A farewell and an opportunity to get a free book

Its been a long dry spell on this blog. Apologies for that. The last post was around the time that I was preparing for OER13 to be unleashed (a fantastic experience which I and many others really enjoyed). Not long after that I confirmed arrangements to take early retirement from the Open University in order to have more time with family. Leaving the OU was very hard to do. I originally planned to go at the end of 2013, this stretched to the end of March 2014, allowing me to not only chair production of a new course on the MA Online and Distance Education Programme (H818: The Networked Practitioner which has openness and sharing at its heart), but also to lead its first year of presentation. This meant that I met and worked with some great students - always a joy - and had a front row seat for the first H818 student online conference and activity around this. Unmissable.

This last year has also involved working with some talented authors and my valued friend and colleague Professor Allison Littlejohn on completing the book which we started talking about at the ORIOLE retreat in 2010. The book is published at the end of this month and we agreed an arragement with Routledge (many thanks to Alex Masulis) allowed us to publish about half the chapters in an issue of the open journal JIME. So a significant portion of the content has been available to read, without fee, since April. Thank you to Martin Weller and others on JIME for agreeing to this hybrid form of openness which allowed us to accommodate authors who were uncomfortable without an open license, but also making it possible to publish conventionally, which also has benefits.

FREE COPY AVAILABLE: I now have two copies of the hardback book (pictured) and thought it might be a good idea to offer one of these via this blog to someone who can provide a good reason why they should have it.  If I agree I will post it to you anywhere in the world. You can contact me with your entry (put 'ROR book' in the subject header) at my OU address chris.pegler@open.ac.uk until the end of August 2014. I will be happy to sign it if that suits, so feel free to suggest a suitable inscription.

ORIOLE 2013 survey - Help required (reward offered)

We have a (not-so little) online survey running which collects information about the contexts in which open resource use may occur, looking particularly at reuse of educational resources and attitudes to open resources. We aim to share the results as open data later this year. So we need your help in getting the URLs for this survey out to as many people as possible. If you are interested in knowing more about resource reuse then this data will be of use to you - the wider the set of respondants the better. A similar survey ran in 2011 and attracted 192 responses, we hope that with versions in English and Spanish we will attract more responses in 2013 and reach a more diverse audience.

Is there a reward besides this sharing of data? Well in 2011 and again in this survey we are offering £300 in donations to three selected charities. This year the same amount to Oxfam educational projects which the respondants can select from to reflect their interests.

So no, this is not a chance to win a natty techo-device, or a matched set of Amazon vouchers, but we hope that in sharing the survey data and in directing the budget to helping educational causes you can see the reward of taking part and spreading the word. We would particularly appreciate spreading news of this survey beyond the open education community and into your schools, colleges and universities so that those who are not actively involved in open resource sharing yet can help us understand what it would take to attract them.

To access the survey use the buttons on this page (right hand side), or these URLs:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ORIOLE_E (English)
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ORIOLE_S (Spanish)

(PDF copy of the survey questions/design (English) (Spanish) here) Happy for you to reuse any of these you find useful.

You can learn a little more about the survey at http://orioleproject.blogspot.co.uk/p/survey.html and look out for Gema Santos and myself at OER13 towards the end of this month when we will be sharing some early results.

Looking forward to OER13 - Thanks for getting us here ...

As co-chair of OER13 (with the wonderful Jackie Carter) I have had the inside track for months now on how the event was shaping up. It has been quite a ride. I can recall when our realistic estimates for numbers attending was around the 80 mark on the basis that OER10, OER11, OER12, in fact the full set so far, had each been supported by well-resourced projects (RLO-CETL, JISC and later SCORE) and times and project funding are no longer to be relied upon. Once SCORE finished in July 2012 we would need to fall back on the generosity of OER friends, not only as members of the planning group, but also in working their socks off and attracting supporters (more active than simply sponsors) to make the event financially viable. Last week we had our penultimate planning group meeting (only 48 days to go) and now realise that we may well sell out (i.e. top 200) even before we get to the end of the Early Bird rate period.


