Blogging for Bioscience

This week the OER representatives and project managers met at the Academy to discuss how we can optimise our activities and work together. Each Subject Centre now expands on the detail of our Centre projects to ensure we get best value from our consortia, and manage it effectively. We had very interesting presentations to help us navigate the labarynthine nature of Full Economic Costings and JISC projects, and how to draw up consortium agreements which work for both sides of the relationship without imposing too much of an administrative burden. You can imagine how complex this could get with 12 Subject Centres and probably 10 consortium partners each. This also has to be done while the consortium projects begin to roll - most project partners are approaching the end of the second semester and now is one of the best times to carry out the enhancements for OER release. No-one likes the timing of April to April but as a pilot project we just have to grin and bear it.

I have been trawling the OER universise to discover the current state-of-play and I have to conclude it is very impressive. When the MIT first launched OpenCourseware I was a bit disappointed with some of the materials in that they were not as sophisticated as expected. However, it was the approach itself that made the shift in how collaboration could be of benefit to all, and gave others confidence in adopting the philosophy. The Open University (where I did my first degree) now look particularly impressive as they have also built an environment (called Labspace) where the usage of materials can be linked with others’ activities. I have recently re-joined to explore the environment and would like to hear what my colleagues think.

How educators think about OER is difficult to surface. Academic blogging is painfully slow to take off but we really need this to happen to get a fair measure of the issues. Those who blog are likely to be more technologically literate and therefore receptive. However, those who don’t are likely to have a lifetime of teaching experience untapped. This jiscinvolve.org facility is so easy there really is no technical hurdle to blogging - perhaps it just needs better incentive.

Finally, the Academy’s Gateway project has been establishing a Sharepoint for evaluating an intranet type collaboration system. I am really pleased that all the Centres present at our Academy OER meeting could see the benefits of adopting it for OER teamworking and gave support for its implementation for this pilot. I am sure its benefits will be significant with such a diverse network of partners.