Gina Bennett

hi Mary (& others)

I've been reading through the documents (thanks for these Mary!) & I do have a few questions...

First, I have a few questions related to the "Find Open Textbooks" front-end for the database of textbooks we are accumulating in this project. What I wanted to do was to browse the 12 reviewed texts mentioned in the Narrative document. So I went to this website & saw that there are 28 available results but I wasn't able to find a way to display all 28 results: the most I can display at any one time is 10. Am I doing something wrong? Also ... is there some way to tell ahead of time whether or not a listed text has a review available for it? 

Also, I'm surprised that there has been so little interest in the adaptation phase of the project. Does anyone have any ideas as to WHY the uptake has been so poor? Do we have any feedback from the faculty who reviewed the original batch of texts: what was the process like for them?

Moving forward...

Gina

hi Leva,

What time does the breakfast start?

Gina

Hi Paul, it's great to see your expertise so openly exposed here :) :) :)

I have a question... more of a philosophical one I think. I understand the differences in CC licences & I certainly understand the value of having a "wide" open licence: a CC-BY gives incredible freedom to potential users. But I worry a bit that by honouring this ideal licence so much, we might de-value other good openness intentions. For example, at College of the Rockies this semester we have an instructor who took the bold move of adopting a free textbook for his students. (The course is Introductory Astronomy & the book is Astronomy Notes, by Nick Strobel & you can see it here: http://www.astronomynotes.com/) As you can see, this is NOT an open as in CC-BY sort of book. But to be honest, as far as the students are concerned it is "open" because it is openly available. The instructor is very happy with the quality too.

I'm just thinking we shouldn't be too hard on those who are generous enough to provide any level of openness to their creative works. Sure, it would be great if this particular author would re-licence his work for re-use etc. but if there's one thing we've all seen from this forum (& other places) openness is a journey & most people don't start at the ideal state.

Thoughts??? 

Thanks

Gina

hi Colleagues,

I'm delighted to join this forum, & the interest I see in Open Textbooks is yet another sign that Openness is becoming mainstream in academia. I've been interested in the Open movement for some time now & am currently serving on BCcampus's Open Textbook subcommittee.

In my day-job I support curriculum, innovation & distance learning for College of the Rockies, a small, rural community college in Cranbrook BC. Encouraging faculty to consider & adopt open textbooks has been a challenge & I'm really interested to see how the adoption process can be encouraged through smaller steps.

Looking forward to learning with/from you all!

Gina

hi Peter, you said:

>>why we would consider using badges within the traditional learning experience... the journey toward accreditation is well known, proven and culturally entrenched. Why introduce a new model?

And yes, I understand that this forum is about 'digital badges' & not supposed to be targetted towards uses in higher/tertiary education. But I would like to pick just a bit at your comment about accreditation being well known, proven, & culturally entrenced. Yes, you are right: the current HE system of accreditation *is* well known & god knows it's culturally entrenced. But is it the best way; should it be the only way of credentialling the learning that happens in HE?

The culturally entrenced way of credentialling HE learning is not necessarily fair nor representative of what people actually learn. It is not all that granular, for one thing, & it's often not very authentic. I think there's lots of room for a parallel system that takes the assessment of learning out of the extreme monopoly of the current system.

And yeah, I don't doubt that a far greater percentage of humanity takes part in informal or nonformal education. I'm guessing that in at least some cases, they do it this way because they are not looking for any tangible recognition (not even badges) beyond the satisfaction in learning something new.  

I would love to see something like a digital badge system that recognized the achievement of learning outcomes regardless of where they were learned, something that might gradually achieve some legitimacy & currency within the huge higher ed machinery & perhaps make the promise of 'recognition for prior learning' a little less hollow.

But probably this is a discussion for a later SCoPE!

Gina