This reflexive task is designed to give the cascade project partners a chance to discuss issues related to project priority areas (i.e. capturing/developing the cascade framework, student engagement and OER release - please note that clicking on those links will take you outside of the wiki to our project blog!) within the framework of peer review.

Task overview

We have put together a number of reflexive prompts (see below) which you can use as headings to help structure your discussions, however feel free to incorporate additional themes and issues that you find relevant in your own context. You might also find it useful to have a look at the peer review development activity which took place in the context of the pilot project. The format in which you write up your reflexive account is pretty much up to you and could include text documents, annotated diagrams, audio recordings (provided there is a transcript attached) etc.

The topics we would like you to consider are as follows:

Cascade framework

How are you addressing the cascade framework in the context of your involvement in the project? Is this a generic model for “how to” cascade OER practices from one context to another? Or is it a model for “how to do” OER in the C-SAP/social sciences ethos? Are we cascading with the intention of creating OER consumers, producers or both?  Who are we cascading to? How does the institutional context impact on the opportunities or barriers to sharing and how relevant is that context to our cascade framework?

On a related note, how are you capturing development of the cascade framework? As part of our efforts aimed at capturing the process of developing a rationale for the cascade framework we have explored tools such as voicethread, mindmeister or prezi. Of course, numerous other tools exist – which ones have you found to be most useful when it comes to representing/visualising the cascade framework? Which tools would you recommend to anyone who might want to use the cascade framework developed in the context of this project in the future? In particular, if you had a chance to use the toolkit developed in the context of the pilot project, in what way could that be helpful to current and future cascaders and cascadees?

The social sciences context

Overall, through our involvement in the OER programme (pilot/second phase) we have embedded our bids and project plans within a critical social science perspective on the processes of sharing digital educational resources. On a related note, the cascade project seeks to cascade support for embedding Open Educational Resources within the social sciences curriculum. At the same time, in what way does this disciplinary context impact on your own involvement in the project? In what way can we/are we capturing the social sciences perspective within the cascade framework?

Some themes and issues we have identified previously (by no means an extensive list) include the process of social sciences knowledge production, the space for OERs within the social sciences curriculum; power relationships within OER context - between HE and HE in FE institutions; between producers and users of content, students and tutors etc.

Student engagement

In the project bid, we have stated that “students should become active co-creators of learning”; we have also indicated student engagement as one of our priority areas. In ourdraft mindmap of the cascade framework, we have indicated a number of approaches to using OERs with students: “hand-picked”, “letting students loose” and “students as producers”. Each of these implies rather different priorities for content production and release, as well as for reuse of content. Which approach have you adopted when introducing OER resources and/or open education-related concepts to your students? Have you identified any particular resources, strategies etc. that others might find useful? Finally, what conditions need to be met to enable students to understand the purpose and their relationship with OER s and how might we deal with any issues they might have about loss of contact with teachers?

OER release

For this part of the peer review task, please select one of the resources you are currently developing. To facilitate discussion about re-purposing, please upload your resource (it really doesn’t matter if the resource is in a very raw state at the moment) to the wiki and share the link with your peer review partner.

What technical challenges/issues/aspects have you identified in terms of developing your resource? How have you/are you planning to address issues around accessibility, copyright, depositing etc.? We recognise that for most of you have decided to release resources at the granular level of a module -  what issues do you see arising from this choice?

What major issues with regard to re-usability can you identify? For instance, in the context of the pilot project, 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. How do you envisage that your material will be re-used and do you have aspecific audience in mind – e.g. colleagues within/outside your own institution? Your students? Independent learners? How would these different end users change your thinking about the material and the ways in which it could be re-used?