Teaching and Learning in the Open: How does this Relate to ‘Excellence’?

Vivien Rolfe@vivienrolfe

Intestinal Physiologist and Open Educator

CC BY (unless assets otherwise indicated)

Presentation for:University of Kingston Teaching Excellence

Conference 22nd June 2016

This was a fantastic event organised by Dr Nick Freestone at Kingston. The audienceComprised students and academic staff, mainly those involved in sciences. Theaudience very enthusiastically received the idea of open educational resources andthere is a need here to support them in understanding about Creative Commonslicenses and to help them participate in the open science community.

How do you define TEACHING EXCELLENCE?

Question posed to students and teachers in the audience. The mainidea from both sides was the importance of building effective relationships.This is at the heart of what good teaching is all about.

PhD title: “Mechanisms of action of E. coli STa”

Little girl with kwashiorkor By Dr. Lyle Conrad [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, Available:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwashiorkor#/media/File:Starved_girl.jpg

In my talk I described a recent lecture with year two undergraduate students in which I presented my PhD research from 15 years earlier. Here is a quote from my dissertation.

Mechanisms of intestinal secretion derived from the research.

Cl-

GC

STa

cGMP

CFTR

2Cl- Na+ K+

Transporter

Osmosis

Water

NitrinergicMyenteric secretory reflex

Remote secretion? ?

Rolfe & Levin 1994, 1999

Water

Capsaicin-sensitive

Lin et al 2010, WHO 2016

• Globally ~ 6 million children under the age of 5 die.

• Diarrhoea is joint leading cause of death with pneumonia.

• Disease is preventable (good sanitation/nutrition) and exacerbated by malnutrition as gut becomes hypersecretory.

Mechanisms - 2010 Statistics - 2016

What do we conclude about science?

I led this discussion with students at the time. Reflecting on how little thefield had advanced, other than providing new molecular detail, but howthis hadn’t impacted on the global statistics. We had an interesting conversation about global distribution of wealth, and who determines global research agendas.

Rolfe VE & Levin RJ. (1998). Neural and non-neural activation of electrogenic secretion by 5-HT. Acta Physiologica Scandinavica 162, pp. 469-474.

Intense rivalryand competitionbetween researchteams

Lack of reproducibility

Is there another way?

Maybe – through an open science approach?

Largest systematicreview ever with over 180 contributors.

Global consensus on themanagement of Barrett’soesophagus across15 medical arease.g. histology, endoscopy, treatment.

Ethos of collaboration with open critical review.

Big problem solved without the need for big funding.

Giulia Forsythe, Google Images, CC BY (varying terms)

Open sourceOpen data

Open accessOpen science

Open innovation

Open coursesOpen educational resources (OERs)

Open practiceOpen washing

Open textbooks

MITOpen sharing ofcourse materials2000 Creative Commons Open license

2001Wikipedia Founded (2001); Wikimedia Foundation (2003)

Jorum ‘Open’ – UK national repository2009

OpenLearn at Open University2006

iTunesU / YouTube Edu2007

2009 – 2012 Jisc UKOER funding

MITx / Coursera / Udacity xMOOCs(learning platform; Coursera £60 million+venture capital funding)2012

UK FutureLearn xMOOC2013 (£74 million)

cMOOCs in Canada (‘Connectivist’ – online learning networks and communities)2009

Stepping into the open….

OER@De Montfort UniversityUKOER Programme Funding 2009 – 2012

• 2008 VAL - Virtual Analytical Laboratory – lab skills• 2010 SCOOTER – sickle cell health & medical resources• 2010 TIGER – interprofessional learning• 2012 MOER - midwifery• 2012 Biology Courses – bioscience, forensics etc

Pathology slides from theLeicester Royal Infirmary

DMU students as co-producers

Used for university-biomedical science teachingand hospital trainees.

Hospital assets / data

Shared benefits

DMUCreates OER

Given with kind permissionby Dr Amy LivingstoneWittenberg University

Out of publication text

book

Globalresource

DMU releasewith Creative

Commons

FingerprintSociety

Shared benefits

DMUCreates OER

Finger print materialsand expert knowledge

Forensic Science

Quality control

Impact on students

• VAL – supported student transitions to lab sciences. Built confidence (Rolfe 2009).

• “It is excellent to see such hard work being distributed throughout the world for free. I feel proud of the fact that I study at DMU” (DMU student).

Rolfe 2009

Supporting global health promotion

• Sharing health policies / guides under open license for translation.

• Supported further funding and REF Impact Case Study.

What does this mean for teachers and institutions?

• The need for new digital literacies• The need to consider new educational business models

(open texts reduce costs; z-degrees; 6 month degrees)• Use of big datasets / open datasets in research projects?• How to explore the idea that the ‘classroom’ and the

‘lab’ aren’t the only spaces for teaching and research….• OER TRANSFORMS TEACHING PRACTICE…. “It has

changed my practice in terms of whenever I’m doing anything I think how could this be an OER or how could it supplement what I’m doing” (DMU teacher)

Where are our boundaries?• What are our ethical boundaries online? Do MOOCs provide

global education opportunities for all or are they about the selling-on of student data; are illegal downloads of research papers wrong or a good skill to have?

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/whos-downloading-pirated-papers-everyone

Thank you.

Vivien Rolfe

vivrolfe.com

@vivienrolfeJacob Escott CC BY-SA

Lin, J. E., Valentino, M., Marszalowicz, G., Magee, M. S., Li, P., Snook, A. E., ... & Waldman, S. A. (2010). Bacterial heat-stable enterotoxins: translation of pathogenic peptides into novel targeted diagnostics and therapeutics. Toxins, 2(8), 2028-2054.

Rolfe VE & Levin RJ. (1994). Enterotoxin E. coli STa activates a NO-dependent myenteric plexus secretory reflex. Journal of Physiology 475.3, pp. 531-537.

Rolfe VE & Levin RJ. (1999). Vagotomy inhibits the jejunal fluid secretion activated by luminal ileal Escherichia coli STa. Gut 44, pp. 615-619.

Rolfe VE. (2009). Development of a Virtual Analytical Laboratory (VAL) multimedia resource to support student transition to laboratory science at university. HEA Bioscience Case Study. pp. 1-5. At: http://www.bioscience.heacademy.ac.uk/ftp/casestudies/Vrolfe.pdf

WHO 2016 http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs178/en/

References