Tag Archives: OpenEdFeed

Looking Behind the Curtain

Posted on by

Before Christmas by lovely former colleague R. John Robertson invited me to answer some questions about digital literacy for a course on Digital Literacy and Life that he’s teaching with Cindy Strong at Seattle Pacific University.  I’m late with these responses as usual, but it was a really interesting and thought provoking exercise because I’ve never taken the time to sit down and really reflect on how I understand digital literacy and what it means to me.

What is digital literacy?

I’ve never attempted to define digital literacy before, but now I think about it, I realise that I tend to conflate information literacy and digital literacy, primarily because so much of the information we now create, consume and interact with is mediated by digital technologies.   Certainly, there is a digital skills aspect to digital literacy, having the requisite skills to be able to use the tools that enable us to create and access information, but developing information literacies is arguably more important as it enables us to ask critical questions of this information regarding authorship, authenticity, ownership and perspective.

What impact does digital literacy have on your personal, professional, and spiritual life?

Digital literacy has a huge impact on both my personal and professional life.  I work for the OER Service, within Information Services at the University of Edinburgh, and helping colleagues to develop critical digital literacy skills is a large part of my job;  whether its running workshops on developing blogging skills to build your professional online profile, contributing to training sessions on understanding copyright and open licensing, or helping to run Wikipedia and Wikidata editathons.  Digital literacy is at the heart of what I do.

It’s not just about teaching people how to use digital tools, it’s about empowering them with the knowledge and confidence to have some degree of control over their digital presence and interactions.  Having the ability to curate and control our personal digital identities and online personas is a key aspect of digital literacy for me. It’s not all one way though, I’m constantly developing my own understanding of digital literacy and learning new digital skills through my professional practice and interactions with my peers.

I don’t regard myself as a spiritual person, but on a personal level, I believe that one of the most important aspects of digital literacy is that it gives us the ability to understand and to question how information is created, by whom, and for what purpose.  Digital literacy allows us to look behind the curtain to see the man (and it is invariably a man) who is pulling the levers and pushing the buttons.  Digital literacy helps to reveal how orthodoxies and narratives are created, and enables us to understand whose voices are included and whose are excluded.  Digital literacy helps to make structural inequality visible and if we choose to, it give us the tools to challenge these inequalities.

Who are you? (context matters)

I’m Lorna M. Campbell and I’m an open education practitioner.  I work in Edinburgh, live in Glasgow and come from the Outer Hebrides.  I’m a trustee of the Association for Learning Technology, Wikimedia UK and the Society for Nautical Research.  I was an archaeologist in a previous life, and I’m sometimes a naval historian.  I’m interested in fan culture and issues relating to gender and sexuality, particularly from a queer and historical perspective.  And I’m the mother of an almost-teenage daughter who understands the importance of citations on Wikipedia, because digital literacy begins at home ♡

Open for all? Engaging with open education practice at the personal and institutional level

Posted on by

A couple of weeks ago I gave a webinar as part of Jane Secker’s new online course on Digital Literacies and Open Practice at City, University of London.  The lecture was called Open for all? Engaging with open education practice at the personal and institutional level and the recording is available here (Adobe Connect). The webinar provided an overview of open practice, reflected on my own experience of being an open practitioner, explored issues relating to equality, equity, privilege and inclusion, and included examples of how the University of Edinburgh supports open practice and the creation and use of OER.

In a stroke of good timing, my webinar took place a couple of days after a fantastic EDEN webinar by Catherine Cronin and Martin Weller called Open Education: What Now? which you can listen to here (Adobe Connect).  Many of the points Catherine and Martin raised really struck a chord with me, particularly this one, so I was great to have the opportunity to reflect on this in my own webinar.

“Where there is no policy or strategy around openness many individuals, students and staff feel that if they make a mistake they may be in peril, that the university may not have their back. So the absence of policy speaks very loudly to people within higher education institutions.”

Mini-series: Don’t panic! Content and copyright for lecture recording

Posted on by

CC0, @finnhackshaw, unsplash

This post previously appeared on the University of Edinburgh’s Teaching Matters blog.

