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SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

Learn about the SCOOTER project, which aims to build a community for open education resources (OERs) on sickle cell and thalassemia education. Discover the importance of community in sustaining OERs and explore strategies for building an active and engaged community.

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SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices

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  1. SCOOTER: Building an online community to sustain open education practices Dr Vivien Rolfe & Dr Simon Griffin*De Montfort University, Leicester, UK *Griffin Internet Marketing

  2. OER11 Conference,Manchester, May 11th 2011

  3. SCOOTER - OERs for Sickle Cell andThalassaemia education • JISC/HEA OER Phase 2 • Website launch November 2010

  4. Introduction • Driving forces for the future of OERs and open education practices are discoverability and sustainability – how can individuals and institutions ensure that their resources thrive and not gather dust?

  5. Importance of Community • Central to sustainability is growth of a critical mass of interested individuals, and it adopting technologies and approaches to create networks (Dholakia 2006). • Need to facilitate productive sharing whether as one-off transactions, or within on-going collaboration (Chris Pegler OER2010). • Identify emergent champions who serve as informal leaders in inspiring new OER communities (Cynthia Jimes OER2010).

  6. How to Build a Community? • HumBox Project supporting humanities subjects – repository launched Feb 2010. • Project has produced new registered users and deposits beyond duration of initial project. • HumBox uses a comment box for each resource to build dialogue - championed by HumBox project team (Borthwick & Dicken 2010).

  7. Other Online Strategies? • Use of social networking tools (YouTube, Twitter) promoted OERs on web and was linked to increased in course intake (Russell Stannard, OER2010). • Their website has grown to 15,000 visitors per month!!

  8. SCOOTER Project Aims • Building a community of online users using social networking tools. • Understand which networks are effective tools? • What is their impact in terms of discoverability and sustainability of OERs and OEP?

  9. Methodology • Establish social networks e.g. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Posterous. • SCOOTER has produced 26 “new user” registrations in total!!

  10. Methodology • Track web traffic using Google Analytics, and using additional indices from social network tools. • Evaluate REACH (visitor demographics) and IMPACT (return visits, reuse, change in behaviour, loyalty) (Rolfe EDULEARN 2010). • Evaluate type of community engagement - PASSIVE or ACTIVE (comments, dialogue, evidence of collaboration).

  11. SCOOTER Online Presence

  12. Results – REACH and IMPACT From launch to 18th April 2011 (5 months)

  13. Visits from 66 countries • 1,153 unique visitors • 30% returned 2 times or more (reuse)

  14. People searching for “sickle cell”, “sicklecell anaemia” (Google, Yahoo,Bing, AOL) Sites, socialnetworks containingSCOOTER URL (back link) People who KNOWthe URL already

  15. Results – COMMUNITY data From launch to 18th April 2011 (5 months)

  16. Who is using, why and what purpose? • Facebook - general public • Twitter – academic, professional • Forum - healthcare professionals, students • Comments include general positive feedback and requests for resources and suggestions for weblinks.

  17. Summary • Social networks are effective in “referring traffic” to SCOOTER, producing 30% of the 1500+ visits in the first 5 months. • Social networks (Posterous, Youtube) are useful repositories for OERs, with a recorded 4000+ views of our OERs on these sites. • Posterous is very quick and highly effective social networking tool.

  18. Summary • SCOOTER community presently is largely PASSIVE – OER users, viewers, readers. • ACTIVE users are few and this can be enhanced for a truly sustainable approach. • But, conferences and off-line networking is also essential for building the SCOOTER community and will sustain interest beyond the project (including universities, hospitals, charities and commerce).

  19. Conclusion • Creating a community using social networking tools is relatively simple and makes OERs DISCOVERABLE on a global level to a wide range of audiences. • Creating a vibrant ACTIVE community as a means to drive SUSTAINABILITY takes effort, and building off-line communities is also important. • We need to evaluate community dynamics - who is using, and for what purpose? Also who is NOT using the resources and why?

  20. References and Useful Resources • Borthwick K 2010. HumBox Tracking Reports 1 and 2. http://www.llas.ac.uk/resourcedownloads/3233/humbox_tracking_report1.pdf • Dholakia UM, King WJ & Baraniuk R (2006) What makes an open education programme sustainable? The case of Connexions. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/3/6/36781781.pdf • Jimes C (2010) Building Communities to Support Teacher Use, Localization and Sharing of OER. OER10, Cambridge. • Pegler C (2010) Reuse: the other side of sharing OERs. OER10, Cambridge. • Rolfe V (2010) How to monitor the use and reuse of open educational resources using Google Analytics. EDULEARN10, Barcelona, p2320. http://library.iated.org/view/ROLFE2010HOW • Stannard R (2010) OER and Marketing Opportunities. OER10, Cambridge. • SCOOTER Project Website http://www.sicklecellanaemia.org (Including OER Training, and HOW TO SET UP POSTEROUS) • Online Marketing Services and Advice http://www.griffininternetmarketing.co.uk/

  21. GO TO http://www.sicklecellanaemia.org/OER/training.html Twitter #DMUViv Email vrolfe@dmu.ac.uk

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