Exploring the potential of Open Data as a material for learning in Open Education [1095] Members : #OER16

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Wed, Apr 20 2016, 10:30am – 11:30am

Authors: Tim Coughlan

Room: Pentland (East)

Theme: Converging or diverging cultures of openness

Type: Presentation

Description

Open data is becoming an important resource for teaching and learning across a variety of contexts and subject matter (Atenas & Havemann, 2015). As well as providing opportunities for open learning practices, this is of interest to the OER community with regards to the ways in which open data and open education could interact and evolve together. However the current reality may be closer to two “open silos” that “progress in parallel with little sign of convergence” (Campbell, 2015).

The work undertaken by organisations to release open data is likely to lead them to a desire to engage audiences and to see the data widely used, yet public engagement with open data currently appears to be limited (e.g. Worthy, 2015). However, there is potential for mutually valuable forms of engagement between organisations and informal learners (e.g. Coughlan et al., 2015a). If we begin to see greater engagement between open education and open data, then the distinct aims and cultures of the two are likely to come to the fore in the roles taken by educators and learners.

This presentation will explore how open data offers opportunities and challenges for open education. It focuses on the roles and experiences of educators, learners and data producers as they interact around open data. It will review current instances of open data use in education, link this to related research, and draw on interviews conducted with educators who use open data in their practice.

We will explore how to use open data as a material when designing learning activities, with reference to concepts of active, authentic, personalised and collaborative learning. While most current instances of open online learning with open data focus on broadcast instruction, they also aim to provoke the learner to interact with open data in exploratory or personally-meaningful activities, and to share and discuss the results of these activities.

This raises a number of questions for reflection and discussion, including: Who is responsible for providing data in a form that is useful to learners? Or should wrangling with raw data be a part of the learning activity, with an expectation that learners develop greater literacies for this? Are there unexplored possibilities for learner participation to add value through augmenting open data? If so, can this be harnessed to increase the authenticity of learning activities? (Coughlan, 2015b) Will this lead to new forms of integration between open learning and crowdwork?

References

Atenas, J., & Havemann, L. (Eds.). (2015). Open Data as Open Educational Resources: Case studies of emerging practice. London: Open Knowledge, Open Education Working Group. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9. gshare.1590031.

Campbell, L. M., (2015), Open Silos? Open Data and OER, available from: https://lornamcampbell.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/open-silos-open-data-and-oer/

Coughlan, T., Carletti, L., Giannachi, G., Benford, S., McAuley, D., Price, D., Locatelli, C., Sinker, R., and Stack, J., (2015a) ArtMaps: interpreting the spatial footprints of artworks. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). ACM Press. 407-416.

Coughlan, T., (2015b) Using Open Data as a Material for Introductory Programming Assignments. In: Atenas, Javiera and Havemann, Leo eds. Open Data as Open Educational Resources: Case studies of emerging practice. London: Open Knowledge: Open Education Working Group, pp. 38–48.

Worthy, B. (2015). Who Is Using Local Spending Data, https://opendatastudy.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/who-is-using-local-spending-data/

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