Engagement of Digital Natives in the Development of Learning Content for Open Educational Resources Mais Fatayer, MSc, PhD Candidate School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics University of Western Sydney Sydney – Australia

Myself – short bibliography - UWS My name is Mais, I am a PhD student in school of SCEM at UWS. My research area is in Educational Technology and I am focusing on Open Educational Resources. I have passion toward utilizing technology to educate people especially those who can’t afford it. I worked at the Open University and now am in my third year of my PhD at UWS. University of Western Sydney – School of Medicine

Outline The Idea Open Educational Resources Conceptual Framework Digital Natives/University Students Cognitive Surplus OER Development Model Research Design Summary In the paper I presented the research idea and theoretical background. I will fly you through these quickly and I will go beyond the paper, by talking about implementation of the idea in real life setting.

1. The Idea The Idea Evaluating the proposed OER development model. The model repurposes the cognitive surplus of university students by engaging students in generating learning resources for OER. I will start with the research statement

What are Open Educational Resources? Any presentation about OER should start with a definition of what are OERs, they are the Digitized educational resources that are shared in public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or repurposing by students, academics and life-long learners. Open educational resources can be text files of lecture notes, course outline, past exams...OER can be video files such as lecture recording, or experiments, and can be image files such as medical images, interior design sketches, screen shots... Under IP licenses OER can be used reused and repurposed in different contexts. These are all shared openly without cost - means free, but that doesn’t indicates cheap! Creative Commons is an international non-profit organisation that provides free licences and tools that copyright owners can use to allow others to share, reuse and remix their material, legally. creative commons Atkins, D.E., Brown, J.S., & Hammond, A.L. (2007). A review of the open educational resources (OER) movement: Achievements, challenges, and new opportunities. Report to The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Digital Natives 3. Conceptual Framework There is a long debate about this generation and being described as digital natives, net generations, tech savvy and so on... Whether or not they are labelled in one of these terms, ubiquity of technology in every area in our lives require a careful understanding about how these areas are changing and adapting technology, Education definitely is not an exception, however acceleration in technological changes are making it difficult for educational systems to synchronize with. One solution is engaging students in using the technology as passive consumer and producers, to help us find solutions to understand how technology can advance knowledge in HEI, and push the educational system wheel to synchronize with new technologies. Here in this conference and other conferences focusing on educational technology I believe we are all working toward similar goals. One of these is providing more solutions and innovative ideas to utilize existing technologies to harmonize with our educational systems goals. Prensky, Marc. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants Part 1. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6. doi: 10.1108/10748120110424816 (Permanent URL)

3. Conceptual Framework Cognitive Surplus The Cognitive surplus concept describes the opportunities, projects, ideas, charity work that online communities create as a result of collective intelligence and collaboration, with the driving force of intrinsic motives. The Cognitive surplus concept describes the [opportunities, projects, ideas, charity work] which online communities create as a result of collective intelligence, and selfless collaboration, with the driving force of intrinsic motives. Majority of the users are young people, who contribute to blogs, wikis and create and share video on the web. The concept has five main dimensions that if found together we will witness some kind of creative work. These dimensions are: Technology Skills creativity Motives Collaboration Usually OER projects are established and created in: Technology: ICT including CMS, Hosting, and digital content authoring software Skills: knowledge of academics in different areas creativity: learning resources created by expertise from different levels and backgrounds who like to share their IP Motives: with both intrinsic an extrinsic motives Collaboration: with collaboration of staff members or communities of interest Where the research practice focus on: Technology: Employing the eLearning authoring tools Skills : and the skills of university student learned during their study units creativity: by tapping into SGC Motives: through intrinsic motives they have Collaboration: during teamwork assignments and students as co-creators (in teacher-student) What motivate different group of people to create and share with all community members are intrinsic motives rather than extrinsic ones Such incentives : Autonomy Competency feelings of control ( allow students to select the area they like to do their projects) level of difficulty ( not too hard so they would give up easily, not too easy so they would lose the motive) connectedness or membership (like twitting, angry birds, and facebook games) sharing and generosity Competency Autonomy Connectedness Sharing Feelings of control Generosity Shirky, Clay. (2010). Cognitive surplus : creativity and generosity in a connected age. New York: Penguin Press.

Mapping the Conceptual Framework Cognitive Surplus OER Projects Research Practice ( Content authoring software, LMS) ( Students’ skills ) ( Teamwork projects, students as co-creators) ( Intrinsic and extrinsic ) ( Student-generated content) ( CMS, Hosting and content authoring software ) ( Knowledge of academics) ( Collaboration of staff or communities of interest ) ( Intrinsic and extrinsic ) (Learning resources ) ( Technology ) ( Skills) ( Collaboration ) ( Motives) ( Creativity) The conceptual framework is based on the concept of CS from economic science. The Cognitive surplus describes the creativity of online communities with the advent of Web 2.0 and content generation. As a result of collective intelligence, and selfless collaboration, with the driving force of intrinsic motives. The main 5 dimensions of CS were found to align with OER projects and hence, mapped to the research practice.

3. Conceptual Framework Cognitive Surplus inside classroom in the form of student-generated content Bull, G. (2008). Capitalizing on the cognitive surplus. Learning and leading with technology, 10-11. Sener, J. (2007). In Search of Student-Generated Content in Online Education. e-Mentor.

3. Conceptual Framework Repurpose Cognitive Surplus inside classroom in the form of student-generated content Facilitator Open Educational Resources

OER Development Model Participation Expertise Quality Reusability

Research Design Design-Based Research 1. Analysis of practical problem 2. Development of solutions using existing design principles and technology innovation 3. Iterative cycles of testing and refinement of solution in practice 4. Reflection to produce “design principles” and enhance solution implementation DBR is a systematic and iterative approach, that help refine the theory and practice in real world. The research currently is in the third stage. A pilot took place in Spring 2012 with Introduction to IT unit, and currently we are at the end of the first iteration with the same unit however, new students! Herrington, J., McKenney, S., Reeves, T., & Oliver, R. (2007). Design-based research and doctoral students: Guidelines for preparing a dissertation proposal.

Research Iteration Peer Assessment TECHNICAL INTRODUCTION 5. Research Design Research Iteration Peer Assessment TECHNICAL INTRODUCTION Facilitator Open Educational Resources

Quality of Student- Generated Content 5. Research Design Quality of Student- Generated Content Technical Openness Educational Previous assessment were on a simple rubrics matrix which consisted of Interest & Usefulness Product Design Multimedia Interactivity However, outcomes of the first iteration will be based on the Q M of SGC Three parts accomplish the evaluation stage. Peer assessment Academic evaluation: inside unit (scores), inside UWS, outside UWS Researcher evaluation The purpose of this mechanism is to evaluate the fitness of SGC to OER.

6. Summary Summary Engaging university students in generating learning content for OERs, through forming a community of practice of students and teachers around OERs. The model taps into student-generated content and repurposes the cognitive surplus inside classrooms toward building OERs. The model is being evaluated and will be made available for HEI to adapt. To help evaluate the model, we will be assessing student-generated content fitness to OER based on quality mechanism designed for this purpose. In the paper, I talked about the research idea, and the needs for new and sustainable OER development model.

Mais M. Fatayer PhD Candidate University of Western Sydney m Mais M. Fatayer PhD Candidate University of Western Sydney m.fatayer@uws.edu.au Thank you