www.le.ac.uk

China is harvesting your iTunes Uand other findings from researching how overseas students engage with open learning materials

Terese Bird Learning Technologist & SCORE Research FellowInstitute of Learning InnovationUniversity of Leicester

What shall we talk about?• Current HE climate -> OER

• iTunes U Reach Project

• Uni of Leicester’s OER

• Chinese Open Course harvested from iTunes U

• How OER can help Chinese students choose your university

• What is China looking at?

Photo by ToGa Wanderings on Flickr CC-BY-NC

OER and Open Ed: Their time has come• Reaching for overseas

students

• Distance learning

• MOOCs

• OER as ‘soft marketing’

• JISC Factors 2011:– Financial constraints– Reputation– Course marketisation(McGill, 2011)

iTunes U Reach – HEA OER International Aims & Objectives• To gather and create high-quality open-licensed learning materials

by University of Leicester for release into iTunes U

• To document and arrange into a framework the procedures and standards utilised in the choice and preparation of iTunes U OER

• To ascertain how international students who use iTunes U materials find, select, and view/listen to them, and to discover whether and how these students make conclusions about the universities that provide them.

• To inform and listen to University of Leicester academics in discussion considering how iTunes U may be of use to share out their materials and message to international students

Online Survey N=102 ‘potential students’(Bird, 2013)

Do you use, or have you ever used, iTunes U?’

‘Do you use, or have you ever used, iTunes U?’ – by country

How do/did you select suitable materials?

What was your reason for selecting these materials? (Choose all that apply)

Have these materials helped you to achieve this aim?

As a result of your experiences with these materials, would you consider studying at the institution that produced them?

Leicester’s Multimedia OER

• YouTube channel videos

• Narrated presentations

• Still images or screencasts with voiceover

• Audio lecture recordings

• Audio research vigniettes

• Ebooks – pdf, epub, .ibooks

Happy Harvesting• Netease software company

joined OCW 2011• Harvest CC-licensed(?)

Western VIDEO of interest to interns working at Netease, for OpenCourse app:– Western law– Media / Social Media– Philosophy / Death– Kahn– TED

Your university’s OER can encourage enrollment by Chinese students

• Agents

• League tables

• After being accepted, students search for course content and sample lectures

What did China look at on Univ Leicester iTunes U? 1-10 August, 2013Subject Video Audio Doc Browse/

Subscribe

English 5 5 20

Medicine 13 10 1

History 1 4

Engineering/Programming 2

Psychology 10

Media & Communications 7

Management 4 5

Forensic Science 2

Actuarial Science 6 1

Chemistry 6

Public Lectures 1

Final tips for a Chinese Connection• Post a video on YouTube, embed on Youku

• Try Sina Weibo, the Chinese Twitter

• Contact Netease to suggest your university’s open material for their app

Image from Netease recorded

lecture by M Sandel

Thank you!

• Bird, T. (2013). iTunes U Reach: Case Study of University of Leicester’s Release of Open Educational Resources for International Students through iTunes U. Leicester, UK.

• McGill, L. (2012). OER Synthesis and Evaluation / OER Synthesis and Evaluation Project. OER Synthesis and Evaluation Project. Retrieved March 09, 2013, from https://oersynth.pbworks.com/w/page/29595671/OER Synthesis and Evaluation Project