My 'oriole' shoes for the OER13 gala dinner

In the lull before the event I would like to thank all of the planning group, an exceptionally active and willing bunch of volunteers, and also pass out some special thanks to some of those who have taken on additional responsibilities to push OER13 forward to the next level. Not three parallel strands but 5-6 each day, more affordable than ever before (£167 for the two days) ... I will rein in my inner saleswoman at this point. If you are interested in what we have achieved look at the website - oer13.org

Now the roll call: Thanks to Jackie Carter (MIMAS) co-chair, voice of reason and all a chair should be; Steve Stapleton and Andy Beggan (Open Nottingham) for offering Nottingham as a venue, with recording, logistics and even food tasting services thrown in; Andy Lane and Anna Comas-Quinn (OU) for running the paper/poster review side of things so well; Dawn Leeder (Cambridge and UCEL) for her (wo)manning of the website; Megan Quentin-Baxter, Victor Ottaway and many at MEDEV (Newcastle University) who are pulling together an interactive programme that will amaze and astound; Simon Thomson (Leeds Met) who is part of that programme team, provides the system we rely on for virtual meetings and will be 'Blingmaster' for the gala dinner Open Mic session; Terese Bird (Leicester) our OER13 blogging queen and David Kernohan (JISC) aka @oer13 on Twitter; Jonathan Darby (who thought that there should be an OER13) and Tim Seal who together have brought the OE SIG into OER13 planning and other valuable contacts besides; Terry McAndrew (HEA and TechDis) who agreed to be Treasurer when no sane person should have - i.e. when we had almost no money to build from; Stephen Gomez and Alex Fenlon (HEA) and Patrick McAndrew and the OER Research Hub team (OU) who have brought in supporters and new activity and actors into the mix. Finally the ALT people, Maren Deepwell who provided the base for the OE SIG, and hence OER13 and Caroline Greves who is supporting the event (aka organising us).

Not going to be there, or new to OER and need some funding help?
The event will be captured in many different ways and made open for those who can't be there, but if you can be there then do. If you have colleagues who are interested in OER but not yet, or only newly, engaged with it then point them in the direction of the HEA sponsorships which will cover the fees of the event and please circulate the link: http://bit.ly/OER13_HEA

From this experience it is very hard not to be impressed by the UK OER community. I'm not going to try :-) 

OpenEd 2012 and the ORIOLE Survey Remixathon

It is Day 1 of the OpenEd 2012 conference here in Vancouver (yes, I know I am very lucky to be part of this). ORIOLE is pitching in on two of the events this time. Later today it is literally a pitch - at the Pitchfest. 5 mins to talk about the resue cards (wish me luck) which have recently gone into a 3rd (special for OpenEd 2012) edition, taking on board some user feedback from Anna Comas-Quinn, Tita Beaven, Bea de los Archos and others.

But the real excitement is the Remixathon - an interesting ideas to try to get audience involvement at this conference. I am offering for remix the ORIOLE survey. This, some of you may know, remixed some earlier survey ideas from the learning objects era (CD-LOR and Rights and Rewards were particular project influences). In turn the ORIOLE survey has been looked at by other researchers and questions adapted from it for work by Marion Manton at Oxford for OERSesame and also by Sandhya Gunness (Mauritius) for her OLNET project activity. The data is open and is being released more widely at this conference, but the remix proposal relates to both the design and the data. What could be done with either/both and how could this help inform the design of a better, more relevant and more international survey for Autumn 2012. You don't have to be here in Vancouver to have your say. I am particularly interested in hearing from and working with those who have surveys in storage, progress or pipeline and would like to compare. Let's try and collaborate.

If you have a question that is burning a hole in your brain - you really think that this should be added and you have not seen it yet - then comment below or email me.

There is an ORIOLE Remixathon Google site set up and in progress for the OpenEd 2012 event so please come and look and let  me know what I am missing (repeat: it is a work in progress so will fill out as the conference progresses and beyond).

