OER1006 Oral Presentation

I am what I am: Self-identity, communities and reviewing in the humanities HumBox project.

Dr David J Mossley, Subject Centre for PRS, HumBox

Conference Theme: Open Education Communities

Abstract: The JISC/HEA OER Humbox project has brought together departmental partners from across the humanities to share, review and develop teaching resources. The success of the project is founded on its strong basis as discipline and community focused. This presentation outlines how this was achieved from the outset in the project’s design, philosophy, methodology, technological innovation through adaptation of existing techniques, disciplinary focus and dissemination. Aspects of review, collection and categorisation were tailored to match the approaches familiar to academics in humanities; contested and constructed areas of knowledge were not prejudged allowing bottom-up disciplinary and interdisciplinary community engagement. With some exceptions in language teaching and research, matching collaborative teaching resource development to recognised practices and community identities in research is the exception rather than the rule in the humanities; a central part of the HumBox project was to explore and evaluate how well this could be extended. The presentation shares insights from the process and stresses the need for future OER development to be owned by self-identifying communities of academic practice. Finally, there is a short assessment of the future of OER in the humanities and how Web 2 technologies present challenges and opportunities for further nurturing the approach taken by HumBox.

Keywords: open educational resources, communities, academic practice, humanities, identity, bottom-up, teaching, learning, methodology, technology

References:
Becher, T. and Trowler, P.R. (2001) Academic Tribes and Territories Buckingham: Open University Press