Open education as a disruptive force in global higher education: rhetoric or reality?

Feature Event

Location: Murray 102

Presenter: Nancy Turner, University of the Arts, London

In most Higher Education (HE) contexts teaching remains a relatively private aspect of academic practice, not open to peer review or external quality benchmarks.   This landscape is beginning to change with national student surveys, the scholarship of teaching and learning, professional development in learning and teaching for HE faculty, and implementation of development schemes such as peer teaching observation. This opening up of teaching practice is occurring alongside apocalyptic predictions for HE (e.g. blah).  Whether such extreme predictions will play out will only be seen in time, however, it would be acting like the proverbial ostrich to ignore the significant shifts that HE is currently navigating.  The need for rapid and continuous change has never been so pressing. While developments to date have improved teaching practices more needs to be done to facilitate ongoing enhancement in teaching and curriculum design.  I propose that engagement with open educational practices (OEP) is one powerful way to achieve this.

Experience at the University of the Arts London (UAL) indicates that engagement with OEP is an effective tool to support change in HE teaching and learning practices.  We have found that OEP acts as an excellent ‘lightening conductor’ to identify underlying pedagogic conceptions and practices.  Making implicit models of learning and teaching explicit through OEP is an important step in developing the skills and infrastructures needed to operate effectively in a changing HE landscape. These benefits have also seen engagement with OEP move from the edges of our institutional agenda to feature as a component of strategic planning.

This session will provide an overview of some of UAL’s activities in supporting teachers to engage with OEP together with their reflections on the experience, paying particular attention to the affective, cognitive and practical factors involved.  UAL’s strategic direction in this area will also be considered in light of the broad benefits potentially achieved through OEP.

Nancy’s Bio:

Nancy Turner is Associate Dean Learning and Teaching Development and Head of the Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design at the University of the Arts London in the United Kingdom.  Her role involves strategic leadership of the Centre and its activities and leading and contributing to institutional projects related to the enhancement of learning and teaching.

Throughout her career Nancy has gained experience of strategic leadership of learning and teaching at institutional level as well as strategic management of virtual learning environments.  She has lead Masters programmes in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education and developed contextual, relevant and flexible continuing professional development for faculty and staff who support student learning.

Nancy's teaching experience in higher education has included development and delivery of courses in classroom, laboratory and distance learning environments in Canada and the UK.

Nancy chairs the Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) Scholarship and Research Committee, is on the Editorial Board for the Social Science Citation indexed Innovation in Education and Teaching International and is a reviewer for many programmes of the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and several international journals. Nancy is also a member of the UK Heads of Educational Development Group and the Heads of e-learning Forum.

Her main areas of research are self-belief, professional development in HE, change processes in HE, open educational practice, and linking teaching and disciplinary research.

Further information:

http://www.arts.ac.uk/cltad/aboutus/cltadstaff/nancyturner/

@nkturner

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