I am also proposing to use the ORIOLE mailing list (been there some time but mothballed for a while) to help share analysis of the survey and development of further ORIOLE items such as the cards. So join this as http://jiscmail.ac.uk/oriole if you would like to be more involved in that sort of discussion into the future.

Sure is lots to discuss. Time to go conferencing now ...

Stairways as a metaphor for OER engagement

Today I ran a workshop with some fantastic OER colleages (Suzanne Hardy, Alannah Fitzgerald and Joanna Wild) to explore where different stakeholders stand (or sit) within an idealised stairway. I've been asked to share the activity cards and the information so here is:

Link to slides (simple explanation of activity)
Link to download of Powerpoint cards to print out.

Thanks to Xpert for the wonderful photos of stairways that inspired some very creative conversations.

Joanna Wild also talked about her ladder methodology. 
Download her full research report from:
http://bit.ly/UEcbPi
or for a quick overview download a summary presentation from:
http://slidesha.re/TBrfiK

Using the reuse cards

I delighted that Gema Santos of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia) will be joining me on the ORIOLE team to take forward some of her doctoral research and work with ORIOLE and LORO projects from October to December 2012.

Gema is pictured here on a visit to the OU following OER12. We look forward to learning more about attitudes and practices related to OER use/reuse and sharing these with you. Gema has recently also spent time investigating OER at the Unversity of Michigan.

UNESCO speaks (draft declaration looking pretty good)

There was a big meeting at UNESCO in Paris last week which spawned a daft declaration about OER and celebrated/reflected on the ten years since UNESCO started its OER activity. I was not there, but did a short(ish) unsolicited personal take for the OER-DISCUSS mailing list.

As Gabi Witthaus has asked to Scoop.it and because the declaration is a PDF (so not easy for Scoops) here is the gist. It is not informed by the ins/outs and cut/thrust of discussion. So if you were there so if you have comments/insights please share.

The declaration has been warmly welcomed and is clearly well-honed and both positive and inclusive. Scroll to the bottom of this post for the link. Or this is my 'take'. The declaration:

1. Locates OER within a wider range of aspirations about education by reminding of a number of international declarations with relevance to OER or which it supports, e.g.:'The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 26.1), which states that: “Everyone has the right to education' and note that OER promotes the aims of these international statements.
2. Emphasises use of the UNESCO 2002 definition: 'teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. Open licensing is built within the existing framework of intellectual property rights as defined by relevant international conventions and respects the authorship of the work'. I find this quite long as a definition and it reminds me of the reusable learning object IEEE definition (so anything used for education/research in the public domain or with an open license). I presume it has not shortened on this occasion as, ten years on, some people still won't know what open licensing is.
3. Specifically recalls existing Declarations and Guidelines on Open Educational Resources such as the 2007 Cape Town Open Education Declaration, 2009 Dakar Declaration on OER and the 2011 Commonwealth of Learning and UNESCO Guidelines on OER in HE.
4. Recommends that 'States':
   
   a) Foster awareness and use of OER to widen access, improve cost-efficiencies and quality of teaching/learning outcomes. (If I were wishing for the world here I would ask that we consider that OER also helps with creativity, something for teachers to warm to).
   
   b) Facilitate enabling environments for use of ICT. This is a very wide-ranging aspiration from improving 'media and information literacy' to reliable power supplies and broadband. Mobile activity is specifically mentioned.
   
   c) Reinforce the development of strategies and policies on OER. This one (frankly) worries me a little. It talks of 'Promoting the development of specific policies for the production and use of OER within wider strategies for advancing education'. Fine if these are enabling, but could they also be (unintentionally) restricting?
   
   d) Promote the understanding and use of open licensing frameworks 'while respecting the rights of any copyright holder'. I'd be happier with 'respecting copyright' not sure what the distinction is between this and 'the rights of any copyright holder' is and concerned that not every rights holder is entirely rational (my experience), but I am happy that its 'rights' and not 'wishes'.
   
