From PROBE to PROWE and back again … Chris Pegler IET, Open University PROWE evaluator

Acronyms, acronyms … JISC PROWE – Personal Repositories Online: Wiki Environment PROBE – Personal Repositories Online: Bliki Environment OU – The Open University IET – The Institute of Educational Technology UoL – University of Leicester (Beyond Distance Learning Alliance)

Greetings from Anne Hewling

The partners Open University: Includes: Anne Hewling (PO) Anne Ramsden Gill Needham Janet MacDonald Chris Pegler (Evaluator) University of Leicester: Includes: Gilly Salmon Tony Churchill Richard Mobbs Selina Lock Roger Dence* * Roger tutors for the OU and UoL. He’s UoL consultant to the project

The project Funded under the JISC Digital Repositories Programme.JISC Digital Repositories Programme Start and end dates: 01 June 2005 to 31 May 2007 “To investigate the use of informal repositories within Wiki and Blogs by part-time tutors on distance education programmes in the partner institutions. The focus is on the use of wiki-type environments as personal and informal repositories for sharing and storing resources in the context of their own professional development needs.”

The research question "In what ways could wiki and wiki-type environments be useful and usable as personal and informal repositories to support professional development within part-time tutor communities of practice?” Environment may be a blog, wiki or bliki … Methods used will vary in line with the context

Why? (The need) The OU and UoL have large numbers of part-time tutoring staff – in the OU there are >7000 linked to 12 regional centres! Many tutors work on more than one course and may blend OU/UoL work with other teaching Current information exchange between tutors is course rather than community focussed. The tutor cannot access or easily share or use it beyond that course/presentation. We don’t know much at all about personal and informal sharing between part-time staff

How? Focus group meetings at OU and UoL in December (this week!) will inform choices of tools and direct relevance to tasks that tutors are already involved in. Tools will be used by tutors working with courses ranging from Business to Museum studies, in online, distance and blended teaching environments Personal and informal repositories will be supported through one full presentation and evaluated during and afterwards This builds on Janet MacDonald’s work with OU tutors on sharing information online and Tony Churchill’s experience with staff development at UoL

Community users and wikis Conventionally wikis are not WYSIWYG – will our users use them if they are not? They’re often not moderated either – what style of moderation do we need/want? Personal spaces within PROWE – choosing to share or not. Reuse can be personal. Shared spaces for part-timers cause a challenge. What have we learnt from students? Blog/Wiki balance?

The first 14 OU users look like … At little as 6 months experience and as much as 15 years Teaching on Technology; Education, Maths, Social Sci, Arts and Openings Work environments are a mix, several work outside the OU Only 1 on dial up Only 1 had had any previous contact with repositories Currently organising digital teaching resources on personal web pages, hard disks Transfer resources across teaching contexts using FirstClass and USB pen drives. One uses bookmarks and four use chiefly paper copies of handouts. One uses blog for storage/transfer Mostly recycling own material only, perhaps from more than one job

Answers sought: 1.How can we create a sustainable repository and support sharing for remote part-time teaching staff? 2.How will users respond to ‘lighter touch’ sharing based on wiki/blogs? 3.How might these tools contribute to enhancing/building an information sharing culture? 4.How do informal personal repositories work with institutional repositories (or not)? 5.What transferable lessons are there?

Outcomes (User benefits) Enhanced peer to peer community for sharing ideas and experience Quicker access to material to support teaching Time saving (easy to access materials and value of the outputs obtained) Easy to use tools suitable for inexperienced users of ICT Portable and accessible

Outcomes (Transferable) Will inform about the role of personal digital repositories within a social network supporting teaching and learning Will identify related cultural issues and impediments Enhanced quality of teaching and learning through better prepared teaching staff Improved uptake of shared resources Transferable Toolkit ‘product’ with relevance to other communities of practice, for instance, those currently using discussion lists

Mapping PROWE (or PROBE) Personal Controlled access Unmoderated (informal) - we think

Any questions? or better still