Recommended external events

Wednesday 23rd March from 10:15am to 3:45pm, at the Open University headquarters in Milton Keynes.

This “Impact Conference” focuses on the impact of the use of Open Educational Resources on Teaching and Learning. There will be presentations by ‘leading experts’ and a series of workshops in the afternoon.

Thursday 24 February 2011
Dr Sian Bayne, University of Edinburgh

The session will consider how we go about encouraging students to think about constructing academic knowledge for the digital age via the formal assessment frameworks we use. Even in highly technologised learning and teaching contexts, we still tend, for the most part, to rely on relatively conventional written assignments as our main assessment method. But what happens if we ask students rather to submit assignments which are ‘born digital’? This session will discuss what happens in a formal teaching context when students submit hypertexts, lifestreams, weblogs, group wikis, videos and virtual world exhibitions as their formal assignments. Looking at specific examples of assignments ‘born digital’, it will also question some of the assumptions and orthodoxies underpinning our institutional assessment practices: that students’ writing is created by an individual, that it is stable and fixed, and it has no continuation beyond the point of assessment.

Dr Stuart Lee, University of Oxford 
Thursday 10 February 2011
Oxford Learning Institute
The application of IT to research and teaching over the past twenty years in the field of humanities has changed dramatically. In 1991 there was no mention of the World-Wide Web and discussions were still being had in the University as to whether undergraduates should be allowed access to email, and what would be the wordprocessor of choice to support. Using experience both as a teacher (English Literature) and Researcher this talk will cover new innovations and possibilities as presented by podcasting and iTunesU, WebLearn, Mobile Computing; and also look at a couple of research projects that have been undertaken to show how IT can assist in the all important areas of public and business engagement.

Monday 7 February 2011 16:00 – 17:00 
 Professor Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, OII
What are the emerging threats to the security of networks and personal computers and how can they be addressed through social as well as technical initiatives? What role should law enforcement, government and business play in improving cybersecurity?

 The ALT-C 2011 themes will be:

1. Research and rigour – creating, marshalling and making effective use of evidence
2. Making things happen – systematic design, planning, and implementation
3. Broad tents and strange bedfellows – collaborating, scavenging and sharing to increase value
4. At the sharp end – enabling organisations and their managers to solve business, pedagogic and technical challenges
5. Teachers of the future – understanding and influencing the future role and practices of teachers
6. Preparing for a thaw – looking ahead to a time beyond the disruptive discontinuities of the next few years

ALT-C 2011 will provide a valuable and practical forum for practitioners, researchers, managers and policy-makers from education and industry to explore, reflect, influence and learn.

A free two-day developer event related to Open Educational Resources to be held in Manchester on 31 Mar – 1 Apr. The OER Hackdays will bring together software developers, project managers, learning technologists and users for two days of hacking content, systems and services for Open Educational Resources. This is an opportunity for developers and users to get together and explore how OER content, systems and services currently stand and how they may be improved. The event is free (including accommodation for the 31st) and is jointly organised by UKOLN and CETIS as part of UKOLN’s DevCSI (developer community support initiative) and CETIS OER Technical Interest Group.

Plagiarismadvice.org are pleased to announce free online training sessions starting from September. Sessions will take place on Wednesday afternoons at 1500 BST, starting on 15 September.

Each session will be delivered by WebEx and will last around 30-40 minutes.  Sessions are aimed at those with teaching/lecturing and administrative responsibilities.

The sessions are intended to provide a basic overview of issues relating to plagiarism and will address the following topics:

• Getting the message across to your students about plagiarism.
• Identifying and tackling plagiarism.
• How and why students plagiarise.
• Designing plagiarism out of coursework.
• Best practices for dealing with academic misconduct.
• Institutional policies and procedures.

Click here to sign up for a session.