   e) Support capacity building for sustainable development of quality learning materials. Personally I like this one a lot as its about developing staff 'taking into account local needs and the full diversity of learners' however it also reaches into the trickier areas of promoting quality assurance/peer review and into assessment/creditation. So very ambitious and directly reflecting current community concerns (I feel).
   
   f) Foster strategic alliances for OER
   
   g) Encourage the development and adaptation of OER in a variety of languages and cultural contexts. Note that this talks of favouring production/use of OER in local languages.
   
   h) Encourage research on OER. No surprises here about the areas and all good (my opinion). Like specifically that one area is 're-contextualisation of OER'. Initiatives like Bridge2Success is one project that currently points at this even within English language resources reused UK to US, as does previous work in sharing RLOs. Re-contextualisation is not that easy to do (see also item e.).
   
   i) Facilitate finding, retrieving and sharing of OER. Open standards and user-friendly tools as you would expect.
   
   j) Encourage the open licensing of educational materials produced with public funds. Yes! As with e) this one is one which I am particularly happy to see. But I note that the phrasing is much gentler (more informercial than a) to i): 'Governments/competent authorities can create substantial benefits for their citizens by ensuring that educational materials developed with public funds be made available under open licenses (with any restrictions they deem necessary) in order to maximize the impact of the investment.'

So all good and sound and no unwelcome surprises. This is the DRAFT, so it may change but it seems to all good (to me) and I hope will be listened to. The full version is at:

http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/Events/Paris%20OER%20Declaration.pdf

What will come out of this?

Promise and practice in OER: The need to move forward together

Tomorrow I head off for the joint OER12/OCWC conference at Cambridge. I am looking forward to hearing a mix of views on what it will take to continue and build the momentum of the OER movement. OpenEd 2011 was a fabulous event and as someone based in the UK it drew my attention to a new perspective on open education, particularly away from HE and into schools. There has been heartening news over recent weeks of regional and sector push towards openness, including in US schools as a result of pioneering work by David Wiley and others and the announcement last week from the World Bank about research.Next week's conference promises to offer an international mix of experiences to mine and learn from.

My own session is a short demo called 'Cartoons and Card Tricks'. At OER11 I unleashed v.1 of the reuse cards and its been great to hear how people have used these cards in the past year as a medium for exchanging views with novices to OER, to open up discussion and hopefully open eyes to the potential of sharing and using OER. The cards have travelled from seminar rooms and conferences to less formal venues - bars and dinner parties. They recently did a little detour to EUROCALL in Italy last month with Anna Comas-Quinn. Feel free to reuse, translate and adapt the cards yourself. The idea of reusing cards about reuse must make sense. I've spruced them up for OER12 and spring-cleaned the shop (see link above) a little.

One of the resources added is a new cartoon from Steve Davies, formulated as a worksheet but adaptable as you wish. It looks at the axis between promise and practice in OER activity. This one of the ideas behind the ORIOLE project. Practitioners have a lot to learn about the promise of OER, if they can find the time to look around. However those looking to the future, to the promise of OER and  increasingly open landscapes, or trying to formulate policy based on this new future, can learn from noting what practitioners need, what they use, and how they use it.This latest cartoon asks you to consider what your perspective is, promise- or practice-heavy, light, or balanced. Perhaps we need more emphasis on promise at this stage to capture the imagination, but if so when does the balance need to shift? The cards and the cartoons are trying to test how this might be achieved as gaining ground in the hearts and heads of practitioners becomes important to maintain the movement that we are all engaged in.

Open Education Week (March 5-10 and all year round)

5-10 March 2012 is the very first Open Education week. A great idea and the Open Education Week website list of webinars and events offers an amazing, exciting, heart-warming menu of happenings to celebrate and draw attention to what Open Education is. There is certainly a lot of open education going on. [Pause for thought]. 

