Psychology at Heythrop College
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This project was motivated by the need for a set of excellent online materials to contribute to two 15 credit modules being taught in research methods and statistics in psychology at Heythrop College, University of London. The overall aim of the project was to produce these materials by reusing and repurposing existing materials sourced externally to the institution, and to engage with and document the process of developing, delivering, quality assuring and making openly available these materials.
Executive Summary
All acronyms are explained in the glossary (section 12.3, page 40)
The ‘reproduce process’ engaged with by this project can be summarised with six 'Cs' (see section 5, p.10). In the first instance, course design is important, prior to collecting materials to be reused or repurposed. Clearing rights to reuse these materials must occur before actually creating new materials by integrating, modifying and adapting the shared material. These new materials need to be critiqued by exploring student feedback on their use and revising them appropriately. Finally, materials need to be conserved by putting them, among other places, in the JISC Jorum repository so that they may be used subsequently. Each stage presents challenges and issues. The methodology of the project was not as linear as this list implies, with problems at later stages requiring a return to earlier stages. Critically, when permission to reuse and repurpose materials was not forthcoming, the project would be returned to an earlier stage.
The project ran from February 2008 until March 2009, interacting with a range of stakeholders throughout. For example, input was provided to UK Psychology Departments through involvement with the HEA subject centre, and with JISC through presentation at conferences. Stakeholders within the institution were also engaged at all stages (see section 6.1.2, p. 13).
Technical implementation of the project was primarily using the MOODLE VLE along with EXE XHTML editor and Adobe Captivate software. Tensions were recognised between producing engaging high quality learning objects and ensuring that these remained interoperable.
Course design was carried out using the London Pedagogic Planner tool (see section 7.2, p. 16), proving the value of such tools for learning design. The materials incorporated a set of texts explaining key concepts, glossaries explaining key terms, screencasts demonstrating use of SPSS, datasets to support examples with SPSS, interactive simulations, and quizzes.
The principle outcome of the project was to demonstrate difficulties associated with the repurposing process. Collecting materials can be difficult because there are typically no means beyond informal contact for an academic external to an institution to discover what might be shared. Clearing rights is the area of greatest difficulty, and is discussed in detail in section 8.2 (p. 22). The process of sharing is perceived as bringing various potential benefits but also carries potential risks. The perceived balance of benefit and risk depends on the career stage and characteristics of the individual concerned. A key issue is reputation, with perceived benefits and risks to reputation proving decisive in decisions about sharing materials. Other issues included commercial publishers being completely unwilling to share materials; academics being unsure about what rights they are able to grant for their materials; a knee-jerk ‘all rights reserved’ response; a reluctance to sign formal letters granting rights; a concern about the context of presentation; a desire to restrict use; grant funded projects not insisting that materials must be available for repurposing; the need for personal trust and good relationships if sharing is to be agreed (see section 8.2.2, p.25). As regards the content of learning materials, a range of issues arose including cultural references within materials, the academic level of materials and the quality and extent of writing. The greatest perceived difficulty for students with learning materials was related to the appropriateness of the level.
A range of technical challenges were also apparent (section 8.3.2, p. 30), including the inability of MOODLE to export SCORM compliant materials. A major technical challenge was present around the issue of repurposing online studies, due to the withdrawal of suitable commercial software to allow for accurate timing of responses (Adobe Authorware).
Despite difficulties in clearing rights to repurpose materials, some elements were used and evaluated during the funded period of the project, and some exploration of online reading was carried out in order to explore the appropriate presentation of material for low prior knowledge learners. Review of materials by students indicated a primary concern that online materials be of the appropriate level, whilst exploration of reading indicated that low prior knowledge learners (towards whom these materials are directed) require material that is appropriately structured in order to direct and ‘scaffold’ the learning experience.
The project concludes that until more effective processes are in place for providing default options and rapid responses to requests for content use, the construction of entirely new courses composed substantially of reused and repurposed materials within a realistic timeframe is a largely unworkable process. However, the gradual incorporation of externally sourced materials into a pre-existing course, evolving something better through a process of sharing is a much more appropriate aim in the current climate. Further recommendations are made in relation to collecting, clearing, creating, critiquing and conserving materials. These include: provision by institutions of publically available indexes of materials that have been created and which may potentially be considered for external reuse and repurposing; a consideration of how academic reputation might be leveraged to encourage the creation of open, repurposable content; investment in current technologies to ensure that end users (academics) can create high quality, interoperable learning objects which are nevertheless engaging with a minimum of technical skill; addressing more clearly the issue of a common understanding of the academic level for which learning objects are created, and providing easy to use tools which allow metadata to be added to learning objects.