JISC

Summary

The OpenLives project will digitise and publish materials documenting the experiences of Spanish migrants to the UK and returning migrants to Spain, repurposing this data as open educational resources. Spain experienced tremendous economic and political upheaval in the 20th Century and there was a high level of emigration. Following subsequent political changes in Spain many emigrants later returned to Spain, and the experiences of those who returned from the UK, have rarely been studied until recent work was undertaken by researchers at Southampton who have collected oral testimony, images and other ephemera.

Such primary research data on migration has potential relevance to a wide range of academic disciplines including history, politics, economics, sociology, etc. and is of ongoing interest and debate in the wider world.  The project will demonstrate that a set of research data collected for a specific purpose can be used in a range of ways within humanities and social science disciplines. Modern languages have been designated by HEFCE as a ‘Strategically Important and Vulnerable Subject’ and following a 2009 HEFCE review as a subject which needs to re-establish its identity as a humanities discipline. This project, therefore, will support the teaching of Spanish language and culture and demonstrate the contribution of modern languages to humanities scholarship.

The project is a collaboration between three UK universities: Southampton, Leeds and Portsmouth. Once released as open content, the raw data will be developed as open educational resources for a range of teaching and learning contexts in humanities and social sciences on topics such as migration, life history, employability skills, research skills, language learning. A key element will be to involve students at all stages of resource development: using the original data, evaluating the teaching resources and creating/peer-reviewing their own learning resources. The data and open education resources will be released, in the first instance using the community repository for the humanities, HumBox, developed with funding from JISC by the University of Southampton.

Objectives 

• to publish, for public use and re-use, a set of research data documenting Spanish migrant experiences
• to create a suite of open educational resources using this research data and publish them for use and re-use
• to embed the OERs into teaching and learning at three different UK institutions
• to engage students in the process of creation and evaluation of OERs including participation in inter-institutional collaborations
• to demonstrate that a single set of research data collected for a specific purpose can be used in a range of different ways within humanities and social science disciplines 

Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes

• release and exploitation of research data not normally accessible to the academic community
• creation of a rich range of open resources appropriate to a wide variety of disciplines
• a model for release of research data for open sharing
• student engagement as evaluators and creators of learning materials
• enhancement of transferable skills and digital literacy
• initiation of a culture change which encourages researchers to consider relevance of their collected data for a range of audiences and purposes
• promotion and increase of the use and creation of digital content in the curriculum