Browsing by Subject "open research"

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    Open Access
    365 days of openness: The emergence of OER at the University of Cape Town
    (Athabasca University Press, 2013) Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Paskevicius, Michael; Cox, Glenda; Shaikh, Shihaam; Czerniewicz, Laura; Lee-Pan, Samantha; McGreal, R; Kinuthia, W; Marshall, S; McNamara, T
    Historically, resources such as books, journals, newspapers, audio and video recordings have been fairly well curated in university libraries. However, the same cannot be said for teaching and learning materials, unless they have been included in a textbook or study guide. With the growth in digital media, libraries have been extending their curation of scholarly resources to include electronic journals, digital books and reference guides, broadening access to these beyond the physical walls of the library. While the growth in digital technology has prompted academics to create their own customised and contextually specific digital media for use in their teaching in the form of PowerPoint presentations, manuals, handbooks, guides, media resources and websites, these resources are most often stored on personal hard drives, on departmental servers or within password-protected institutional learning management systems. Access to these digital materials is usually limited to registered students undertaking specific courses within specific institutions and usually only disseminated by individual academics or departments.
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    Open Access
    Dimensions of open research: critical reflections on openness in the ROER4D project
    (Open Praxis, 2016) King, Thomas; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl-Ann; Willmers, Michelle; Walji, Sukaina
    Open Research has the potential to advance the scientific process by improving the transparency, rigour, scope and reach of research, but choosing to experiment with Open Research carries with it a set of ideological, legal, technical and operational considerations. Researchers, especially those in resource-constrained situations, may not be aware of the complex interrelations between these different domains of open practice, the additional resources required, or how Open Research can support traditional research practices. Using the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project as an example, this paper attempts to demonstrate the interrelation between ideological, legal, technical and operational openness; the resources that conducting Open Research requires; and the benefits of an iterative, strategic approach to one’s own Open Research practice. In this paper we discuss the value of a critical approach towards Open Research to ensure better coherence between ‘open’ ideology (embodied in strategic intention) and ‘open’ practice (the everyday operationalisation of open principles). This paper first appeared in Open Praxis, Volume 8 Number 2.
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    Open Access
    The OER Adoption Pyramid
    (2016-04-18) Trotter, Henry; Cox, Glenda
    This Pyramid was developed in the course of a research paper focusing on why South African academics adopt OER or not. We understood that numerous factors shaped their choices, but it became apparent that some factors were "essential" to OER activity while others were merely "influential". To clarify which factors were required for any type of OER activity, we developed the OER Adoption Pyramid, which consolidates the factors into six hierarchically related categories: access, permission, awareness, capacity, availability and volition. Under these terms we can place numerous other sub-factors which emerge in the OER literature, such as quality, relevance, localisation, licensing, self-confidence, etc. Going from bottom to top, these categories move from factors that are largely externally defined to factors that are more personally determined. This pyramid reveals that, ultimately, only academics or institutions that possess all six of these attributes at the same time (even if in some modified or attenuated fashion) can engage in OER activity. If even one of these elements is missing, they cannot participate in OER activity.