There has been lots going on in the run up to open education week, interesting announcements about success in securing OER K-12 legislation in Washington State, OERu activity, a very visual cc-by licensed UNESCO-initiated logo for OER that works in countries where the words 'open education resources' don't mean the same as we think they mean (translations here). All evidence of hard work by lots of people over a long period. [Pause for applause well earned].

There will be lots of open education going on AFTER open education week. [Hooray!] Looking at the list of webinars. There will be one starting shortly, (featuring Patrick McAndrew, Martin Weller and Sandra Wills and organised by University of Leicester's TOUCAN project (I will be there) which will link to archived recording as well as being live.

The great thing about Open Education week is that it draws attention to the great openness that is happening all the time and all around. There will be sharing beyond this week. The resources, ideas and initiatives shared now will be used and referred to in the future by people who don't yet know what open education is all about. That is the great thing about open ed. Its out there, its in the air. Definitely something to celebrate and spread the word about. Perhaps think of what you can do this week that would be special and new for you (or someone else). Tell someone about open education who really does not have a clue. Sign up for a commitment to carry on with open ed after this week (SCORE has a nice simple resolution, and the OER Cape Town Declaration cannot fail to inspire).

A slogan comes to mind here that will be familiar to people in the UK: 'A dog is for life and not just for Christmas'. Well, open education is for life, beyond this week and beyond the people who are engaging in it this week. Open education is for life.

Happy New Year and thanks (again) for help with the survey

Happy New Year (this was supposed to be an end of year round up message but you know how these things go. ORIOLE plans to be a tad more lively in the next few months and I hope to catch up with people face-to-face at the OCWC/OER11 conference in Cambridge (UK) in March. I'll be demonstrating some of the outputs from ORIOLE there and have just been co-opted with Tim Seal (SCORE) to help plan a post-conference event at the OU on the 19th (i.e. the following day). So if you are planning to go to Cambridge and have the following day free put in a tentative visit to the OU in Milton Keynes (transport will be laid on). Further details will follow shortly.

So much happening in the world of Open Resources and I hope to get more information pushed out from the ORIOLE survey over the next few months. I'll be working on this with SCORE fellows Joanna Wild (Oxford University) and Ming Nie (University of Leicester). Now that we have a (mostly) full set of this we can also disperse the donations to the survey participants' three most nominated charities. These were

	Cancer Research UK Registered Charity No1089464 http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/
	Macmillan Cancer Support Registered Charity No261017 http://www.macmillan.org.uk/
	Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) Registered Charity No261017 http://www.msf.org.uk/

These each receive a £100 donation. Thanks for helping that to happen.

Does OER benefit affluent students more than it benefits poorer ones?

There is an interest post on the Harvard site with an eye-catching set of graphs which suggest that OER could be having a different effect to that which we expect. Note that this is a debate series so I am sure it is deliberately contentious!  [Read that post]

I was thwarted by the Harvard system which only allows short comments (3 * twitter post size) without warning you that you will have to chunk down your essay :-) So after posting two parts to the start of my comment the system there decided not to talk to me. So here is my response. Comments here - or there - would be welcome. This is very much about the influence of OER, so on topic for ORIOLE. (My full comment on these graphs and the Harvard abstract follow ...)

An interesting argument to open up here. But wondering how you expect (and why you expect) Scenario #2 to happen as you draw it when your example is ready-to-use OER as opposed to wikis (which require considerable on-going resource from educators if they are to be hosted locally). I accept that well-resourced learners are well resourced so could make more use of OER should they choose to do so, and the same for their teachers. However these students already have many competing demands for their attention in terms of learning options. The well-resourced teachers in scenario #2 would have to be willing to change their teaching (which is already at a high level in your example) to reuse someone else's resources. There is no evidence that reuse will happen at a high, transformational, level in this case. Resource reuse is most likely to happen where there is a gap in the provision, or the offered resource is significantly better than what it replaces. Forgetting OER for a moment, we know this about reusable learning objects, and the behaviour of well-resourced educators with relation to these. They repurposed the resources, or made their own versions, or (most often) preferred their own versions but took new ideas or assets from the RLOs. This was part of what they did in refreshing their teaching, so it was not a huge change, just a boost.

