{"id":3697,"date":"2014-04-10T14:53:31","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T14:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsletter.alt.ac.uk\/?p=3697"},"modified":"2014-04-10T14:53:31","modified_gmt":"2014-04-10T14:53:31","slug":"the-open-course-you-cannot-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2014\/04\/the-open-course-you-cannot-fail\/","title":{"rendered":"The open course you cannot fail&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>\u2026 unless you fail to find something interesting.<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">The second run of ocTEL, the Open Course in Technology Enhanced Learning, is starting at the end of April. Last year we ran the course[1], designed, written and supported by members of ALT, for the first time and 1200+ people registered. Within the first few days, hundreds of participants interacted with the course and its fledgling community in some way. Then, different patterns of engagement began to emerge from those who were actively completing activities to those joining live sessions, posting in forums, blogging, tweeting or lurking.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">So this time round, with a slightly shorter course, and a focus beyond teaching in Higher Education, how do we hope participation in the course will happen? The answer is simple: you cannot fail the course or fail to complete it. You might ask, why is that and how does it work then? Here are our thoughts on how you can make ocTEL work for you:<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Participating<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">The course has an introduction week and 6 week-long modules (with a break in the middle). While you can participate from the first day to the last, there is no expectation that you do so. Modules, activities and live sessions don\u2019t require you to have completed any of the previous ones, leaving you free to pick what\u2019s most relevant to you, your role and your context. Each week there will be a \u201cif you only do one thing\u201d section, highlighting what we have chosen as a key activity. There will also be core activities, resources and a live session &#8211; and there is a new TEL explorer section for those of us who want to find out more about a particular topic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">Here is a list of the content of the course:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Week 0: TEL &amp; the future (induction) &#8211; 28 Apr 2014<\/li>\n<li>Week 1: Concepts and approaches &#8211; 5 May 2014<\/li>\n<li>Week 2: Learners and learning &#8211; 12 May 2014<\/li>\n<li>Week 3: Materials, platforms and technologies &#8211; 19 May 2014<\/li>\n<li>Week 4: Support, feedback and assessment &#8211; 2 Jun 2014<\/li>\n<li>Week 5: Leadership, management and keeping on track &#8211; 9 Jun 2014<\/li>\n<li>Week 6: Enhancement, review and evaluation &#8211; 16 Jun 2014<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">Whatever you choose to participate in, there will be a range of options for doing so, which you can choose when you register and change throughout the course, including various social media channels, the course platform itself, your own blog, an email list, notifications and so forth. Lurkers are welcome! Particularly if you find something that\u2019s relevant to you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">We are also working on incorporating open badges into the course, so there may well be a badge or two to earn for those who are looking to have something to show for their participation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Link to registration form\" href=\"https:\/\/www.alt.ac.uk\/civicrm\/event\/info?reset=1&amp;id=101\">Click here to register for ocTEL<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">Contributing<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">The course is designed, written and supported by members of ALT on a pro bono basis. All its content depends on our community and your expertise, experience and know-how. You can contribute resources, <a title=\"Link to form for tutors\" href=\"https:\/\/docs.google.com\/forms\/d\/1hp42RYTG6qyiwqCClPSSv2FvjwF1h2Wba2AFeK1RLLo\/viewform\">become a tutor<\/a> or help run one of the live sessions. You can also contribute to discussions, use the #ocTEL tag to share your own content across the web.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Once the course is up and running and you spot a gap or have a good example which might help others, you can still contribute.<\/p>\n<h2>Re-use, re-share, re-mix<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">ocTEL is an open course. By open, we don\u2019t just mean free or open to all (although it is both of these things), but its content and platform are openly published. All content of the course is published under a creative commons licence (CC-BY), which means that you can re-use it, share it and re-mix it. Thus, if a part of the course is particularly relevant to the staff development in your institution, you can download all the materials and use them in your own context.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>We also collect data about the course and all related activity, with the permission of participants, which we then also publish openly for researchers and others to use.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">We hope that as a flexible, open way to share and create knowledge about what works and what doesn\u2019t, about the intelligent use of Learning Technology, you will find a way to make ocTEL work for you. If the course enables you to find out about something interesting, have a valuable insight or make a new connection between 28 April and the end of June, then the course will have been a success.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Link to ocTEL platform\" href=\"http:\/\/octel.alt.ac.uk\/\">The ocTEL platform<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\"><a title=\"Link to registration form\" href=\"https:\/\/www.alt.ac.uk\/civicrm\/event\/info?reset=1&amp;id=101\">Join us, register for ocTEL<\/a>.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5em\">[1]\u00a0In 2013 ocTEL was funded by a grant from the Innovation and Transformation Fund of the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"info\">The\u00a0Association for Learning Technology Team<\/p>\n<p class=\"note\">If you enjoyed reading this article we invite you join the\u00a0<a title=\"Link to membership page\" href=\"http:\/\/www.alt.ac.uk\/get-involved\/membership\">Association for Learning Technology (ALT)<\/a>\u00a0as an individual member, and to encourage your own organisation to join ALT as an organisational or sponsoring member.