Scheduled Seminar Discussions

This is my passion and I tend to get almost evangelical about it. (not saying that is a good thing)

I have so many stories, as do others I am sure.  One of my favourites is old(er) bloke who ran a hugely successful tyre shop, but ‘didn’t do much good at that book learning stuff’, truly believed he wouldn’t have much evidence, then proceeded to overwhelm and delight me with his knowledge skills and overall competence in management. 

When finally achieving a Certificate IV in Business, he got almost teary, was extraordinarily proud and later even enrolled in ‘formal education’ to pursue other avenues based on the fact that recognition gave him the confidence to do so.  The process of recognition literally changed his life and the way he viewed himself.

But I agree with Rory McGreal and Wayne Mackintosh, especially the comment “OERu is a big tent with room for different approaches” and having a ‘neutral position’ postion :)

I also should say I was the first in my family to be lucky enough to 'go to uni' thanks to the policies of the government at that time - & will remain forever grateful for that experience and opportunity.  It changed my life. 

So I really do value and support learning in all its forms and the wide and varied ways of assessing learning - if indeed, any (formal anyway) process of 'assessment' is part of the process for a person or  situation ...

I am really loving this whole seminar overall. thanks to all for such interesting posts ....

My pleasure Joyce :)  I think it is interesting that these definitions are actually embedded within the legal framework RTOs must operate under. 

I like that and I think it gives credibility to ‘informal’ learning in particular.  One thing I am always mindful of tho is that in reality these can become entwined. 

For example: Mary becomes the President of her local school council and has to do a ‘marketing plan’.  She ‘runs around the internet’ learning how to write one. (or maybe she will come to the OERu).  She also sees a seminar on marketing run by her local council and she attends.

She develops it and presents it to her committee. They work on it, implement it and enrolments go up the following year.  She does such a good job she wants to help other schools and thinks ‘It might be good if I could show I know this stuff’. 

She takes ‘the evidence’ of the above (plus other stuff) and goes to ‘somewhere’ and says .  “Look I KNOW this and can DO this”  

She is assessed and receives ‘a piece of paper’ certifying that she indeed does how to develop, implement, review and evaluate a marketing plan.  This might just be a unit or maybe a couple of units and maybe a few years later she builds on that towards further ‘credentials’ maybe even enrolling in a ‘traditional’ formal learning course (or maybe not)

The best thing about the story above is both non-formal (seminar) and informal (real ‘life’ experience) can be ‘recognised’ (if she wants to) and then built upon, again if she wants to.

This to me is such an organic and real world learning experience. I still find some of my colleagues who find it hard to believe that unless Mary was taught (by them) HOW to write a Marketing Plan … then, well, she wouldn’t really know how to do it ‘properly’ …..  would she? :)

Hi Wayne,

glad I made you laugh - it is always a pleasure and a relief.

You said:

On a more serious note -- more justification for our OERu network to be thinking about a transnational qualifications framework

And if OERu can achieve that alongside its other developments we will have made a great breakthrough.

Cheers,

Haydn

Hi Haydn.

You made my day!  Had a good chuckle. In jest, given my Scottish blood from a few generations ago -- I was hoping that this finer detail would be overlooked. Trust our Welsh freinds to see the error in my ways ;-). 

Well I'll  bow to the superiority of Wales -- we don't have any OERu partners from Scotland yet :-(. 

On a more serious note -- more justification for our OERu network to be thinking about a transnational qualifications framework.

Hi Hayden,

I certainly understand, and I myself have worked in that environment most of my life. I guess I just hope that as we continue to plan the future of the OERu, we remain open to, and maybe continue to press the boundaries of, traditional ways of assessing and recognizing learning toward credible credentials. And I think in the OERu are doing that already. I see this as part of the potential for institutional tranformation through the engagement of partners and others with open initiatives such as the OERu.

@Haydn Blackey  PLEASE DO make it!  re - "perhaps I should have created it as an OER from the start so others would still be learning without me having to repeat myself :-)"  

And I am not sure about 'other places' but in Australia there are some auditors - ie the people who say - 'yes good job' or 'No you are out' (and versions along the scale :)) - who could may be also benfit from such a course ....

If i had a dollar (of any currency) for every time i heard 'an auditor'  say ...   "ummm   that 'rpl thing' " (while looking like they are suckiing lemons ...)   well   ... you know the rest :)

Having said that - I do KNOW some 'institutions' -  (said in a way that I LOOK like i am sucking lemons!) *think* it is a short cut to a quick, dirty, nasty buck ($ - in any currency).  And THAT helps no one ...

Hi Kathleen,

I prefer the concept of "Active observer" -- far better description of the "lurkers" who are watching OERu developments and have been participating in our OERu mOOC prototypes.

