Creativity tools for higher education

I was very encouraged by a couple of posts to the oer-discuss mailing list this week highlighting two Scottish institutions that are in the process of in developing guidelines and policies for the creation and use of open educational resources.

The Blog of Gilly Salmon

Scholarship and Literacies in a Digital Age - Special IssueAims and rationale

There is growing interest in the field on the impact of digital technologies on meaning-making practices and identity in education, which has been explored via the related concepts of ‘digital scholarship’ and ‘digital literacies’. A range of initiatives have focused on digital literacies (associated with student practices), such as the current JISC programme, the ESRC seminar series on literacy in the digital university, and international networks such as the UK-Canadian, “New Media, New Literacies and New Forms of Learning”. In contrast, the concepts of ‘digital scholarship’ or ‘open scholarship’ have tended to refer to the impact of digital technologies on academics’ practices and identities, as with the Open University digital scholarship research strand, or else refer to data management, as with the Royal Society’s Open Science report or Friedrich Kittler’s late provocations.

However, these efforts remain disparate, and unconnected. This is a missed opportunity: it is important and timely to consolidate, critically interrogate and extend our understandings of the relationships between digital technologies and practices. There is also an imperative to broaden the base for our understanding beyond Higher Education, to other sectors; and also to understand how these practices differ internationally.

Our proposal is for a special issue of Research in Learning Technology to bring these strands together in a critical and theorized way, in order to consolidate and advance research, and to identify implications for practice, organizational change and policy. We are confident that a good selection of quality research will be submitted. This will be an open call, but the proposal has already gained the support of members of the JISC Developing Digital Literacies Programme, who will have undertaken new empirical work of direct relevance to this topic. We will encourage contributions from outside the UK and from across all educational sectors.

Indicative list of topicsWhat theoretical frameworks can extend our critical understandings of digital scholarship and literacies?How should the concepts of digital scholarship and literacies be understood and applied, particularly in terms of diverse disciplinary, professional or personal settings?What is being done to understand and develop digital scholarship and literacies in under-studied sectors and cultural contexts?How can teachers, managers, support staff and institutions support the development of digital scholarship and literacies?

This page sets out the Library’s position and guidance on the use and publication of Open Educational Resources (OERs) within educational situations.