Description
This 90 minute workshop will build upon previous conference-based workshops investigating flows of knowledge exchange between multiple institutional actors in particular sectors of the economy (see Oreszczyn and Lane 2012a and 2012b). In this case the workshop will be a scoping study on knowledge flows to support institutional capacities and capabilities in open education practices in the UK which will be followed by a similar workshop looking at knowledge flows globally at the Open Education Consortium Global Conference later in April 2015 (http://conference.oeconsortium.org/2015/).
Open educational resources (OER) and the related open educational practices (OEP) that use them are premised on a sharing and inclusive culture whereby both the resources and practices aim to create bridges between the primary (e.g. educational institutions, teachers) and secondary (e.g. learners, non-governmental organisations, civil society organisations, community groups) users as active participants. OER and OEP have been likened to open innovations (see Lane, 2013) with a social rather than commercial purpose and which involve a greater number of institutional and governance actors. Many primary users involved in OEP aspire to empower secondary users by enabling self-directed capacity and capability building. In particular OEP and related digital practices are held up as ‘disruptive innovations’ more than as influences on existing divides in access to education and to digital technologies (Lane, 2009).
This conference brings together a blend of academics, policy makers and practitioners and thus provides an excellent opportunity to involve some of the principle movers and shakers in this relatively new ‘open education’ movement and to use them to help map out who are the knowledge creators, the knowledge brokers and the knowledge users, and how that knowledge flows between them and where the policy and practice barriers may be most acute. This will be achieved through small groups using a visual mapping technique accompanied by audio-recording and/or note-taking of what participants say when discussing the maps. A report on the workshop will be made available on the Conference website after the event, as well as feeding into the subsequent workshop at the OEC Global conference.
References
Lane. A. B. (2009) The impact of openness on bridging educational digital divides, The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(5): 12 pp, ISSN 1492-3831
Lane, A. (2013) Social and economic impacts of open education, in Eds. Squires, L and Meiszner, A, Openness and Education, Advances in Digital Education and Lifelong Learning, Volume 1, 137-172, Emerald Publishing
Oreszczyn, S. and Lane, A.B. (2012a) The role of contexts in knowledge brokering systems, Report on a workshop held at Bridging the Gap between Research Policy and Practice: The importance of intermediaries (knowledge brokers) in producing research impact, Wednesday 7th December 2011 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), London, 4pp, available at http://www.genomicsnetwork.ac.uk/media/report_oreszczynandlane.pdf
Oreszczyn, S. and Lane, A.(2012b) Mapping knowledge exchange in the UK Hedgerow management system: A report on a workshop held at the first International Hedgelink Conference, Staffordshire University, Stoke on Trent, UK. 3-5 September, 2012, 14pp, available at http://oro.open.ac.uk/35938/