You are also ignoring the opportunity that parents and carers can now direct poorer students to OER. One of the reasons that affluent children do better in school is because of the support of learning at home. For poorer students, where parents may not be well-educated, the great thing about OER is that these are OPEN. Not just the schools can get access. Not only registered students. I wonder at this point how open the wikis you refer to were?

This is an important discussion, it addresses over-hype and perhaps unrealistic expectation of OER (although you are sticking with the developed world here and there is another story to tell globally). However I think that your graphs overstate the case and I am struggling with the comparison of what happens with intra-institutional wikis (if that was what you were looking at) being an indicator for what will happen with OER. I'd suggest a scenario #3 with both rising to some extent but not too much for those who already have good learning resources. After all, access to online all the time via a flashy iPad. smartphone, etc. will not only be used to access education. There is quite a competition for attention going on there from Facebook, YouTube (not the formal educational stuff), etc.

Thanks for raising this.

Sharing - a cartoon to stimulate discussion

We created some nifty resources for the ORIOLE retreat back in June and are in the process of creating others from it so keep an eye on the SHOP (all free and open).

This image (click to download/view a larger version) was drawn by Steve Davies and arose from ideas I had about problems people may have in bringing themselves to share resources which they have created. The focus here is on those resources which are not that 'mature', haven't been shown around much, are perhaps unfinished, or work-in-progress. If the user is hoping to build from ideas rather than use 'as is' then sharing work which is not-pristine-but-has-promise can be helpful.
What this cartoon tries to get across is that academics and developers are pretty prolific people. We might  feel protective about our work, but can't personally nurse along every good idea, or every promising start that we generate. If we put them aside in a filing drawer 'for later' when we have time to develop them, that may never happen.

So this cartoon can be used to trigger discussion about sharing 'babies' as OER as well as the fully maure work. Yes, it does sound scary, but perhaps worth considering? If you want to think scary then what happens to all those babies (ideas) left to languish in the filing cabinet ...

Chris

Assisting in the search for OER evidence

The need to locate and evaluate evidence around OER has been a consistent theme at this week's Open Ed 2011 conference in Utah. It was identified at the top of the top 3 noted by Josh Jarrett in his keynote this morning. Let me now plug the Evidence Hub which is in the early stages of playing its role, but is already gathering useful information on OER claims and identifying a wide range of evidence in support of potential solutions to the OER challenges.



Some useful links ...

• YouTube video of how it works (complete beginner's guide) - also above
• A step by step guide to getting in, adding your project, learning about the challenges, claims and most important, how to contribute evidence
• In the run up to Open Ed 2011 ten main challenges facing OER, identified from the information already identified 

New reports on reuse and UK HE (and OER)

Reuse has often been portrayed as a Holy Grail in terms of sustainable elearning. It is also something that academics already do, when we quote and attribute we are reusing and acknolwdeging reuse. So when we are talking about reuse and open resources we may include this regular reuse but we are also talking about reusing digital resources, reused as a result of online delivery to educator(s) and/or learner(s). What the open license aspect adds is still emerging and all this activity is part of what is still a new approach to teaching.

It is great news that there are reports emerging from the Impact of OER study funded by JISC and led by teams at University of Oxford. There is lots of food for thought and discussion in these so check out

White and Manson, The value of Reuse in Higher Education

Masterman and Wild, OER Impact Study: Research Report

Amber Thomas’s Blog posting on OER trends in UK HE, OER Turn

Survey - Last Call extended

I have not done all that I might to publicise the extension to the survey (there are reasons) but it WILL close at the end of August, so if you have not yet tried it, or told friends about it, please do that now.

Here is a link to a PDF showing the questions (think of all the lovely open data this will allow us to share and use and compare ...)

Here is a link to the charities we have nominated to benefit (three of these will get £100 each, nominated by those who complete the survey.

