Submissions/Open Scotland: Opening up education policy and practice in Scotland

After careful consideration, the Programme Committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2014 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this August.

Submission no. 3019

Title of the submission: Open Scotland - Opening up education policy and practice in Scotland

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop): Presentation

Author of the submission: Lorna M. Campbell, Fionnuala Carmichael, Sheila MacNeill, Joe Wilson

E-mail address: lorna.m.campbellicloud.com

Username: LornaMCampbell

Country of origin: Scotland

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.): Cetis

Personal homepage or blog: http://lornamcampbell.wordpress.com/

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

Open Scotland is a voluntary cross-sector initiative, led by Cetis, SQA, Jisc RSC Scotland and the ALT Scotland SIG, which aims to raise awareness of all aspects of open education and explore the potential of open policy and practice to benefit all sectors of Scottish education. Scotland has a distinctive and highly regarded tradition of education, however policies to support open education have yet to be articulated at national or institutional level. Despite the absence of top down strategic drivers, a number of open education initiatives have emerged in Scotland including MOOCs, OER repositories, OER guidelines for staff and students, Open Badges initiatives and engagement with the Wikimedia community and the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Building on these developments, Open Scotland aims to encourage the sharing of open educational resources, embed open educational practice, and lobby for policies that support open education. To achieve these aims, Open Scotland has undertaken a number of activities over the last year. These include the Open Scotland Summit, which brought together senior managers, policy makers and key thinkers to explore the development of open education policy and practice in Scotland. The Open Scotland blog, hosted on A Domain of One's Own, and #OpenScot hashtag, have been established to disseminate news and developments relating to all aspects of openness in Scottish education. More recently, Open Scotland has launched the draft Scottish Open Education Declaration. This declaration is based on the UNESCO Paris OER Declaration of 2012, but broadens its scope to include all aspects of open education, not just OER. The draft declaration has been launched using the open source CommentPress application to enable all members of the community to comment and contribute.

Awareness of open education appears to be growing in Scotland but continued advocacy is required to encourage the development of open education policy and practice at the national level. Open Scotland will continue to engage with open education practitioners, and communities such as Wikimedia UK, to highlight the benefits of all aspects of open education and to encourage the development of open education policy for Scotland.

Track: Education Outreach

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long): 30 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Yes

Slides or further information (optional)

Special requests: Cannot present on Sunday

Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with a hash and four tildes. (# ~~~~).

Add your username here.