University of Bedfordshire, Digital Literacy and Creativity

  • Start date: 2011-10-27
  • End date: 2012-09-30
  • Amount: £20,000
  • Status: in progress

Digital technologies provide a wide range of tools which research shows can enhance and support teaching and learning. However, this knowledge is not uniformly available across disciplines. This project aims to provide materials which are cross-disciplinary in application and which, through collaborative pedagogy and innovative assessment processes, supported by Web 2.0 online community working, induct staff into the power of collaboration and the re-purposing of OER. This proposal is submitted by the University of Bedfordshire in partnership with Core Education, a not-for-profit company with expertise in digital technologies, and ITTE (the Association for Information Technology in Teacher Education), a national professional/subject association whose members are staff in UK universities.

The aim of this project is to produce an online module to support the use of OER materials that will focus of on the ways ICTs/digital technologies can support teaching, learning and administration. The OER that are created, collated and re-purposed will be made available through a creative commons licence. The OER (unit resources) can be used individually as well as accredited by universities in order to gain 30 M-level credits and can form an online module ‘Digital Literacy and Creativity’. Assessment processes will induct participants into the re-use and publication of OER for colleagues nationwide providing a self-renewing resource.

A key goal of the project is to raise the level of digital literacy in the Higher Education sector and through this to raise the status and quality of teaching with university lecturers being as digitally competent as the students they teach. This project extends the use of the OER beyond traditional HE practice as the module will also be used by ITTE HEI ITE (initial teacher education) tutors with HEI students on education studies and teacher training education programmes. Information about the OER and module will be disseminated by ITTE members to other tutors in ITE and to other university staff (including programme leaders of PG Cert HE Teaching and Learning) via professional networks and conferences across the HE sector.

Aims and Objectives

The aim of the project is to create a 30-credit level 7 online module, with a pedagogic framework to support the deployment and use of OER on digital literacy and creativity. The objectives of the project are to:

• Re-purpose exiting OER from the Information Technology in Teacher Education (ITTE) community that develop digital literacy and creativity
• Create detailed and accessible pedagogic structure for the use of these resources (existing OER) on digital literacy and creativity
• Deposit the above resources across three forums (Jorum, ITTE website, Education Communities website; the latter also provides an online community space).

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes

• An online module, which will provide a framework for the use of OER on digital literacy and creativity, complete with a clear pedagogical structure on how these OER can be used (and re-used) to support teaching and learning.
• An online community and website: the creation of a community of practice - to collaboratively create the pedagogical framework; review exiting OER; create new OER where necessary; and to develop a richer understanding of how OER materials can be used in new contexts.
• Conference workshops to demonstrate the project outputs and disseminate the knowledge and experience developed to the wider HE community.

Organisations

Lead Institution:

Consortium Partners

Contact details