Can I use copyright materials in my lectures? What about film clips? What if my lecture is recorded? How can I make sure I won’t get into trouble? Lorna Campbell and Charlie Farley, from the Educational Design and Engagement team in Learning, Teaching and Web Services, offer some answers to these frequently-posed questions…

Many of the questions and concerns that the OER Service receives from colleagues around the University relate to what kind of content can and can’t be used in lectures.  In order to address these concerns, the OER Service runs a wide range of digital skills training workshops and eventsaround open educational resources (OER) and the use of licensed content in learning, teaching and lecture recording.

The University purchases licenses through a number of agencies, to allow staff to use books, chapters, papers, films, and other resources in our closed teaching spaces. Closed teaching spaces are spaces that are only accessible to registered students and staff, e.g. lecture theatres, labs, tutorial rooms, and EASE authenticated online spaces such as Learn and Moodle. It’s okay to use these licensed resources in your recorded lectures as long as the recording is only shared with our registered students in authenticated spaces.

We also have access to a whole host of OER that we can use in a variety of exciting ways both inside our closed teaching spaces and in open online spaces.

OER are online resources used in the context of teaching and learning that have been released under a Creative Commons licence so they can be reused, remixed and re-purposed by others. The University has an OER Policy that encourages staff and students to use and create OER and you can find and access many of these resources through Open.Ed, our one stop shop for advice and guidance on OER and open licensed content.

The number one tip that we encourage everyone to develop as part of good teaching practice is to get into the habit of providing attribution for all the resources you use in your lectures, including images, diagrams, film clips, audio and text. To attribute a resource you should include title, creator, licence and, where possible, source URL.

If you’re showing a video or film during a recorded lecture, we recommend that you stop the recording at that point, show the film to your students, then resume the recording.  When you’re ready to share the recording, you can then provide a direct link to the film or video so your students can watch it in their own time.

If you’re recording a lecture that you would like to share outside of closed University teaching spaces, e.g. on Media Hopper Create, on a blog, or on the open web, you need to ensure that all the content has either been created by yourself, is outside of copyright protection (i.e. resources that are in the Public Domain by virtue of their copyright term expiring, or CC0 resources that have been placed in the public domain by creators who have chosen to relinquish their rights), or has been released under an open licence.

The University’s OER Service provides all kinds of advice and guidance and training on creating and using digital resources, and understanding copyright and open licensing, so don’t hesitate to get in touch with us though Open.Ed, come along and join some our free events, and sign up for the quarterly OER Service Newsletter.

Blogging to Build your Professional Profile

Posted on by

Last month the University of Edinburgh rolled out a new centrally supported Academic Blogging Service, which provides staff and students with a range of different blogs to support professional development and learning, teaching and research activities.  The service has already been hugely successful, with almost 200 new blogs created in the last four weeks.  My colleague Anne-Marie has written a lovely post about the service here: A month of Blogs.Ed

I’ve been blogging for more years than I care to count and my blog has been hugely important in supporting my career and my professional practice.  So much so, that I reflected on the significance of my blog in my CMALT portfolio, which is also hosted here, and I presented about Using WordPress to build an online academic identity at last year’s PressED Conference.  So I was really pleased to be asked to develop a new digital skills training workshop on Blogging to Build Your Professional Profile to support colleagues at the University.

Because we like to practice what we preach, I’ve created all the workshop resources on a WordPress blog running the SPLOT theme developed by Alan Levine.  The SPLOT was Anne-Marie’s idea.  I’ve been a fan of SPLOTs for a while but this is the first time I’ve used one and I think it’s the ideal format for presenting online resources like this.  The workshop covers using blogs to build your professional profile, writing for blogs, group and syndicated blogs, privacy, openness, copyright and licensing, and amplifying your blog with social media. It also includes practical guidance on setting up a blog on the new blogs.ed.ac.uk service, provides links to additional training courses running by the University, and examples of some fabulous professional blogs to provide inspiration.  There’s far too much material here to cover in a one hour workshop, but the beauty of the SPLOT format is that workshop participants can access all the course materials at a single URL, work through them at their leisure, and refer back to them as needs be.

And because we believe in spreading the love and supporting OER and open practice, all the workshop materials are CC BY licensed so you’re welcome to take them away and adapt and re-use them.  All the lovely header images are from a collection of  Architectural Drawings by William Henry Playfair, and they’re available under CC licence from the University of Edinburgh’s Image Collections.

