Using OER in Online Welfare Communities: Facebook as an Arena for Open Scholarship across the Commonwealth Dr Leigh-Anne Perryman, Fellow, OER Research Hub, The Open University (leigh.a.perryman@open.ac.uk; @laperryman) Tony Coughlan, Regional Academic, The Open University (t.coughlan@open.ac.uk; @CYPmedia) Photo credit: Kevin Dooley CC-BY

Focus is on OER for informal learning Reporting on work done over the past 2 years sharing OER with Facebook groups Slide shows some Facebook groups across Commonwealth focused on autism. Groups here cover a combined membership of 5000 people 2.5 million indexed Facebook groups on a huge range of topics many of whom could greatly benefit from knowing about and using OER

The Public Open Scholar . 1. Find a community and identify its OEP readiness Past 2 years been developing and performing public open scholar role Five steps for using OER with online communities of informal learners We’d like to invite all of you to perform the role in communities with which you have a connection But first, I’ll take you through the five steps Step 1: find a community with which to work; one you’re personally aligned with or which fits your academic specialism. Identify its readiness for open educational practices. We explain how to do this in our full paper drawing on Galley’s community indicators framework.. Photo Credit: StockMonkeys.com CC-BY

1. Find a community and identify its OEP readiness Galley et al (2010) suggest that fully developed communities share four indicators - ‘identity’, ‘participation’, ‘cohesion’ and ‘creative capability’ - which develop in sequence and can therefore be used to evaluate a community’s strength. Where all four indicators are present and the creative capability stage has been reached, it is likely that the community would be receptive to the intervention of a public-facing open scholar.

The Public Open Scholar . 1. Find a community and identify its OEP readiness 2. Listen to the needs of the community - Step 2 involves working on a a demand-pull basis (rather than the supply-push approach typical in formal education) Comprises being attentive to the ever-changing needs of the community Photo Credit: StockMonkeys.com CC-BY

The Public Open Scholar 3. Simultaneously establish your credibility . 1. Find a community and identify its OEP readiness 2. Listen to the needs of the community At the same time as listening to the community’s needs it’s important to establish your own credibility Online trust is vital to community building Number of ways in which you can establish trust and build your own credibility. Self-disclosure is known to be important in Facebook, for example. Photo Credit: StockMonkeys.com CC-BY

www.cyp-media.org

The Public Open Scholar 3. Simultaneously establish your credibility 4. Search OER repositories/collections for OER that may meet those needs; share them with the community . 1. Find a community and identify its OEP readiness 2. Listen to the needs of the community 3: Search for OER to meet the needs of the community with which you’re working Having found OER that will meet a community’s needs academics should … participate in any discussion about the resources, including discussing evaluation of resources share information about where OER can be found basis for empowering community participants to self-source resources. Photo Credit: StockMonkeys.com CC-BY

The Public Open Scholar 3. Simultaneously establish your credibility 4. Search OER repositories/collections for OER that may meet those needs; share them with the community 5. Disseminate information about the community’s unmet needs. . 1. Find a community and identify its OEP readiness 2. Listen to the needs of the community 5. - disseminate information about their chosen community’s unmet needs among academics within their own institution and elsewhere. might lobby for further OER to be released to meet these needs or for existing OER to be in different formats Social media such as Twitter and blogs might be a useful platform Photo Credit: StockMonkeys.com CC-BY

Full paper: -. Different behaviour patterns across groups of Full paper: - Different behaviour patterns across groups of different nationalities - How best to work with particular groups - The formats that best suit sharing via Facebook CoL Paper Finder database/CD www.publicscholar.org Full paper covers the findings of our work in more detail Different behaviour patterns across groups of different nationalities How best to work with particular groups The formats that best suit sharing via Facebook Find in CoL paper database + our blog site Repeat invitation to become a public open scholar in your country and field and keep us updated

Thank you! Dr Leigh-Anne Perryman, Fellow, OER Research Hub, The Open University (leigh.a.perryman@open.ac.uk; @laperryman) Tony Coughlan, Regional Academic, The Open University (t.coughlan@open.ac.uk; @CYPmedia) www.publicscholar.org Photo credit: Kevin Dooley CC-BY