Category: Digital Learning

Digital Learning, Online Learning, Open Educational Practices, Policy and Strategy, Publications

Go Open: A Beginner’s Guide to Open Education

The Go Open project is a collaborative initiative based in Dublin City University (DCU) comprising a team from the DCU Library, Open Education Unit and the Digital Learning Design Unit.

Led by Dr Orna Farrell, the project aims to support the DCU Community to engage with Open Educational Practices (OEPs) in their teaching, research and support activities. The Go Open Project is funded by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and DCU’s Teaching Enhancement Unit (TEU) through the SATLE 19 fund.

The project team has produced a number of open access resources published under creative commons licenses (CCL) designed for academics and professional support staff to begin engaging with OEPs and to take small steps towards going open!

Go Open Resources

You can already access the following two resources…

Go Open Launch Webinar

We invite you to join us at the Go Open launch event at 10:00am (IST) on Thursday the 29th of April. 

  • The webinar will feature a keynote talk by Dr Catherine Cronin from the National Forum about the three pillars of Open Education.
  • A panel discussion about getting started with Open Educational Practices
  • The Launch of the Go Open digital resources 

Register via eventbrite here.

Other OER/OEP initiatives

The NIDL is currently involved in two other major European-funded OER/OEP projects, including ENCORE and OpenGame. As part of the latter initiative, in 2020 the project team published this Handbook of Successful Open Teaching Practices which places an emphasis on how OER/OEP can be used to address some of the current challenges facing educators and students.

Assessment, Awards, Digital Learning, Events, Teaching

Celebrating Student Excellence: Reflect Eportfolio Showcase and Awards

Yesterday, April 8th, 2021, the Teaching Enhancement Unit (TEU) at DCU hosted the annual Eportfolio Student Showcase and Awards event.

These annual awards have been an integral event of the eportfolio intiative in DCU since its launch in 2016. The Showcase is a celebration of student excellence in eportfolio practice and all students from programmes using the Reflect learning portfolio (based on the Mahara platform) were invited to enter. Students could submit an eportfolio developed for a module during 2020/2021 or develop one specifically for the Showcase. 

The DCU eportfolio eterns ran a social media campaign to promote the event and this, as well as the increasing numbers of DCU students now using Reflect to support alternative and authentic assessment, resulted in a 33% increase in entrants over the previous year.  

A panel of judges reviewed submissions based on the following criteria:

  • Effective showcase of knowledge/skills/attributes through relevant argument and artefacts
  • Level of reflection
  • Design and originality

The judging panel was impressed this year with the excellent standard of entries from all Faculties and the increased use of rich media to showcase students’ knowledge and skills. The digital skills of students were evident in the use of embedded images and videos, clean navigation, and the degree of creativity and personalisation. Judges comments included:

 “Very engaging for reader; great mix and use of artefacts to express learning; comprehensive reflections”, “very informative, using different types of media, creatively presented, “evidence of learning and growth through reflection”. 

These comments speak to the authentic representation of learning; allowing students connect their learning, to reflect on their learning, and to intentionally engage with their learning as it is happening (Rhodes, 2018). 

A snapshot of all submitted entries can be viewed in this video carousel…

Ten students were shortlisted for the top prizes. Billy Kelly, Dean of Teaching & Learning, recognised these students for their excellent work and virtually presented the awards in front of faculty and peers. 

The overall winner was Chelsea Thompson, who developed her eportfolio as part of the requirements for the Bachelor of Education programme in DCU’s Institute of Education. The judges agreed that this was an all-round excellent eportfolio which surpassed the competition criteria.

Laura Furlong, also from the Institute of Education, Ore Jalaade, DCU Business School, and Lucyann Kehoe, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences were also recognised for their rich and innovative eportfolios.

We would like to thank all of the students who submitted entries and look forward to seeing even more creative and critically reflective examples of Loop Reflect over the next year. We would also like to acknowledge our colleague Lisa Donaldson who organised the showcase event and leads the use of and support for Loop Reflect within and across DCU.

References

Rhodes, T. (2018). Lift every voice: ePortfolios for creating and integrating. International Journal of ePortfolio, 8(2), 87-89.