Digital Futures in Teacher Education: Open educational resources and quality of teaching Project Lead: Richard Pountney, Faculty of Development and Society Principal Investigator: Guy Merchant, Faculty of Development and Society

Digital literacy: issues and concerns 

Overview of the DeFT: Digital Futures in Teacher Education project  Part of a larger UK Open Educational Resources (OER) programme, led jointly by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) and the Higher Education Academy on behalf of HEFCE.  Builds on previous involvement of the team with the OER programme  Links with Collaboration Sheffield, the Transformative Change project involving both Sheffield universities  Key goal is to raise the status and quality of teaching and the level of digital literacies and the (re)use of OERs in the teaching workforce.

Project partners  Sheffield Hallam University (Lead institution)  University of Sheffield  4 PGCE tutors at SHU and TUOS  Initial Teacher Education students at SHU and TUOS - PGCE/BA in Education  8 primary and secondary schools Local creative/digital industry partners:  Learning Connections  SmartAssess  Sheffield Children's Festival  Yorkshire and Humber Grid for Learning  UK Literacy Association

Key terms: Open Educational Resources … digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research (OECD, 2007). Create License Remix Share … teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. (Atkins et al. 2007).

Key terms: Digital literacy  A blend of ICT, media and information skills and knowledge situated within academic practice contexts while influenced by a wide range of techno-social practices involving communication, collaboration and participation in networks.  The project embraces a holistic view of digital literacy and engages with a number of different actors involved in/ influenced by issues related to teacher education  The project works on the assumption that increasingly the skills and experience that learners (and their teachers) have or need is changing and the baseline is being raised.

Digital literacies: ‘stages of development'

Project outputs: Open textbook  i) Digital literacies in the context of professional development: opportunities and challenges of embedding digital literacies within teacher education  ii) Digital literacies for creative learners: a set of tools and resources for embedding OERs within the school sector.  These materials will be accompanied by pedagogical descriptions with the aim to become incorporated into existing PGCE/PGCert modules

Key relationships

Case studies/stories of OER (re)use  Partners’ reflections on the process: before, during, after – examination of assumptions, challenges involved in “opening up” the materials  Focused around one module - but reflect across the scope of the project  Supporting materials Evaluating the Practice of Opening up Resources for Learning and Teaching in the Social Sciences

Key issues: quality in teaching with OERs  Focus on the “why” rather than the “how” of Open Educational Resources  Emphasis on the broader cultural and institutional context in which OERs are created and (re)used and any resulting issues and/or tensions  Release of OERs at an institutional level provides an opportunity for existing quality measures (technical/pedagogical) to be reconsidered/evaluated

For more information:  This presentation can be accessed from our slideshare account at:  Project blog:  Follow us on Twitter  Contact details:  Project manager: Anna Gruszczynska ext  Project assistant: Nicky Watts 