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

From Wikimania 2014 • London, United Kingdom

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.campbell@icloud.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


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