If you’ve got any comments or feedback on these resources I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Blogging to Build your Professional Profile

thinking.is.ed.ac.uk/professional-blogging/

Ada Lovelace, Exmoor ponies and the trouble with sources

Posted on by

Madeleine Shepherd and Anne-Marie Scott, ALD18, CC BY, Lorna M. Campbell

I didn’t manage to post a blog post on Ada Lovelace Day this year because I spent most of my spare time in the run up to the event looking for sources for the twenty contemporary Women in STEM nominated for Wikipedia article creation as part of the University of Edinburgh’s Ada Lovelace Day Editathon. The event itself is always one of the highlights of the year and this year was no exception. We had a really inspiring series of talks in the morning from the University’s Women in STEM and Physics Societies and the student WellComm Kings initiative. Mathematician and maker Madeleine Shepherd of Knot Unknot also came along and showed us her amazing knitted portraits of Ada Lovelace and Mary Somerville, which she created on a hacked knitting machine. We had a range of activities including DIY Filmschool and cake decorating followed by Wikipedia and Wikidata editing in the afternoon.

Back to those sources though…

Finding good quality secondary sources for contemporary academics can be tricky and it’s doubly difficult for female academics whose work is less visible and less widely reported. Wikipedia relies on independent secondary sources; it’s not sufficient for an academic to have published extensively, to be regarded as notable, it’s necessary to show that they have had a significant impact in their field. This can be problematic for female academics, and particularly for women in STEM, who routinely face discrimination on account of their gender.

There was much outrage in the press recently when it was reported that Donna Strickland did not have a Wikipedia entry until she received the Nobel Prize for Physics, with some news reports throwing up their hands in horror at Wikipedia’s gender bias. This isn’t news to anyone who has engaged with or edited Wikipedia of course. We are all well aware of Wikipedia’s gender bias, there’s even a Wikipedia article about it, and we’re working hard to fix it through our Wikimedia chapters, editathons and projects such as Wiki Women in Red. Also as Alex Hinojo pointed out:

In an article titled Wikipedia is a mirror of the world’s gender biases, Wikimedia Foundation’s Executive Director Katherine Maher, noted that it’s somewhat disingenuous for the press to complain about Strickland’s lack of Wikipedia entry when the achievements of women scientists are routinely under reported. We need more reports and independent secondary sources so we can improve the coverage of women on the encyclopaedia.

Wikipedia is built on the shoulders of giants. We’re generalists who learn from the expertise of specialists, and summarize it for the world to share. If journalists, editors, researchers, curators, academics, grantmakers, and prize-awarding committees don’t apply their expertise to identifying, recognizing, and elevating more diverse talent, then our editors have no shoulders upon which to stand. It’s time for these other knowledge-generating institutions to join us in the pursuit of knowledge equity. Wikipedia alone can’t change how society values women, but together we can change how they are seen.

A case in point is Mary Etherington, one of the women nominated for our Ada Lovelace Day editahon. The person who nominated Mary wrote

Mary Etherington was integral to the protection of the Exmoor pony breed after the war. She saw the importance of protecting the breed which was nearly extinct after the ponies had been used as a meat source during rationing and as target practise for the armies on Exmoor.

Whilst she is well known within the Exmoor pony breed, I believe she may be lost to time due to her rural links and the general lack of representation for rural matters on Wikipedia as well as her being a woman.

I really struggled to find many good sources about Mary online, but one of our editathon participants, Vicki Madden, was captivated by her story and determined to create an article about her. After some creative research and round about thinking, Vicki and Anne-Marie were able to find a whole range of independent sources and Mary Etherington now has her own shiny new Wikipedia entry.

Meanwhile I wrote an article on Tara Spires-Jones Professor of Neurodegeneration and Deputy Director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. I don’t know Tara personally but in her nomination she was described as:

World-leading research into molecular mechanisms of dementia. Works tirelessly to promote public understanding of science through expert comment in press and public engagement activities. Lovely person and very supportive of other women.

I hope her new Wikipedia article will help to raise awareness of her work to the general public and go a little way to replaying the support she has provided to others.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2018 – Pipped at the post!

