform in GLOW a Scottish Schools Intranet with excellent set of tools to support learning but it lacks a learning object repository it is hard to find materials inside GLOW and there is no coherent approach to adopting standard open licencing like Creative Commons. In terms of development there is the recently published Digital Learning and Teaching Strategy this encourages the development of digital skills in both initial teacher training and in teacher CPD for continued registration with the General Teaching Council for Scotland but it tends to focus on the use and deployment of technology and makes no mention of content creation or open educational resources.

Third sector and libraries – perhaps most progress is being made here. Libraries and museums are digitising their resources and releasing these into the public domain with open licences. Trade unions and third sector organisations realise that a sharing economy is the most effective way to support their stakeholders. Good signs here that the methods and approaches of the wikimedia foundation are being adopted.

Government, while the government has usefully made a significant investment in the OEPS Project, which it references in any enquiry about the progress of OER in Scotland, it still appears to view activity in this area as peripheral in meeting sectorial objectives.

The broad view of the administration seems to be that policy around open educational practices is not required as initiatives in this space are being driven out by Universities fulfilling their charitable and philanthropic traditions and that there is a lack of an evidence base around the benefits to learners that justifies a policy intervention.

The growing evidence base from other countries and global initiatives is counter to this view. A healthy open educational resource driven system needs both top down and bottom up support. The papers from this consultation and from the World Congress should allow an informed reappraisal of this position.

UNESCO European Regional Consultation on OER, Malta, February 2017

A further report on the Consultation is available from UNESCO here: Ministers, experts urge inclusive access and quality education through open educational resources

The Place of Gaelic in Modern Scotland

Mr John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills

Mr John Swinney, Scottish Government, CC BY-NC 2.0

Last week in Stornoway, as part of the Royal National Mòd, Mr John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, presented the Angus Macleod Lecture on The Place of Gaelic in Modern Scotland. Mr Swinney assumed ministerial responsibility for the Gaelic language after the last election.

In a thought provoking speech Mr Swinney reiterated the Scottish Government’s commitment to securing the future of the Gaelic language in Scotland and outlined plans for education, broadcasting, digital and economic development to support the language.

The First Minister clearly stated that hostility towards Gaelic has no place in Scotland, adding that the reason for the Government’s commitment to the language is quite simple. “Gaelic belongs in Scotland.”

Although Mr Swinney did not speak specifically about open education, he did refer to the importance of Gaelic education provision:

“Earlier this year, the Scottish Parliament passed an Education Act which included important Gaelic provisions. We will use this to strengthen Gaelic provision in schools.

This Act placed a duty on Bòrd na Gàidhlig to prepare Guidance on Gaelic education. This Guidance, for the first time, describes what parents can expect local authorities to deliver when they choose Gaelic education for their children. The consultation on this Guidance closes at the end of this month.

In recent years, we have seen a welcome increase in the number of parents choosing to place their children in to Gaelic education. Since 2008, we have witnessed a 32% increase of young people in Gaelic medium education and it is our duty in the Scottish Government, working with local authorities, to ensure this demand can be met.

Today I would like to announce £700k of funding for Glasgow City Council for its two Gaelic schools at Glendale and Berkeley Street. This funding will further improve the learning environment for young people studying core subjects such as physical education, STEM and ICT, ensuring Gaelic learning provides a wide experience across the curriculum.”

In response to a question from Open Scotland regarding the importance of ICT to support Gaelic education, the Deputy First Minister reiterated the Government’s commitment to providing 100% network connectivity throughout Scotland. He went on to highlight the importance of education technology to broaden the coverage of education provision, ensuring that Gaelic education can reach greater numbers of learners than ever before. In addition he also emphasised the new opportunities that information and communication technology affords young people in the Highlands and Islands, enabling them to expand their education and skills, and seek new careers without having to leave the Gàidhealtachd.

A Storify of live tweets from the Deputy First Minister’s lecture is available here: The Place of Gaelic in Modern Scotland

Links

Scottish Government press release
Full text of the Deputy First Minister’s lecture

National Library of Scotland and Wikimedia UK recruit Gaelic Wikimedian

uicipeid_largeEarlier this month the National Library of Scotland and Wikimedia UK announced they are recruiting a Gaelic Wikimedian funded by Bòrd na Gàidhlig to help promote the Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia, Uicipeid.

The Gaelic Wikipedian will be responsible for designing and delivering a range of activities that will encourage young Gaels to improve their language skills through editing Uicipedia. They will deliver events and workshops and work with Gaelic organisations and communities to promote knowledge about Uicipedia and increase its size and usage. They will also support the development of open knowledge and open licenses and prepare progress reports to assess the impact of their work on the development of Uicipedia.

The Wikipedian will work with the National Library, Wikimedia UK and Gaelic agencies and organisations to identify groups to engage with including young people between the ages of 16 and 25, community groups and those active in areas such as music, local history, literature etc.

The part time role will be funded for 12 months and the National Library are flexible as to where the Wikipedian will be based as they will need to deliver training throughout the Western Isles, Highlands and central Scotland.

Lucy Crompton-Reid, Chief Executive of Wikimedia UK, said:

“As the national chapter for the global Wikimedia movement we believe that open access to knowledge is a fundamental right, and a driver for social and economic development. We are delighted to be working with the National Library of Scotland on this important project, which will see the Gaelic Wikipedia becoming an increasingly important source of information created by and for Gaelic speakers, with better online coverage of Scottish Gaelic history, culture and heritage.”

Further information about the Wikimedia role and an application form is available the National Library. Applications close on the 4th November 2016.

Links

National Library of Scotland press release
Wikimedia UK press release
Uicipeid

Commonwealth of Learning / UNESCO OER Regional Consultations

OER CosnultationsIn order to mark the 5th anniversary of the World OER Congress, which resulted in the Paris OER Declaration, the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), in partnership with UNESCO and the Government of Slovenia are undertaking a survey of world governments and key stakeholders focused on OER for Inclusive and Equitable Quality Education: From Commitment to Action.

This survey is being conducted in advance of the 2nd World Open Educational Resources (OER) Congress which will be held in Ljubljana on 18–20 September 2017. A series of regional consultations will also be held around the world from December 2017 until May 2017. These regional consultations aim to:

  1. Raise regional awareness about the importance of OER and its relationship to SDG4;
  2. Provide a hands-on experience for all participants to establish personal OER knowledge;
  3. Explore mechanisms to facilitate the mainstreaming of OER;
  4. Identify strategies and solutions to overcome the challenges or barriers to mainstreaming OER; and,
  5. Agree on inputs that factor into the planning of the 2nd World OER Congress.

Questionnaires have been sent to sent to key stakeholders and government ministers, including the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Education Mr John Swinney.

Other interested parties are encouraged to contribute to the consultation by completing the non-governmental stakeholders’ questionnaire which is available here.

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