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SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Learn how to build a thriving online community for open education practices. Discover the importance of community growth, productive sharing, and identifying champions. Explore strategies such as social networking tools and effective online presence. Evaluate community dynamics and sustainability.

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SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

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  1. SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices Dr Vivien Rolfe & Dr Simon Griffin*De Montfort University, Leicester, UK *Griffin Internet Marketing

  2. OER11 Conference,Manchester, May 11th 2011

  3. SCOOTER - OERs for Sickle Cell andThalassaemia education • JISC/HEA OER Phase 2 • Website launch November 2010

  4. Introduction • Driving forces for the future of OERs and open education practices are discoverability and sustainability – how can individuals and institutions ensure that their resources thrive and not gather dust?

  5. Importance of Community • Central to sustainability is growth of a critical mass of interested individuals, and it adopting technologies and approaches to create networks (Dholakia 2006). • Need to facilitate productive sharing whether as one-off transactions, or within on-going collaboration (Chris Pegler OER2010). • Identify emergent champions who serve as informal leaders in inspiring new OER communities (Cynthia Jimes OER2010).

  6. How to Build a Community? • HumBox Project supporting humanities subjects – repository launched Feb 2010. • Project has produced new registered users and deposits beyond duration of initial project. • HumBox uses a comment box for each resource to build dialogue - championed by HumBox project team (Borthwick & Dicken 2010).

  7. Other Online Strategies? • Use of social networking tools (YouTube, Twitter) promoted OERs on web and was linked to increased in course intake (Russell Stannard, OER2010). • Their website has grown to 15,000 visitors per month!!

  8. SCOOTER Project Aims • Building a community of online users using social networking tools. • Understand which networks are effective tools? • What is their impact in terms of discoverability and sustainability of OERs and OEP?

  9. Methodology • Establish social networks e.g. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Posterous. • SCOOTER has produced 26 “new user” registrations in total!!

  10. Methodology • Track web traffic using Google Analytics, and using additional indices from social network tools. • Evaluate REACH (visitor demographics) and IMPACT (return visits, reuse, change in behaviour, loyalty) (Rolfe EDULEARN 2010). • Evaluate type of community engagement - PASSIVE or ACTIVE (comments, dialogue, evidence of collaboration).

  11. SCOOTER Online Presence

  12. Results – REACH and IMPACT From launch to 18th April 2011 (5 months)

  13. Visits from 66 countries • 1,153 unique visitors • 30% returned 2 times or more (reuse)

  14. People searching for “sickle cell”, “sicklecell anaemia” (Google, Yahoo,Bing, AOL) Sites, socialnetworks containingSCOOTER URL (back link) People who KNOWthe URL already

  15. Results – COMMUNITY data From launch to 18th April 2011 (5 months)

  16. Who is using, why and what purpose? • Facebook - general public • Twitter – academic, professional • Forum - healthcare professionals, students • Comments include general positive feedback and requests for resources and suggestions for weblinks.

  17. Summary • Social networks are effective in “referring traffic” to SCOOTER, producing 30% of the 1500+ visits in the first 5 months. • Social networks (Posterous, Youtube) are useful repositories for OERs, with a recorded 4000+ views of our OERs on these sites. • Posterous is very quick and highly effective social networking tool.

  18. Summary • SCOOTER community presently is largely PASSIVE – OER users, viewers, readers. • ACTIVE users are few and this can be enhanced for a truly sustainable approach. • But, conferences and off-line networking is also essential for building the SCOOTER community and will sustain interest beyond the project (including universities, hospitals, charities and commerce).

  19. Conclusion • Creating a community using social networking tools is relatively simple and makes OERs DISCOVERABLE on a global level to a wide range of audiences. • Creating a vibrant ACTIVE community as a means to drive SUSTAINABILITY takes effort, and building off-line communities is also important. • We need to evaluate community dynamics - who is using, and for what purpose? Also who is NOT using the resources and why?

  20. References and Useful Resources • Borthwick K 2010. HumBox Tracking Reports 1 and 2. http://www.llas.ac.uk/resourcedownloads/3233/humbox_tracking_report1.pdf • Dholakia UM, King WJ & Baraniuk R (2006) What makes an open education programme sustainable? The case of Connexions. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/3/6/36781781.pdf • Jimes C (2010) Building Communities to Support Teacher Use, Localization and Sharing of OER. OER10, Cambridge. • Pegler C (2010) Reuse: the other side of sharing OERs. OER10, Cambridge. • Rolfe V (2010) How to monitor the use and reuse of open educational resources using Google Analytics. EDULEARN10, Barcelona, p2320. http://library.iated.org/view/ROLFE2010HOW • Stannard R (2010) OER and Marketing Opportunities. OER10, Cambridge. • SCOOTER Project Website http://www.sicklecellanaemia.org (Including OER Training, and HOW TO SET UP POSTEROUS) • Online Marketing Services and Advice http://www.griffininternetmarketing.co.uk/

  21. GO TO http://www.sicklecellanaemia.org/OER/training.html Twitter #DMUViv Email vrolfe@dmu.ac.uk

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