Posted on by

Wiki Loves Monuments, Wikimedia’s annual photography competition, came to a close at the end of September.  An astonishing 4,374 images of Scottish scheduled monuments and listed buildings were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons over the course of the month, over double last year’s total of 2,104 and almost a third of the 14,203 images uploaded in the UK.

Competition was fierce towards the end of the month, Ewan McAndrew, our indefatigable Wikimedian in Residence, pipped me at the post on the very last day of the competition with 442 uploads (13th overall) to my 383 (15th) and Anne-Marie’s 213 pictures of graveyards (21st).  In my defence, I was wrestling with an outrageously crap internet connection at home that almost had me weeping with frustration while I waited hours for images to upload. Still, over a thousand uploads is not a bad score for one division of Information Services!

It was great to see so many new people getting involved in the competition this year too through the efforts of Sara Thomas, Wikimedia UK’s Scotland Programme Coordinator and Delphine Dallison, Wikimedian in Residence at SLIC.

Wiki Loves Monuments is so much fun that I’m always a little sad when it’s over, and it’s almost impossible to break the habit of pulling out my phone to snap any likely looking listed building I pass.  I’m already storing up pictures for next year!

Kirkandrews Memorial Chapel, CC BY SA, Lorna M. Campbell

Wiki Loves Monuments 2018

Posted on by

Smailholm Tower, by Keith Proven, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Tomorrow marks the start of Wiki Loves Monuments, Wikimedia’s annual photography competition, which runs throughout the month of September. The rules are simple, all you need to do is register a Wikimedia Commons account, take an original picture of a scheduled monument or listed building, and upload it to Wikimedia Commons using this interactive map. In addition to the overall prizes for the best UK entries, this year there are new prizes, sponsored by Archaeology Scotland, for the best three images of Scottish monuments. There are also going to be prizes for the photographer who uploads the largest number of images of monuments that are not currently represented on Wikimedia Commons.  For further information you can contact Wikimedia UK’s Scotland Coordinator Sara Thomas.

The best thing about Wiki Loves Monuments, is that anyone can enter. You don’t need a fancy camera, you don’t need to be a history geek, and you don’t even need to go out of your way to photograph historic monuments, most of us pass dozens of listed buildings on our way to and from work every day. All you need to do is check the map for monuments near you, take a snap with your phone, upload it to Commons and voila!

I had great fun taking part in the competition last year and managed to upload 184 images, just a fraction of the amazing 1,351 uploaded by colleagues from the University of Edinburgh during the competition.  Most of the pictures I entered were old holiday snaps, and though I may not have won any prizes, it really is the taking part that counts.  It’s great to be able to make a contribution to the Commons. It’s also nice to see some of these open licensed pictures taking on a life of their own after the competition. My picture of Culzean Castle, which appears on the Wikipedia page about the film The Wicker Man, has now been viewed over 28,000 times.  And a picture I took of the Circular Records Hall at the National Archives of Scotland featured in an article in Atlas Obscura.

I’ll be raking through my old holiday snaps again this year, but I’ve also got a whole bunch of new pictures ready to upload that I took during my summer holidays in Galloway and the Outer Hebrides. Some of these pictures are places I have a real personal connection to; houses I passed every day as a child, my old school, the church that witnessed all my family’s births, deaths and marriages, the clock tower that’s all that remains of the building where my mother went to school in the 1940s, the castle where my granny worked as a cook. Others are monuments I stumbled on by accident, like the tiny Arts and Crafts church in Galloway, or snapped from the side of the road, like Cardoness Castle. I even have a picture of a 16th century cats paw print from Glen Luce Abbey chapter house!  I wonder where it will end up?

Cat's paw print from Glenluce Abbey Capter House

Pangur Ban? Cat’s paw print from Glenluce Abbey Chapter House. CC BY SA, Lorna M. Campbell

Univeristy of Edinburgh wins Wikimedia UK Partnership of the Year Award

Posted on by

Earlier in July I was delighted and a little stunned when the University of Edinburgh won Wikimedia UK’s Partnership of the Year award for the second time.  Delighted because so many people have worked so tirelessly and so enthusiastically to embed Wikipedia in teaching and learning across the University, led of course by our indefatigable Wikimedian in Residence, Ewan McAndrew. And stunned because I had no idea we had even been nominated and I had the great honour of being the person to receive the award at Wikimedia UKs AGM at the Natural History Museum in London.  Sara Thomas, Wikimedia UK’s Scotland Coordinator, has a hilarious picture of me looking very surprised indeed after picking up the award, and if it ever surfaces again I will kill her.  Here’s a much better picture of just a few of the people who have played a part in supporting the use of Wikipedia across the University.