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2026 unless you fail to find something interesting. The second run of ocTEL, the Open Course in Technology Enhanced Learning, is starting at the end of April. Last year we ran the course[1], designed, written and supported by members of ALT, for the first time and 1200+ people registered. Within the first few days, hundreds [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[725,933,943],"class_list":["post-3697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alt-news","category-featured","tag-altc","tag-mooc","tag-octel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/04\/Im-participating-with-new-logo.jpg?fit=1024%2C768&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3840,"url":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2014\/05\/octel-course-underway-registration-still-open\/","url_meta":{"origin":3697,"position":0},"title":"ocTEL course underway, registration still open","author":"ALT","date":"1 May 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Welcoming over 900 participants, we launched the Open Course in Technology Enhanced Learning\u00a0(ocTEL)\u00a0on Monday, 28th April 2014. ocTEL is a 7-week Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to help participants \u00a0understand better how to use technology to enhance teaching practices. The open, flexible nature of ocTEL means we'd argue that you\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;ALT news&quot;","block_context":{"text":"ALT news","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/category\/alt-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3687,"url":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2014\/04\/chief-executives-report-8\/","url_meta":{"origin":3697,"position":1},"title":"Chief Executive\u2019s Report","author":"ALT","date":"9 April 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A shared vision for the future In early February Diana Laurillard, Chair of ALT, led the launch of our\u00a0new strategy for 2014-17. The strategy sets out a clear vision for the work of the Association over the next three years and strongly articulates our core values of being participative, open\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Chief Executive's Reports&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Chief Executive's Reports","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/category\/reports\/chief-executives-reports\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2013\/06\/ALTC12_0464.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2013\/06\/ALTC12_0464.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2013\/06\/ALTC12_0464.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2013\/06\/ALTC12_0464.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2013\/06\/ALTC12_0464.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4353,"url":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2014\/11\/alt-innovates-views-on-institutional-deployment-of-digital-badges\/","url_meta":{"origin":3697,"position":2},"title":"ALT Innovates: Views on institutional deployment of digital and Open badges","author":"ALT","date":"13 November 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"There was a recent question on the ALT-MEMBERS mailing list about the institutional deployment of digital and Open Badges. Issues raised included maintaining institutional branding and quality assurance. Having used Open Badges as part of ALT's Open Course in Technology Enhanced Learning (ocTEL) here were my thoughts","rel":"","context":"In &quot;ALT innovates&quot;","block_context":{"text":"ALT innovates","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/category\/alt-innovates\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/11\/67220830%40N02_h.jpg?fit=1200%2C450&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/11\/67220830%40N02_h.jpg?fit=1200%2C450&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/11\/67220830%40N02_h.jpg?fit=1200%2C450&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/11\/67220830%40N02_h.jpg?fit=1200%2C450&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1112\/2014\/11\/67220830%40N02_h.jpg?fit=1200%2C450&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":164,"url":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2015\/03\/webinar-recording-living-and-learning-in-the-open-supporting-and-developing-open-courses\/","url_meta":{"origin":3697,"position":3},"title":"Webinar Recording: Living and learning in the open: Supporting and developing open courses","author":"ALT","date":"12 March 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"In this session Vivien Rolfe talks\u00a0to Martin Hawksey, Chief Innovation, Community and Technology Officer at the Association for Learning Technology (ALT), about the development of the Open Course in Technology Enhanced Learning (ocTEL). As part of this we explore how ALT Members supported the design, development and running of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Webinars&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Webinars","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/category\/webinar\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2292,"url":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2013\/02\/chief-executives-report-3-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":3697,"position":4},"title":"Chief Executive\u2019s Report","author":"ALT","date":"26 February 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"By Maren Deepwell","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Chief Executive's Reports&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Chief Executive's Reports","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/category\/reports\/chief-executives-reports\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4029,"url":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2014\/06\/alt-issues-first-open-badges-as-part-of-octel-and-releases-plugin-to-the-community\/","url_meta":{"origin":3697,"position":5},"title":"ALT issues first Open Badges as part of ocTEL and releases plugin to the community","author":"ALT","date":"16 June 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"ALT's Open Course in Technology Enhanced Learning (ocTEL) is entering its final week. ocTEL has been and continues to be an excellent opportunity to explore ways in which we support ALT's community of members. Last year the work we did in setting up a blog and community aggregations site directly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;ALT innovates&quot;","block_context":{"text":"ALT innovates","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/category\/alt-innovates\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"OpenBadges_Insignia_WeIssue_Banner (1)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newsletter.alt.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/OpenBadges_Insignia_WeIssue_Banner-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6CxU9-XD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}