As our open education activities and research continue to build momentum, staff at De Montfort University are keen to disseminate their findings as widely as possible.
2011 was no exception and a busy year with 3 full research papers accepted for publication and a number of articles presented at national conferences. At the HEA Bioscience Conference in June 2011, Viv presented research into the search engine optimisation (SEO) approaches used on the SCOOTER website. These are on-line marketing techniques used for commercial practices to boost product awareness and sales, but all the principles apply to boosting awareness of university resources – it is just that we are not looking for commercial gain!
The abstract can be found on the SCOOTER website :
Rolfe V (2011). Raising the profile of Bioscience Open Educational Resources (OERs) on the Web. Proceedings of the Effective Learning in the Biosciences Conference. June 30 – July 1 2011, Edinburgh UK.
Available at:
http://www.sicklecellanaemia.org/resources/resources/scooter64-65/scooter64.html
In a second piece of research, Viv and Douglas Gray completed a systematic review to ask the question whether multimedia resources – video, animation, podcasts etc, are really effective educational tools. We know that students love using on-line video but do they really help students learn? The resources reviewed here were not open education resources with many of the papers found pre-2000 so before the term “open education” originated. However the findings are directly relevant.
The abstract can be found on the SCOOTER website:
Rolfe V and Gray D(2011). Are multimedia resources effective in Bioscience education? Proceedings of the Effective Learning in the Biosciences Conference. June 30 – July 1 2011, Edinburgh UK.
Available at:
http://www.sicklecellanaemia.org/resources/resources/scooter64-65/scooter65.html
As 2011 closes, 2012 promises to be a busy year with papers submitted to the OER12 conference in Cambridge, and further funding gained by Viv Rolfe and Mark Fowler to look at university policy for promoting and supporting education.
All our publications on open education and our other subjects of interest can be found on the De Montfort research archive DORA:
