I will come back and summarise the page in shorter digests...to make the ideas clearer and more readable....

 

Prompts for discussion

Key concepts

What is your understanding of the key terms employed in this project – such as OERs, reusability or “sharing resources”? There are some well-established definitions, of course, and the project initiation document states the working definitions - however, how do you use these terms in the context of your own teaching practice?

 

In the context of my teaching practice I use them to identify existing teaching resources (often in word document, pdf, but also video files, photographic materials  and hyperlinked texts, websites) that are deposited somewhere, or exchanged over email or the internet for other people to use it. This also includes wikis’ which means the deposit is not a static one but one where different people’s contributions can change, modify and add to the original donation. I like to include handouts that also provide an idea of the goals, aims and objectives of teaching and I also like to include exam questions. If I could I would like to include transcripts of teaching discussions, but these are often unrecorded, many of these take place either informally, many good discussions take place during and as a result of examination processes.  I often feel OER definitions are definitions of ‘practice’ and ‘how to do something’ and how ‘something is/can be done’; I would like to see OER definitions that include discussions on creativity, subjectivity and more theorised, like for example what does ‘exchange’ mean, in the context of teaching. Here I am biased because my work in anthropology is about exchange and as such it is one of my preoccupations in work and theory overall. I am not sure how OER and discussions about OER are entering larger discussions on pedagogy and teaching elsewhere. I am very interested in knowing how theories of pedagogy of teaching (large ones) introduce OER to their discussions, in other work, how are our discussions about e-learning, open access and so on understood and seen from an outsider’s perspective, people who discuss teaching and learning but who are not participants (yet) of projects like OER and so.

 

Key issues

What major issues with regard to re-usability can you identify? For instance, during discussions within the project team, we commented on the fact that a lot of teaching materials we received are embedded in the context of a particular institution and rely on implicit pedagogic assumptions, but your take on that issue might be different.

 

Yes, a lot of teaching materials are embedded in the context of a particular institution and rely on implicit pedagogic assumptions. They also rely on implicit political inequalities, financial or managerial crisis and political (funding, employability, resource allocation) strategies by each particular institution. I believe we put a lot of emphasis on the pedagogic assumptions because we are all concerned, primarily with pedagogy. However, in my experience, the larger political and managerial decisions taken about teaching have a strong impact on re-usability, albeit take longer to see their impact.

 

Sometimes I feel that our focus on pedagogy must also include a focus on the larger and political implications of teaching in Higher Education.  I think we have discussed this before, and indeed C-SAP has devoted many conferences at tracing these links and at broadening the pedagogic perspective as to include the larger contextual political experience of teaching, learning (and managing these).

 

What I am saying is not new, and you can skip the rest below, because it is a repeat of an old discussion on how pedagogy is embedded in a political system of inequality, and perhaps it is defined by such larger political systems.

 

In this respect, for me one of the big issues of pedagogic re-usability is one of politics. Who has access to the materials and why? Are these ‘places of access’ free to all? What is the relationship between the funding bodies that set up projects like OER and universities that use these? Who is making these decisions? How are the objects produced and exchanged? Are our disciplinary subjects (and the teacher’s and students in these disciplines) getting a sense of empowerment with these projects when they use them?

 

In my experience, universities assume they ‘own’ anything and everything that is produced under their name regardless of the ethics of appropriation of intellectual work, non-paid work. For example, the time taken learning Prezi and creating some content that I can use for teaching next week that I did this week is unpaid, it is not yet part of my personal development. The development of my earlier e-learning project in Wales was done out of contractual hours and never part of my contract (and it was a three year project). Why couldn’t my learning be paid as part of my personal development plan?

 

Imagine this: imagine universities had to pay for their staff to spend time going online, finding OERs, adapting these, bringing these to staff meetings to discuss, showcasing examples to their colleagues to share practice, then spending time themselves doing and exchanging OERS, paying for staff to put their talents to develop new work, better contexts of exchange, so at the end of this process there was an improved pedagogic mood in that imaginary university, an improved pedagogic experience. If universities had to pay their staff to do this –mind you, some very few actually do- (and they should because learning to improve pedagogy in an ever changing context, with newer technologies each time) our managers would certainly have to think different about what it means to ‘work’ for higher education. In the institutions I know, we do not get paid (as teachers and learners, I am not talking of the OER project itself now) to bring about new changes in pedagogic practice. It is assumed that we do it ‘as part of’ our existing contracts and that ‘knowledge’ is the reward we then re-use and invest back into preparing our teaching. Well, it shouldn’t be assumed, and it shouldn’t be ‘part of’. We should get paid extra. More precisely, we should get our ‘learning and development’ paid by the institutions we work for, not as part of our existing contracts but in addition to it.  To be paid to browse online? Why not? We would produce so much more! If a teacher develops something that improves learning practice, the process that takes that teacher to develop that should be financially supported and paid for.

The assumption that we should do all these work into e-learning as part of existing contracts, or for free, is something that it has been imposed on teachers and learners since early beginning of the Internet. There is a big difference of investment into management and teaching at HE when it comes to invest into learning processes, management gets more money for ‘learning new things’ than teachers do.

 

I am on a tangent-like, what I mean with this is that re-usability, as a concept, is predicated on the naive idea that exchange (exchange predicates the use and re-use of things being produced and given) is always for free and unproblematic. The reality of it is that things that are ‘re-used’ (outside learning and teaching that is) are often regulated, and therefore, who and why we have access to it, ultimately who is the beneficiary of it is something heavily immersed into larger politics of inequality.

 

 

The inequality of exchange (at the production point)

 

I am sorry I went on an on, on this point, I come from a school where in order to understand exchange (and re-usability of things exchanged) one must understand the processes of inequality that underpins exchange.  I feel that for me, the key issue in understanding re-usability must start by understanding the processes of how these materials are produced, who are the producers? How are they paid? What do they get out if?

 

Is this (OER objects) the case, as it is in many cases of exchange we see in anthropology, one where the system of inequalities is hidden, where the producers of such objects get very little, close to nothing, and the prestige and fame is taken by those who are at the point of ‘exchange’ rather than those that produce the items for exchange?

 

One thing anthropologists can say, for certain, about exchange is that It is indeed the case of many systems of exchange, -all over the world, from the most complex to the simplest types of exchange-, that they hide inequality very well. In most exchange process the producers of objects to be later given and to be later exchanged, the production itself is never an apparent cultural and visible place to be. The production process is often mystified, obscured from view, and the inequalities in this process are muted, made not visible. At the point of exchange, the production of inequalities, is ‘gone’ from view for any of the people that are involved in the exchange.

 

Another point anthropologist make is where ‘power’ lies in this process. Once something is produced, finalised, packaged, presented, given, put in a repository for all to see, it all comes down to who has the power to decide what gets given to whom and when. The production is hidden, and the inequalities within are mystified. It is, ultimately, those who decide what happens with these objects, who has them, if they are re-usable or not, when to give them, where to put them, who to give them to, what objects are good to go out and be used and re-used, it is those at this point, who have most power, and who benefit from this process. The others, the producers, and sometimes the givers get very little benefits, if none at all.  Well, they get some sort of social contract that binds them together, to very annoying levels sometimes.

 

Those who use objects, or those that receive them, or given access to them, are not the ones hiding the production of inequalities, well, not until they themselves share this process. In learning and teaching there is never a passive recipient, all participants are always involved in the creation and sharing of new knowledge, and as such, the crux of the process of creating and maintaining inequality through exchange, depends on the people who have the executive power to allocate resources, to give, to be seen as giving. In our case, someone at JISC is the one –not the only one- that has the executive power to do so, and it would be the case of doing a bit of ethnographic work for us to find out if in this fundamentally system of inequality (like all processes of exchange are) there are ways of transforming inequality into a productive system for the benefit of learners and teachers.

 

So yes, I identify the danger of not knowing where inequality gets created in the process of creating re-usable objects –and, of course, being able to do something about it.

 

Outside this political discussion, are there other issues on ‘re-usability’?  Practical ones (some are covered elsewhere here):

In no particular order:

 

-          thinking outside the box (what do people who are not involved on re-usable objects in teaching make out of these?)

-          should we be worried about creating re-usable objects that won’t be, actually used?

 How do we know that they will be re-used?

-          The impact of ‘re-usable’ objects may be very minimal. How do we give value to all re-usable objects even if they have a minimal impact or never used? I am of the opinion that all ‘re-usable’ objects, and all the effort put into it, even those of minimal impact, and the un-used ones, are important, that we are doing a very important job (even though it may feel small and not a high-impact one)

-          How do we deal with these ‘re-usable’ objects being meaningful when the language we use (the OER -RO- language) is a difficult one for people outside OER projects?

-          What is the best way to showcase these (I think Anna’s job and Darren’s in the wiki is a good answer to this)

-          How do we distinguish between something that is ‘useful’ from something that it has a ‘use’ and who makes that distinction?

-          Do things that are not ‘useful’ get ‘re-used’?

-          Some objects are best thrown away and never used again? Do we have a system by which we know when to throw things away? I always wonder that, as it happens with mail inboxes, and mail folder system, they store things and at some point it becomes impossible to distinguish what is a good email to keep, one that has sentimental value and you want to keep anyway, one that is rubbish (let alone spam), and many more that can be useful. We have some systems of classification and allocation to help us on this.

-          For me, My problem is one of quantity (the quality is produced in the process of re-usability and learning –I believe, the quality of OERS is in the process of creating knowledge, in these OERs being able to produce new knowledge. I do not know how to manage the quantity, the selection, they don’t stand out.

-          When looking at Prezi, looking for examples to follow, what works is what stands out, something that calls my attention, and in youtube, for example, ranking and popularity. I think we should consider how to make these OErs stand out and how to make them popular.

-          I would like to have a background discussion on the term ‘useful’ that impinges in our cultural understanding of things that are useful, usable, re-usable. I think there are theoretical discussions on these terms in anthropology, maybe we could provide links to existing discussions about such terms, and to the kinds of cultural objects we create.

-          Re-usable objects we create are cultural objects, they are embedded not only in the environment of our academic institutions but also in cultural environments, in cultural contexts. That is why I have a preoccupation with understanding the cultural terms of reference we use (such as usability, re-usability and so on) on the languages we create in order to anticipate the usability (the OEr language, the showcases through wikis); and in order to give meaning to the process, to reflect about the process we are involved into.

-          What do they do for teaching? What do they do for society? (I believe they do lots of –good- things). How do we have a more theoretical / rather than practical approach to it? And how do we link these theories to other theories outside OER and pedagogy and to specific disciplines? In other words, ’Re-usable objects are good for thinking’ (and maybe they are good  in second life and web 2.0 and for living too).

 

Looking at my list I seem to have four groups that can be called: ‘worries’, ‘preoccupation with cultural meaning’, and ‘preoccupation with the success of the project’; ‘pedagogic meanings and theories’.

 

 

Learning  design

How would you explain the design of your module to somebody who wanted to teach your module? Most of you seem to be following the route of module handbook together with presentation slides and any additional resources, why do you think this approach is so prevalent? If you have adopted a different format, why?

 

I would like to explain the design of my module differently than through handbook and slides and resources. I think these are a shorthand, a very good shorthand, that aims at simplifying the very complex process of putting the module together and teaching it. So, in a sense the first thing I would say to anyone who wanted to teach my module is that the handbook and slides and additional resources are a ‘sketch’ of the larger process. The second thing I would say is to move away from ‘originality’ and the worries of ‘borrowing’ and ‘copying’ other people’s work. I would say that pedagogic work is made through a lot of borrowing and informal use of other people’s work, with not much acknowledgement, it is a creative process of putting lots of things together. This creative process comes into its performative stage when these are taught (residentially, online, on the street, on youtube wherever the context of learning takes place)  but actually the moment they are taught, new knowledge is produced. I would say to the person that knowledge is produced at all stages of teaching, from reading someone else’s notes, looking online for inspiration for a bibliography, reading something, typing or reading your notes out, seeing the students’ reactions, reacting to the students and changing the course of your teaching. I see teaching as something that does not have one single line, and that is in flux and where all moments of contact (teacher’s contact with the internet, with a word document, moments of reflection with oneself, preassure to conform to a curriculum, little choice to change a curriculum, moments with the students, with the essays of the students) all these are moments when knowledge is created, and it is subjective, shared and common – as in having things in common with others- and singular, it is contextual, time-specific, and it is not bound by a classroom or a style of teaching. Not everybody appreciates when ‘knowledge’ is being produced, and sometimes it is best just to ‘do it’ to start the teaching.

 

I would say the only way to do something with these materials is to treat them as slightly disposable ones, if they are embedded in too much importance they become harder to use.

 

I would also say that the best is to do something with them, that there is no wrong or right in using them.

 

I would say that there are a lots of prejudices about how materials are shared, and things we should and should not do –for example, culturally we can not copy in exams, when this is not true in many other cultures-. We should not be so worried about copying, transforming things we borrow. I would say these are not objects that are pristine or that have to be returned, so do anything you want with them, and most importantly, appropriate them as yours during the learning and teaching process.

 

I would say a bit of respect is important, don’t diss them out, don’t just say ‘they are rubbish’, even the most rubbish ones may have things that will be re-usable, that you can use.

 

I would say, be selective and be prepared to invest a lot of time in going through these materials. Eventually re-using materials becomes easier, one gets more used to it and the process of selection is faster. Think of google and how we learned to navigate through the internet, this is a similar process, and it does take some time, and when you know how, it is very easy to take it for granted. I press ‘Enter’ without thinking, but there was a time when I looked puzzled at the keyboard. I would say, removing the sense of it being a ‘puzzle’ is important, not knowing where to start is common to anyone dealing with re-usable objects.

 

Now, I think I would say a lot of things I have learned about using re-usable objects first, and then move into the specific module.  

 

I would say that informing people about re-usable objects is something that would mean me seating down (physically or virtually) with someone and start by explaining what I did, the strategies I used and why, the kind of things I wanted my students to learn, why I thought this would make it a better learning, and then answer questions to this person about them.

 

I think this approach is prevalent because it shares a common language (everybody identifies a handbook and understands what a ‘handbook’ does before they read the content) that is, it works through recognisable meanings. It is also prevalent because it has a timeline and a structure, they are our basic conceptual maps for navigating our learning and teaching. Here, I believe, software that have the possibility of creating such conceptual maps (Prezi) will be able to help us show people what we do and to go beyond the handbook –only if it is recognisable in meaning, Prezi I mean-.

 

I have adopted this format as a starting point –to show something- but what I really would like to do is to take all of these into Prezi or other toolkits and demonstrate, show, what I do and what could be done with my courses. I also would like to have examples of what people have done with such courses, that is the possibility to show different strategies, actual uses, of the courses by other people as part of the show case.

 

I think, when looking at learning design it is important to see examples of design in practice, and to have examples of different people re-using the ‘same’ re-usable object, this way people could see the many different things that people can do, kaleidoscope like, if you want.

 

One aspect of design is that I tend to prefer to use supports that people recognise. For example, In 2002 I re-used a html based course that had typically a navigation bar on the left with links to other (lecture) pages and a text in the middle. The navigation design followed earlier HTML designs from mid 90s. What I re-used was the idea that you could have a navigation bar on the left, and whilst keeping that navigation bar I added a new one at the bottom, the bottom navigation bar did not go to other lecture pages but to support for learning, for example a discipline specific dictionary, emailing your tutor, chats and course descriptor which include a link about ‘how to study using this design’ which was a website I put together to explain students how to navigate through the design and the course.  This change of design –bottom navigation- was a pedagogic choice as I felt it would be good for students the possibility to access a course-specific dictionary whilst reading. 

 

In 2003 I re-used the design again, this time I was using Authorware, however, since people were not yet fully familiar with applications like Authorware and flash, I decided not to change the design, the lectures had the same left navigation and bottom navigation, however I re-used my own navigation panel structure, this time I included a word search that facilitated for students to locate terms across all lectures and to see ‘visually’ how the terms linked with each other, and so the ideas, for the whole course. You could, visually, have a map of for example ‘gender’ by looking at all the instances of it. I also re-used the idea of a quiz. In a previous module I had produced a quiz, in html,  at the end of a module this was done as a way to improve learning, help students revise concepts, and be playful about it. The quiz was done in one single page, one question after another, cascading, like a series of questions and answers. I took the idea of the ‘quiz’ and this time I produced a new one but done through pages, one question per page, and a final certificate of completion that said ‘well done’ and told how many questions had been answered successfully. Students really liked having a certificate that said ‘well done’ and that produced a positive evaluation of the work.

 

In this sense, in terms of design what counts for me is not the handout and others (which was also part of the package) but the possibility for students to navigate through all the lecture notes and quizzes in a much more fun and easier way. A thing that Authorware did was create a sense of ‘contained’ module, of package, and I think, as design it worked well and it could be re-used using Prezi.  What the package didn’t do, and that is my concern with Prezi and others is allow for people to go ‘inside’ the package and remove parts of it. When I look at Prezi I see a lot of examples but I can not ‘take out’ elements I like and re-use them, so my concerns with using Prezi is how the user can actually go ‘in’ and take any parts they like for these to be re-used.

 

In terms of design I think it must be imperative that the user understands, and it is given consent, that they can go ‘in’ (inside the heart of the software) and take all the pieces apart, use and re-use them as they need to. For this, what would work is a series of exercises, for example ‘how to teach about….’

 

I would like to produce something that said ‘how to teach about…gender’; ‘how to teach about….kinship’; how to teach about…ethnocentricity’.  Then, each section have ways of teaching about gender, different ways of teaching about gender, for any user to go and use any. This would need to list all the different ways of teaching, all the different strategies. These already exist in many teaching handbooks. For example, you could teach about gender by using one photograph of a female body builder, you could teach about gender by asking a series of questions about that picture, you could add a sound file of rap music, you could then add and re-use a clip on you tube (the dancing wedding clip) and so on….

 

Ultimately what you need is a question, what questions do we ask our students and how best can we help them address such question? Once you have a question to start with it is a matter of finding objects and re-using these to address the question.

 

For example, imagine I could go to a place where they would have examples on how to address the same question: the question being, let’s say ‘why body modifications are used in most societies to talk about gender and status? ’ or something on this line…

Imagine I had this question and I could go to a place where other people are teaching gender, anthropology, body modifications and look at the types of objects they have there for me then to re-use them. 

 

Let me give you one example of a re-used object and design that I can show you. In 2000 I created a presentation package that introduced anthropology, and amongst one of the things the introduction does it focus on ethnocentricity, on dealing with ethnocentricity as one of the things anthropology degrees do. We also wanted people to reflect on how we may perceive ‘other’ cultures as ‘exotic’ and that anthropology removes such ‘exoticism’ (and prejudices against it, against the ‘weird’ and strange) in order to explain that other people’s lives are not weird but meaningful.

 

The question for me was, how do we talk about ethnocentricity? How do we convey the sense of ‘exotic’ and how we help the reader reflect on that there are no weird and exotic people out there (all lives are meaningful and exotic alike so to speak)

 

So, I put a series of pictures, one on top of the other, and each picture had a title, then using powerpoint, each picture ‘peel’ out and the next photograph emerged, with a title. A photograph of a wedding, gave room to a photograph of a family buying in a supermarket, this gave place to a women holding his grandson in India, this then ‘peel away’ and a picture of a ritual piercing for a Buddhist training appear. At the end of the photographs –which appeared like a kind of photo album, one after the other- there was a page with some questions and reflections.

 

This was one of the many objects I created. Another one I did was to put a picture that had hidden things on it, you could click on the picture and find out more about what seemed ‘weird’. 

 

In 2002 I re-used some of these for teaching a similar concept but this time I included a short video (the last magician). I had seen a colleague of mine use ‘the last magician’ to introduce anthropology as it is a nice illustration of change and globalisation, the exotic and the ‘normalised’. Along with the video the student had a page with questions about the video. Here I took the idea of the video and I actually took print screens of the video, and added them to the questions, to each question, creating a film strip with pictures next to questions. I re-used both the video, the handout, and created another re-usable object, the film strip with questions. I also re-used Google maps to include a map in the film strip.  All this was done in a word document and the film strip was a highly successful teaching and learning experience that took students from being ‘baby sat’ by using videos, to actually having a breakdown of the video and having to engage with moments and questions of the video rather than taking notes or merely ‘watching’ with no further elaboration. The film strip was successful because it made ‘watching a video’ (specially the very detailed anthropological documentaries) accessible, something that could be ‘seen’ again through the film strip, you could ‘fast-forward’ and ‘go back’ in-situ, and one that had questions for you to answer or think about. It didn’t end when the film ended, and you could take it home and revise the themes of the video for your essays and tutorials. 

 

The changes in design above are about three things: one, the ability to being able to use other people’s strategies for teaching (I copied what a colleague was doing, in fact, I borrowed her video) two, enhance the way questions are asked and answered and change the way technology can be used for teaching.  The success of this re-usable object (the film strip) is due to the fact that it is good for asking questions. It is good at visualising the links and relationships between the questions and the discipline. It can be easily broken into segments, and it is not always lineal in the way it can be used. The presentation is lineal (it is a strip) but it can be used in non-linear ways, and it is not classroom or time dependent.

 

This strip is a re-usable object, made of several many re-usable objects. I could re-design it using the web, for example, to have a digital frame-by-frame selection of the film, using digital software and html. However, the point of re-using it again would, for me, entirely depend on the question I want to address in class, and what is it that I want to be learned in this exercise. If I were to use it in a novel context I think what I would do is I would link each question to other anthropological films, which I did in word format, but this time I’d do it digitally.

 

My reason for adopting certain learning designs would have to do with the question I want to propose in class. I am aware that I could achieve the purpose of addressing any given question by very different means, word, pictures, film, film strips…and that I don’t think one is better than the other if they are used imaginatively, that is if they are able to visualise relationships between ideas, concepts and experiences in a way that is meaningful to students.

 

Context

What sort of contextual information does your teaching material contain – within the project team we identified a lot of “housekeeping information”, for instance references to material on WebCT, arrangements for exams etc. – how should this information be handled when preparing the material for release as OER?

 

 

I think my teaching has all types of standard ‘housekeeping’. I think I started doing so as a result of the visits of the external examiners, whom had to get a sense of the module, questions, ideas, teaching fast and clearly.  I have noted that it takes time for any student to go through ‘housekeeping’ and sometimes, some of the information on ‘housekeeping –for example, class conduct instructions like ‘switch off your mobile’ are part and parcel of the process of docility and accountability that we are all under. Yes, I am being a bit Foucaultian here in saying that this is a process of docility, and yes, I am thinking of Strathern when I talk about accountability. I have been in so many meetings where the purpose of the meeting was to ensure that handouts and ‘housekeeping’ contained all the possible elements that could ‘uspet’ the learning-teaching relationship (in the volatile market conditions of HE), and to anticipate any possible ‘events’. I was always surprised that we spent so much time and energy in preparing ‘housekeeping’ to cover all the eventualities, and they again work like a kind of map. If you get ill…that’s where you go and who you see, and the letter you need to bring back to the administration. They are like, if you allow me, instruction manuals, with all safety and operational elements in place.

 

So, I do feel a bit hesitant when I have to include ‘housekeeping’ per se in my portfolios, because when I am with students these often do not read ‘the manuals’ in the way we imagine them to do so. Students will not consult ‘housekeeping’ very often –and I am glad they don’t- and they will rely on asking others and the tutor for many matters.

 

I feel OER may contain too many of these ‘manuals’ and that they are good in that they illustrate the kind of departmental practice that is being put in place. They are good archaeological records of how we ‘lived’ through our paperwork. However, and I think we already do, maybe we should distinguish these from other types of content, or to indicate the distinction.

 

Assessment

What influenced your decision as to the format of the assessment? How transferable is your assessment strategy to anyone else using your material?

 

Most of my assessment is determined beforehand, we are told that  our students must produced 5,000 words per module and that this may be broken down into written assignments and exams.  Generally speaking this is only a starting point. I do have more flexible assessment. As a general rule, unless there is a procedural rule in my staff handbook that forces me to do exams and essays I choose to interpret ‘written assigments’ and ‘exams’ as creatively as I can. I have no way to influence the procedural rules in the staff handbook that the Registry of the university give us, however, I do have the possibility to be creative about it. Exams are harder to ‘transform’ but I have argued for non-exam based courses and managed to have these validated through the head of my department and approved by the external examiners every year.

 

Now, as to personal decision to the format of the assessment (of the creative interpretations we make of it) what influences me most is knowing the group of students. If I have a group of new students I always start with a working journal and one essay, and no exams. If I know the students well, from previous years I will increase the complexity of the written pieces. Most of my decisions are based on what is important for every course. For example, in anthropology fieldwork research is very important so I will always have one research exercise in each course if I can. I also feel reading ethnographies are very important so I will have a book review. I also use ethnographic diaries that summarise class discussion that combine analysis of media and internet. Another determining factor is if the student is residential or online. I tend to use many more smaller exercises online, and I also use more self-assessment exercises through this media, including boards and online participation of discussions.

 

Even though videos and films are not always regulated by the Registry and as such they are harder to use for assessment purposes, I will try to justify these from within the curriculum. I found out, and that may be purely contextual, that university admin will be willing to consider changes in assessment if they are justified and have the back up of the external examiner.

 

IN cases where the production of assessment would be too complex to undertake piece by piece I choose portfolios to gather all the different assessments.

 

Another factor is the external examiner and the external examiner’s comments on the assessment practice I use. These are very important to me, so if an external examiner were to comment not favourably on some assessment or suggest changes I would, most likely, implement or try to follow these.

 

I try to incorporate much non-assessed exercises, but since the nature of non-assessed is such I often used online media to leave a record of the exercises as a matter of practice, and to use hard copy of the online pages as evidence.

 

How transferable is my strategy? Well, that depends on the structure of the Registry, some University Registrars are more inflexible than others, so if the university allows for creative types of assessment (beyond the 2,500 word essay and 2 hour exam) then these should be transferable, and indeed I have transferred some of these from one university to another. I have found out, however that I had to make changes, I couldn’t transfer the assessment as it was.

 

For example, I use a working journal to assess level one introduction to anthropology. This working journal (of which I have a copy in my material) was already a re-used object from elsewhere. The first time I re-used it I found out that the reason why students were making a different use of it -than the examples suggested to me originally- was that they were not used to writing diaries, and often left their assessment to the last week of the course.  I decide to re-use the diary in a new module but I decided that rather than doing a ‘daily entry’ it would be made of two entries (one based on fieldwork findings and one based on going to a museum-class with me). One thing that has change my assessment is where I live. Before I moved to London I couldn’t look into different venues for teaching. This time, however, I am using the British Museum and other exhibitions (including popular ones) for some learning and teaching, and the whole experience has transformed the assessment.

 

Here it is an example of a re-use of object (the working journal –diary, with entries of class notes, reflections, media, reviews, and so on)  to a working journal that has a museum exhibit as a piece of debate.  This caused me a problem because I did not want students to loose the opportunity to use the diary to enter reflections, reviews, and media. In that sense, here the object was not fully transferable. One possible solution is to use new objects, or to create new strategies to incorporate what I think it is important of the diary format.  Here, I am not yet sure, I may eventually ask students to do their diary online, as this may increase their interactivity with media and reviews as well as their new museum object.

 

In doing so, however, the outcome is that I have created a new piece of assessment, even though originally the intention was only to re-use a previously and tested assessment.

 

My answer is then, yes, they are transferable, but only insofar the assessment respond to the needs of the course first, to the pedagogical intent of the course first Probably I’d recommend that all assessment undergoes a degree of change in adopting re-usable objects and that it is tested more than once with different cohorts of students before it becomes ‘ruled’ down as standard assessment.

 

I am not sure they are transferable in relation to disability, though. This would be another issue to discuss.

 

 

Teaching practice

How would you like this module to be taught (imagine as many different potential audiences as possible)? What if the material was to be picked up by a colleague at your own institution? Another UK institution? A colleague outside of the UK – how would these different end users change your thinking about the material and the ways in which it could be re-used?

 

How would I like it to be taught? Honesty, I do not mind at all. The thing that I care about is that the underlying pedagogic idea (let’s say, how anthropology deals with ethnocentricity) remains true to its discipline core. This is the case of ethnography. I have seen hundreds (quite literally) of instances of re-using both the concept of ‘ethnography’ and re-used objects for it. My problem is not with the re-usability but with people misunderstanding the concept and teaching something that is a poor understanding of what ethnography does/is. 

 

Of the specific modules I have, I think the introduction to culture and religion is one that I have taught with another colleague, and for example I would like it taught (specially the lesson on dance) the way she did –where she danced a Greek piece to the students to illustrate a theory on dance performativity and the body. I think I would like some of my modules to be taught more sensorially and through specific instances of students participating more directly. I think I would like this module to be taught outside the classroom, maybe in a public space. I would like to see this module taught without power points and other devices and I would like it to see taught with the latest software, just to try it out. 

I can imagine this module being taught in a coffee shop, where the audience comes and goes, and where students and people passing by are in company of each other.

I can imagine this module begin filmed and distributed in film (edited maybe).

I recently saw a brilliant example (from a colleague who teaches drama) of theatre actors who played the roles of the informants and their stories, I would like to see someone doing a theatrical impersonation of Malinowski, or Geertz.

I would love someone doing a mythological rendition of the lectures on mythology, maybe a theatre group, or a painter.

I would like to know how it would be taught in a foreign language.

I would like it to be taught to people who really don’t care about the things I teach to see how far it could go in creating a learning context

I would like to see taught to children who have failed school to prove the point that anthropology is about people, and thus, should speak to all walks of people, and that anyone can contribute to it

I wonder how it would be to teach this in an ‘official’ setting, like a museum.

I wonder how all the above would be possible in virtual settings, and I would love the module to be taught in second life.

I would like to see the module broken down, with video an all, in youtube.

I wonder how it would be as a short TV program.

I don’t think there is a single context and audiences where I wouldn’t like to try…

 

All of these would mean new re-uses, for example, for media and tv, and internet, it would mean a digitalisation, and probably a video presence. It would mean short editing pieces. It would also mean that my modules may gain an ‘english voice’ which they don’t have. I am aware that each time that I teach in different languages, I teach differently and I approach the teaching differently as well. In Japan, for example, I have used objects and aspects of material culture more than I have done in the UK. In Barcelona, for example, all the teaching is a long conversation with people, rather than the more posed and ‘slide’-based UK structure. I feel my courses have an UK visual structure and if they were used in other contexts this would have to change.

 

I have seen my modules picked up by a colleague at my own institution and have had content changed! I don’t mind if I like the colleague. What I felt uneasy with were interpretations of context, and in one case, someone who used examples of practice that were discriminatory and went against anthropological positions.  

 

I didn’t feel uneasy about a colleague picking up my module. What I felt uneasy was that it was done without my consent and that the effort of producing the module in the first place was not acknowledged. That is why I decided to put all my coursework available online so in a sense I have given consent already.

 

I have also had colleagues taking course titles and changing these, and I have had bibliographies used. I have had a colleague that took one course I use to teach and another course someone else teach, and create a new one. The problem was that it was done simultaneously to mine and there was quite a considerable overlapping–this was a colleague that did not share practice, otherwise I would have noted the overlapping earlier-. The good thing about this (not at the time) is that I had to improvise changes in three lectures. I didn’t object to it but I would have liked it to be shared practice and something to improve the curriculum rather than affect the curriculum.

 

If I hadn’t had the experience of re-using and my material being re-used already I may feel a bit more uneasy.

 

In some cases my work has been re-used in a paradoxical way, it has been distributed and repeated, exactly as it was. I know three people that teach a course I created, exactly like I created it, with the same bibliography and assessment, and have not changed a word (even when they could have technically changed so). All they did was take my name out of it and put theirs.  I do not think this is what ‘res-usability’ intended. The difference for me between this ‘use’ and ‘re-use’ is that in ‘re-use’ the material will be transformed at three significant levels: some transformation will take place at level of design, some transformation will take place at level of assessment, some transformation will take place at level of content and use. The material will change.  The issue of authorship/copyright is significant here and it is one that needs to be discussed much further

 

Would my material be different if I had thought other people may re-use it? Some of it yes, especially for non-UK audiences; other material was already intended for re-use.  I think I would like to increase flexibility in translation and to include ethnographies written in other languages than English.  I’d have to know those audiences better to know some of the implications of this change, though.

 

Images

A lot of you use images in your materials – apart from obvious issues with copyright, what other issues can you identify with regard to repurposing? How did you decide on using those particular images – and how do you see their pedagogic purpose?

 

All my images are decided for particular pedagogic purpose, that is to transmit specific ideas about culture and society; and to address some pedagogic issues, like to illustrate a specific issue of performance during a ritual, or for example, to discus specific types of tattooing in relation to gender or status;

 

In anthropology all images are sensitive and culturally meaningful so I am very careful that pictures are not ‘thrown’ into without some meaning, context and origin.

 

Issues regarding repurposing of images is that of exoticisation of culture. It is very important in anthropology that pictures are not used to exoticise other/own cultures, peoples, beliefs, practices.  All I can do in this respect is tell the user that the use of pictures is embedded in ethics in anthropology. Also, in anthropology pictures form what we call part of a ‘visual system’. I think my preoccupation with pictures would be that they are treated unethically and that the visual system where they come from is objectified, commoditized and lost.

 

Other issues then: exoticisation, loss of meaning, objectification of picture (its content and people depicted on it), commodification of images.

 

How to deal with it? I think the only way is to make the reader/user aware of the implications of using pictures out of their pedagogic context and that there are ethical (not just copyright) issues involved in doing so. With the right permissions and a minimum context pictures can be use with little problem.

 

Now, if the picture is used for teaching and given a minimum context I would not have a problem with this being re-used for teaching purposes.

 

Modifications of pictures, from hyperlinking, cropping, editing, on the actual picture itself may be more of an ethical issue than simply re-using the picture to a different context if it involves fieldwork pictures. My fieldwork informants may have given consent to me but may have not given consent to someone else’s modification of their image, so here it depends really on what’s on the picture.

 

Most of the pictures I use can be used by other people by teaching purposes so except for some very specific ones it all depends what they use it for.

 

As with all things above, I don’t mind seeing others re-use my pictures or work, if they are good uses of it ; and if they are made with ‘fair representation’ in mind.

 

Toolkit

Having read the wiki pages on the toolkit (including reflections of some of project partners), what sort of toolkit would you like to see emerging from the project? What is your “ideal” toolkit – imagine that there are no financial/software restrictions- what ideal features would you like to see? What sort of toolkit would be most helpful for your own teaching practice?

 

I would like a visual toolkit – I like Prezi but too much zooming can give me a headache (seriously, as much as I like it I don’t always find it calming and my eyes move so much that I get headaches –so far the only software that has this effect on me)

 

I would like a visual toolkit that is free (some of the ones available are not or I don’t have direct access to it)

 

I also would like a section of example of re-use.

 

I would like other people in the project re-using other people in the project materials and putting their re-use available to see as examples of re-use.

 

One ideal feature, videos –(i.e Welsh)

 

I would also spend time doing some videos and having all my content transformed so it can incorporate these.

 

I would like really powerful and well constructed website to host it. I mean, a really meaningful site.

 

I would like the site to be clear to anyone and everyone and in a language that is not the language we use in OER talk, but a language that anyone can understand.

 

If I had money I would like a team of people that will digitalise all my content, all my photographs and pages, and content of all kinds and organise them neatly for me, so I can find anything I need at any time.

 

I would like a software that can identify a module and objects (text, assessment, videos) within it as potential re-usable objects and extract them out automatically,  deposit them into a section as such, rather than having to do it manually by myself every time. All I would have to do then, is look at what has been selected and extracted from the larger module and in a pop-up like window enter instructions and ideas about it.

 

I would like to have a visual image of all there is in a module that I can transform into a re-usable object, so I can show others easily. Right now I do have a conceptual image but that’s harder to extract!

 

And I would like software I can’t afford in order to take all my content into presentations.  If I had really lots of money I would probably have a site where any one using it can access anything from it, where there is no restriction of use of software by the user as well as the user that re-uses and produces new things.

 

If I had money I would pay someone at Google to invent a desktop application that can do all software transformations easily whilst incorporating web 2.0 applications all in one. I have two groups in Ning and I belong to another 4 ning groups and as great as it for networking, there is no unification of tasks.  I feel I am in too many online spaces at once. It doesn’t get solved by having a phone that access them. The same happens with teaching materials for OER.

 

I would not like it to be based on an academic institution. I would like it to have the full support of academic institutions but not be funded or stored in a server of which me and my partners have no control and can be switched off by people I don’t know at any time.  I would like more ownership of the toolkit: not dependent on the funding body and their server.

 

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All these reflections are just 'thrown' in and as such I would like to come back another time and summarise them. I have a long list in this page that, on reflection, needs some work.

 

I am also, painfully aware that I write in a way that it does not always sound English, and as I haven't edited this text, there will be paragraphs with ideas on it that would need breaking down separately and clearly.

 

I also have a preocupation with exchange, the term 'the production of inequality' is borrowed from Lisette Josephides.

 

Here I am not using her work -which is much better than I can replicate here- what I am doing is using her term to flag a theory  in one field, in order to address a set of discussions in another field. Basically, some of our problems about re-usability and exchange have been addressed by larger (in anthropology) theories of exchange and I always feel tempted to use and apply these as to give some theoretical context to our discussions.