Great to have one of our "Active observers" from the very first meeting still with us. A great example of the value of open philanthropy, open planning etc. As Paul Stacey mentioned - "Distinctively open". I think we should use that strap line in the OERu launch website. I'll see what we can do to incorporate this in the launch website.

Exciting times!

Hi Irwin,

Every year for the last 11 years I've run two or three sessions a year for academic colleagues who are being challenged to assess and credit experiential learning, first in my role as Deputy Director of our Business School and now as Head of our Learning and Teaching unit.

I'd hoped it would have become so much a part of the culture by now that we would be sharing practice with each other. But every time it seems to come new to staff. Maybe this reflects the high turnover of academic staff and the lack of this approach across other Higher Education Institutions, but I'm almost bored of hearing myself explaining it now, perhaps I should have created it as an OER from the start so others would still be learning without me having to repeat myself :-)

But OERu and the RPL project gives me a good focus institutionally to reaffirm the agenda.

Cheers,

Haydn

Hi Hadyn,

As far as my knowledge goes the two concepts are the same depending in which part of the world you're working. The philosophical debates are usually associated with institutions who do "so-called" RPL trying to map outcomes of individual courses to experience and calling this RPL. The PLAR/RPL purists don't like that stuff being called PLAR because its basically course assessment ;-).  Speaking personally, its not an issue for me -- the more ways learners can earn academic credit the better in my view. 

The beauty of PLAR/RPL is that is provides the flexibility for recognising both experiential learning and certified / assessed learning as a coherent system which leads to formal academic credit. We're very fortunate to have some of the world leaders in PLAR/RPL within our OERu network including the pioneer of individualised degrees SUNY ESC and institutions like Athabasca University, Thompson Rivers University and Otago Polytechnic and USW who all have progressive PLAR/RPL operations. We can definitely share notes and experiences to help us in using PLAR/RPL policy protocols for recognising OERu credits towards credentials.  For partners who don't have existing PLAR/RPL systems in place we can help them get started. For example, Otago Polytechnic's PLAR policy is available under a CC-BY license and can be adapted to suite local needs. 

Joyce,

The Scenario Planning for Educators (SP4Ed) course has helped us to refine a workable template for micro Open online courses. We also have the benefit of data and evaluations from the learners. With reference to your earlier post using the SP4Ed course as a practical example, we have valuable data to confirm the design metrics of the course.

From the open report:

The SP4Ed mOOC was designed for a total of 50 notional learning hours including the preparation time for the summative assessment assignment for offerings where the mOOC is embedded in a formal university course. The course was designed for 25 hours of teaching-learning interactions plus 25 hours for the final assignment preparation.

The SP4Ed 13.09 participants were asked to report the time they spent each day working through the course materials and activities. The weighted average was 2.3 hours for each of the 10 teaching days for the course, thus totalling an estimate average of 23 hours. The workload of the course falls within the specified design parameters.

Drawing on the data from our learners, the interaction-learning hours was in the ball park (aka 25 hours). Desiging a summative assessment assignment of +15 hours would bring us up to a total of 40 notional learning hours. The equivalent of 1 credit within a 3 credit course.

Joyce wrote:

in general US colleges and universities define a 3 credit course as 40 contact (i.e. seat time) hours with an additional hour or two of work for every "classroom" hour...reason I am mentioning this is that we could somehow use "hour estimates" to define the "worth" of various experiences.

Let's take the example of 40 contact hours plus 80 hours (say two hours for every classroom hour) that would total 120 hours for a 3 credit course. This is pretty consistent with similar calculations we have done at our Canadian partners.   So we could say, for example that 3 mOOCs could equate to 3 credits. So the math works ;-).

The closer we move to competency models, the mechanics of learning hours will become less important from an administration point of view. Eg in the US, programmes are funded / measured by "credit hours" and I know this is a topical subject in the US.

Competency based models versus credit learning hours is not an an "either or argument"  in my view -- just different ways of looking at the problem.

The mOOC model generates the flexibility the OERu will need to manage international articulation without compromising pedagogical value of the design because because the micro course does not go below the "minimum threshold" for meaningful assessement and the assessment itself provides wiggle room to get the numbers to stack up for articulation / adminstration purposes.

The value of prototyping mOOCs is that we've been able to tweak and refine as our experience has grown since the first open course we offered in the WikiEducator community in January 2007. 

The SP4Ed template is also pedagogically neutral - it doesnt attempt to dicate any pedagogical approach. Designers can use whatever flavour they want, behaviourism, constructivism, conectivism, free range learner - -whatever suits the purpose but the mOOC template can slot into existing credentialing models.

For those partners who want full courses -- that's fine because 3 mOOCs equals one North American course ;-)