Left to right: Stephanie (Charlie) Farley, Open Education Resources; Lorna Campbell, OER Service; Ewan McAndrew, Wikimedian in Residence; Anne-Marie Scott, Deputy Director of Learnng, Teaching & Web Services. CC BY, University of Edinburgh.

The University was acknowledged for leading the way in terms of Higher Education’s engagement with Wikimedia and for helping to the develop the Wikimedia community and its work in Scotland.

“Edinburgh University is becoming a strong advocate of a Wikimedian in Residence within a university, spreading the message at relevant sector conferences, working with the University of Glasgow, and connecting with the Open Education team at the Université Catholique de Louvain. The resident is facilitating dialogue between the National Library of Wales and Edinburgh University’s Digital Library with a view to increasing GLAM wiki work.”

Ewan’s masterful way with amusing gifs was also highlighted for recognition :}

You can read more about the University’s award winning entry here: Partnership of the Year 2018: The University of Edinburgh 

Open.Ed at RepoFringe18

Posted on by

Way back at the beginning of July my lovely OER Service colleague Charlie and I had a 10X10 presentation accepted for the the Repository Fringe conference. We agreed that I would write the talk and Charlie would go along and present on the day.  Alas disaster struck and poor Charlie came down with a nasty bug, so our fabulous Wikimedian in Residence Ewan McAndrew stepped in to save the day and present on our behalf.  Not All Heroes Wear Capes.  So here I am (very) belatedly posting the script and slides from that presentation.

The University of Edinburgh’s OER Service is based within information Services and provides staff and students with practical advice and guidance on creating, finding and using open educational resources.  Charlie Farley and Lorna Campbell run a wide range of workshops and initiatives within the University and beyond, and also maintain Open.Ed which provides a one stop shop to access open educational resources produced by staff and students across the university.  The University does not have a single OER Repository, instead we have multiple repositories across the institution for different kinds of content and we believe in sharing our open resources where ever they will be found most easily, e.g. Media Hopper Create, flickr, Vimeo, Sketchfab, TES, etc.

OER Mission, Vision and Policy

  • Provide the highest quality learning and teaching environment for the greater wellbeing of our students
  • Make a significant, sustainable and socially responsible contribution to Scotland, the UK and the world.
  • OER Vision draws on history of the Edinburgh Settlement, excellent education and research collections, traditions of the Enlightenment.
  • OER Policy encourages staff and students to use, create and publish OERs to enhance the quality of the student experience.

At Edinburgh we believe that open education is strongly in line with our institutional mission to provide the highest quality learning and teaching environment for the greater wellbeing of our students, and to make a significant, sustainable and socially responsible contribution to Scotland, the UK and the world, promoting health and economic and cultural wellbeing.

Our vision for OER builds on our excellent education and research collections, traditions of the Scottish Enlightenment and the university’s civic mission.   In addition to the OER Service, this vision is backed up by our OER Policy which encourages both staff and students to engage with the use and creation of OER and open knowledge, to enhance the quality of the student experience while at the same time making a significant contribution to the cultural and digital commons.

OER for Digital Skills

OER can help to develop digital skills for both staff and students. 23 Things for Digital Knowledge is an award winning, open online course, adapted from an open course developed by the University of Oxford.  23 Things is designed to encourage digital literacy by exposing learners to a wide range of digital tools for personal and professional development. Learners spend a little time each week, building up and expanding their digital skills and are encouraged to share their experiences with others.  All course content and materials are licensed under a CC BY licence and the University actively encourages others to take and adapt the course. The course has already been used by many individuals and organisations outwith Edinburgh and it has recently been adapted for use by the Scottish Social Services Council.

OER for Equality and Diversity

OER can make a significant contribution to diversifying the curriculum.  A number of studies, including the National LGBT Survey released by the Government today, have shown that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual health is not well-covered in Medical curricula, however knowledge of LGBT health and of the sensitivities needed to treat LGBT patients are valuable skills for qualifying doctors.

