Photo CC BY: B. de los Arcos

Photo CC BY: B. de los Arcos

An update on what the OERRHub team has been up to in February.

We kicked off the month with two away days where we discussed the work ahead of us: we are now at a crucial stage of the project so it was important to sit together and set definite plans to deliver the goods; on the table were the analysis strategy, dissemination proposal, the School of Open course on how to be an open education researcher, the OER Impact Map and a few other items fuelled by gallons of tea, coffee and the sweetest gummy bears I’ve ever had in my life. These two days were also prelude to Claire’s farewell: we’ve been one the luckiest projects on earth to have had the opportunity to work with such an excellent project manager, grounded person and new friend. But hey, who’s come in the door? The one and only Natalie Eggleston, old-hand, cool head and the biggest smile on the planet. (Dear me, how many superlatives have I used in one paragraph? All well deserved!)

Rob travelled to Orlando, Florida (yes, some researchers are luckier than others) to present at eLearning 2014 the work that he’s been conducting in collaboration with Una Daly (CCCOER) on the impact of OER at community colleges in the US. Access his slides here and read also his notes on a workshop on OER that took part in Valencia College ahead of the conference.

A conversation on Twitter with Catherine Cronin prompted a visit to Galway, Ireland to speak with her and her students taking CT231: Professional Skills in the IT Faculty, NUIGalway. Catherine is doing great work as an open educator, but as this merits a separate post, I’ll ask you to be patient to find out more. My personal crusade to put Ireland on the OER Impact Map and Catherine’s enthusiastic support resulted in an invitation to talk at the TeachMeet ahead of the Computers in Education Society of Ireland, CESI14 conference. I had five minutes to present our project and the impact map, and invite an audience of over one hundred Irish teachers to fill in the OERRHub survey; it was a fast and furious night as speakers hurried from table to stand, but a lot of fun too.

I was sorry to miss IET’s Learn About Fair, but colleagues tell me it was as exciting as ever: the OERRHub’s stand was properly equipped with our new posters, and the Impact Map sparked, once again, a lot of attention. Don’t forget you can now contribute your evidence/project.

On the fellows’ front we hosted Billy Meinke from Creative Commons. Thanks, Billy for helping me focus on why flipping the classroom with OER is better than just flipping –oh, aren’t you curious? Watch the space.

Beck has released some very interesting footage of her chat with Megan Beckett from Siyavula in South Africa, while she visited us in January.

While we continue to work on the analysis of individual surveys, we’ve also been compiling all data in one file to be released openly –no small task, I’m telling you.

And it’s only gonna get better! Stay tuned for our March update.