Someone mentioned the iceberg from the impact study. How's about Helen
Beetham's 'openness is the enemy of knowability'? And if we are going for
quotes: 'Not everything that's important can be measured and not
everything that can be measured is important' (I think that was Einstein).
What I mean is aren't we focussing on the wrong thing here? I think there
are two conflicting agendas, that of researchers and institutions looking
to get the next bit of funding (and for this group, counting resources is
important), and that of practitioners, teachers, learners, potential
learners... who are just contributing to the OER movement and benefitting
from it. This second group couldn't care less how many resources were
created under phase 1, 2 or 3. All they are interested in is that the
resources are there, that the practices are changing, that there are
places where they know they can look for useful stuff.
I agree with Julian and all those of you who feel whatever helps the
community feel connected is worth keeping. If use of the hashtag is useful
to some, preventing them from using it (and how would you achieve that
anyway? Would you police it?) is just silly and unworkable. I understand
why some of you think it would be easier, but that is the equivalent of
letting the administrator run the place. They always want to put things
neatly into folders. So, yes, education is messy and so is openness. If we
donšt recognise this we shouldn't be in this business.
Anna
On 14/11/2012 14:28, "Phil Barker" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>On 14/11/2012 13:37, Sarah Currier wrote:
>> "I would be remiss to not express my misgivings" - which include the
>>fact that it's harder to disambiguate a large number of resources with
>>the same tag expressing different properties ("funded by UKOER" *and*
>>"produced by member of UK OER community"), than to just have a new tag
>>that expresses the new property.
>And
>
>On 14/11/2012 13:51, Jacqueline Carter wrote:
>> ESRC (and possibly other research council) funded projects are required
>>to submit an impact report 12 months after the funding ends. That's why
>>I asked my question about does mapping OER to funding matter. I'm
>>hearing no. That's fine - although as impact is so important for
>>everything we do now I'm not sure I agree wholeheartedly with the
>>consensus being reached via this list.
>
>But I don't think it was ever the aim of the programme just to release a
>number of resources, the aim was sustained release, "turning the tap on"
>was one metaphor. So counting the number of resources is a poor way of
>measuring its impact. Sustainability meant setting up processes so that
>the effects would outlive the funding. I think of resources tagged as
>UKOER as being those where release was facilitated (at least in part) as
>a result of the programme not just those that were directly funded by it.
>
>
>Phil
>
>
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