Notes from phone meeting with Phil, 23 March 2011

We spent most of the meeting discussing Phil and Craig’s plans to create an open resource on “Creativity for Edupunks” (as mentioned on Phil’s page in the write-up of the cascade framework task)

Institutional context

At the moment, Phil is seeking approval from senior management to have the course accredited as part of staff research activity (at Phil’s institution, staff get 33 hours remission form teaching for engaging in scholarly activity). That approval might be helpful in terms of getting support from other staff members (this might also provide useful opportunities for peer review etc.) but Phil and Craig will go ahead with the course regardless of management approval as this is something they feel very passionate about; this is also a way of cascading what they are learning in the context of the project both to colleagues within their institution and beyond.

Phil and Craig view the resource as pilot one and within the lifetime of the project aim to create a module based around eleven topics related to open education (eleven three-hour sessions which will add up to 33 hours, the equivalent of release from teaching). The target audience for that pilot version would be HE in FE. If they are successful with the pilot version of the resource and manage to get the course accredited for staff, they would repurpose the course so that it can be accredited for students as well (this is a long-term plan, connected with the plans of the institution to develop a foundation degree – the course would then be optional for students at institutions that have links with Blackburn such as Glamorgan, Preston etc.)

Developing “Creativity for Edupunks”

We started discussing ways of translating Phil and Craig’s ideas – as they both feel they are very much in a brainstorming stage - into an actual resource. Over the next couple of weeks, Phil and Craig will put together a list of resources they like and compile a “wishlist” regarding possible formats, design etc. for the resource; Anna will also signpost them to already existing resources and in particular “OERs about OERs”. This will help to save time and the necessity to “reinvent the wheel”; furthermore, we have adopted similar approach with the reflexive tasks and wherever possible have attempted to use already existing OERs rather than create them from scratch

Phil is interested in looking into using Xerte but would also like to be able to create a resource where a user can easily navigate between different “chunks” that make up the resource. Phil mentioned that he liked the navigation on OpenLearn resources but at the same time, Phil feels that the OU resources are too regimented and text-based (which is because they replicate the structure of OU textbooks) and since this is a course on creativity, he is keen to embrace a format that reflects a creative/anarchist approach in the spirit of edupunk.

Capturing the process of developing the resource

We talked about ways of capturing the process of developing the resource – very much along the lines of our efforts aimed at capturing the process of developing a rationale for the cascade framework – Phil and Craig were initially thinking of blogging about their progress but that might be too time-consuming. Anna suggested instead exploring tools such as voicethread or audioboo which provide an opportunity to provide audio/video commentary especially as Phil really enjoyed the voicethread Richard put on the wiki. 

Further steps

Anna has arranged to talk to Phil again on the 30^th March to talk more about capturing progress on the resource and breaking down the process into smaller and more manageable chunks, including topics for the eleven sessions, milestones, technical issues etc.