Using materials from the commons, a project at the University of Edinburgh, LGBT+ Healthcare 101, sought to address the lack of teaching on LGBT health within the curriculum through OER.  The project remixed and repurposed resources originally created by Case Western Reserve University, and then contributed these resources back to the commons as CC BY licensed OER.  New open resources including digital stories recorded from patient interviews, and resources for Secondary School children of all ages, were also created and released as CC BY OER.

OER for Knowledge Exchange

Open access makes research outputs freely accessible to all. It allows research to be disseminated quickly and widely, the research process to operate more efficiently, and has the potential to increase use and understanding of research by the wider public.  However it is not always easy for those outwith academia to know how to access these outputs, even though they are freely and openly available.   In order to address this issue, we’ve created a series of open educational resources in the form of video interviews and case studies called Innovating with Open Knowledge.  These resources are aimed at creative individuals, private researchers, and entrepreneurs to provide guidance on how to find and access the open outputs of Higher Education.  The resources focus on developing digital and data literacy skills and feature case study interviews with creative individuals and entrepreneurs engaging with the University of Edinburgh’s world class research outputs.

OER and Co-creation 

We believe strongly in engaging both staff and students in the co-creation of open education and one hugely successful example of this is the School of Geosciences Outreach and Engagement course.  Over two semesters, students develop an outreach project that communicates an element of GeoSciences outside the university community.  Students work with schools, museums, and community groups to create a wide range of resources for science engagement. Students gain experience of science outreach, public engagement, and knowledge transfer while working in new environments and developing transferable skills to enhance employability.  A key element of the course is to develop reusable resources which are then repurposed by our Open Content Curation Interns to create OER that are then shared online through Open.Ed and TES where they could be found and reused by other teachers and learners.

e.g. The Sea-Level Story, http://open.ed.ac.uk/the-sea-level-story-geoscience/

Open Content Curation Student Interns 

Open Content Curation student interns play an important role in OER creation at the University.  These fully-paid interns help to repurpose and share resources created by staff and other students while at the same time developing their own digital literacy skills. We’re now in the third year of this internship and the feedback we’ve received from the students has been nothing short of inspiring. This is Tomas Sanders who worked as our Open Content Curation Intern last year, and who then went on to run a successful Wikipedia editathon for Black History Month with the student History Society.

 

OER for Playful Learning

The OER Service also runs a wide range of events that develop playful and creative strategies for finding and reusing open licensed content.  Board Game Jam is a popular workshop that leads groups through creating, licensing, and sharing an OER board game using digitised images from the University collections.  It’s a fun and creative way to teach copyright and open licensing by stealth.   GifItUp is another workshop that provides an introduction to creating GIFs using free and open tools and openly licensed and public domain images.  It teaches colleagues how to find and use open licensed public heritage content and encourages discussion of the ethical responsibilities we as creators have towards those materials.

OER for Creativity

Eric Lucey was a pioneering biologist and film maker at the University of Edinburgh whose film collection from the 1950s and 60s has now been made available under open license by University’s Centre for Research Collections. With help and guidance from the OER Service on open licensing and content reuse, students from Edinburgh College of Art and the Edinburgh Film Society have created film poems from the Lucey collection for the Magma Poetry journal.  And we’ve also released open film snippets from our MOOC content that can be reused in a wide range of creative contexts.

These are just a few examples of how the OER Services encourages staff and students at the University of Edinburgh to engage with and contribute to a wide range of open content collections, while enhancing their own digital skills and contributing resources back to the digital commons.

Circular Records Hall on Atlas Obscura

Posted on by

I was quietly chuffed a couple of weeks ago when one of my photographs was featured in Atlas Obscura, and even more so, because the picture in question was one that I uploaded to Wikimedia Commons as part of the Wiki Loves Monuments competition last year.  See?  Good things happen when you contribute to the Commons.  You can read the Atlas Obscura article here: General Register Building of the National Archives of Scotland, and the original image is available on Wikimedia Commons here: General Register Office, Circular Record Hall.

I actually snapped this picture during a consultation meeting on the Scottish Government’s Digital Educations strategy a few years ago and as far as I ca recall it was taken on an ancient beaten up old iPhone.