This week I’ve been doing lots of writing as part of my application for HEA fellowship. I’m doing this via the portfolio route of GCUs AcceleRATE CPD programme. Over the past 6 years, I’ve become increasingly reliant of my blog as my professional memory. In many ways it is my portfolio and one my main contributions to open practice. As I develop my case studies for my HEA application, it has proved to be an invaluable reference point, as well as reminding myself that I actually do know a wee bit about a lot of stuff.
Martin Weller wrote a nice post this week on the benefits of an open by default approach. One of the comments highlighted another benefit of being open – that it’s easier to find your own stuff. I have certainly found that this week. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons I keep blogging.
I also spotted that there has been an update to the Open Education Handbook from the Linked Up project – lovely example of open practice creating a resource on open education.
It was also great to see this article on the OU’s policy on the ethical use of student data for learning analytics. I know Sharon Slade has been working on this for a number of years now. The policy and the FAQ (both available on the OU website) are really useful – not just for students but for anyone who is thinking about or implementing learning analytics. Hopefully it will be available via CC soon too. Another win for open-ness.
@sheilmcn @mikehamlyn @timeshighered It is now openly available on our site – we’re just checking the CC issue
— Sharon Slade (@SharonSlade) November 6, 2014