We already have 150 UK respondents so we would love more, but would really really love more from people who are outside the UK to broaden our view.

Please disseminate. Not a lot of time left now.

Chris

Oriole Really Re(Useful) Retreat

The ORIOLE RR Retreat took place from 12-14 June. It was a deliberately (perhaps too) unstructured time for people to bring their ideas to the surface and share, travelling along what I am starting to call the Promise/Practice continuum. Some very interesting work and a notable role play led by Helen Beetham. A sampling of the artefacts has been collected together on a posterous site http://oriolerr.posterous.com/ by Simon Thomson (Leeds Met), much of it captured by the resident artist Karen Cropper (OLNET is only her 'day job'). Here is a pic of where it happened.

Working with Helen and Karen on a Blurb book to capture some of the event, including some elements which will be reuable (of course) and the whole thing as an open resource. Naturally.

Go to ORIOLE retreat Posterous site



Survey link now live to end of July - your entry will count (if you missed it before)

In order to try and allow time to collect more international responses to the survey, the link is now back up and will remain live until 31 July.

So please continue to publicise and, if you are UK-based and missed this the first time around please have a go this time. Its the same survey so don't do it twice please. Once is enough. I really appreciate the time those who did it earlier took on this. Some interesting data is emerging. More on this soon. Meanwhile if your own experience is not part of that data please have a go now.

Thanks

Chris

UK phase of ORIOLE survey coming to an end ...

UK views (mainly) were collected between 5-26 May. The link is now removed. If you are curious about what questions got asked here is a PDF copy (http://bit.ly/irTMpZ). Think of how useful it would be to have answers to some of these ...
We'll have some preliminary info to share with you (UK only) at the end of June and a whole load more from July onwards. The data, where possible, will be released as open data to inform research in this area as widely as possible.
Thank you to the 162 who have answered and special thanks to these guys.  Survey is closed for the next week but if you are UK-based and missed it in May it will be back in June as the International Edition (and you can do that one).

Chris

Starting off the survey ...

The ORIOLE team, and some friends at Glasgow Caledonian and Oxford Universities (thanks Anoush, Colin, Liz and David) have been agonising and arguing about what questions we would like to know answers to. The questions that we would really like to ask n-zillion people, but don't have the resources for. The small gaps in research into reuse and sharing that we would like to fill. The result is a survey directed at people who use learning and teaching resources in practice. If you are one of these please read on ...

The survey is open from 5-26 May 2011 and should take less than 30 minutes of your time. Access via the START SURVEY button on right. We would really appreciate your input and have offered a 'reward' for completion of the survey. You will be able to nominate three charities from several options, or the same charity up to three times. The top three will each receive a £100 donation on behalf of the survey respondants. So you will be helping us and being charitable too.

Anything wrong about this survey is undoubtedly my fault. It has been inspired by some other memorable surveys in the history of reuse. Notably that by the CD-LOR (Community Dimensions of Learning Object Repositories) project. Data will be shared. For early sight of the results do the survey and indicate that you would like to know more.

JUST A LITTLE WARNING: If you were about to follow the START SURVEY link with trusty iPad or mobile device in hand note that the questions arranged as card sorts show as very large grids on some devices and in some browsers. Apologies and suggestion that you might care to use a more conventional desktop to have a more comfortable experiences.

Thanks

Chris

Launching ... Launching .... she's airborne!

This is very much the beta version of a website for the ORIOLE project. This is a project which, in its first stage, is led by Chris Pegler (Open University) as part of her National Teaching Fellowship project activity. But is a team effort - see people - and we hope will become over time more of a community affair.

During Phase 1 (to end of July 2011) there will be an online survey around reuse and open resources. Results will be shared, so please take part and check back here for further dissemination. There will also be activity at the up-coming Association of National Teaching Fellows symposium at University of Leicester (9-10 May) and a retreat at Woburn (12-13 June).

So, lots of activity in this phase and some interesting learning to share. Watch this space ...