Team Project

The aim of this course is to develop students’ capacity to work in interdisciplinary project teams, and to upgrade in practice their knowledge and skills needed for open education design.

Students will acquire the following competences:

 Ability to assess the adequacy of existing educational materials, identify gaps and prepare new open educational resources of good quality with the use of traditional and advanced ICT and in cooperation with field experts and teachers;

 Ability to find missing information and to develop specific expertise needed for OE design in a context, of a concrete project task;

 Ability of solving real interdisciplinary OE design problems in a team,

 Ability to present their project in a written form and orally, and to discuss about the project and OE topics with international audience.

Intended learning outcomes:
After the end of the course, students will have

• Knowledge about the complete process of developing OL – from OL demand, specification and development to implementation;

• Skills required for creative design of OL

• Knowledge about basic principles of project management, and know how to act as a responsible member of a team;

• Knowledge about group dynamics within the project team;

• Ability to communicate about open issues in an efficient and assertive way;

• Enhanced ability to critically evaluate their personal contribution to the results of the team.

Students should have knowledge obtained from the courses Introduction to Open Educatin, Open Education Design and Effective Didactical Practices in Open Education. Students should be able to use tools for computer-supported collaborative work, and should be prepared to work in teams.

During the course students will be solving a specific problem in the field of open education design. Through the practical work, students will learn about the principles of project man-agement and project group work. The problem will be complex enough to require an interdis-ciplinary approach and teamwork. Every year, a new project task will be carefully selected on the basis of real problems of open education and will require concrete solutions with practi-cal value.

Study process will consist of the following phases:

1 Introduction

• Presentation of course objectives
• Instructions for project work

2 Project set-up

• Project task presentation
• Project team organization

3 Content design

• OL Curriculum development
• Content selection

1. Detailed project work plan

• Project coordination and means of work
• The division of work
• Determination of the phases of the project
• Time Plan
• Discussion and Consultations

1. Teamwork

• OL development and coordination
• Regular (online) meetings with presentation of intermediate results
• Discussion and Consultations

6 Final report

• Preparation of a written report
• Preparing for a public presentation
• Consultations
• Public presentation

7 Final analysis of the project

• Critical evaluation of project results
• Evaluation of the workflow
• Summary of experience – Lessons learned

After the end of the course, students will have

• Knowledge about the complete process of developing OL – from OL demand, specification and development to implementation;

• Skills required for creative design of OL

• Knowledge about basic principles of project management, and know how to act as a responsible member of a team;

• Knowledge about group dynamics within the project team;

• Ability to communicate about open issues in an efficient and assertive way;

• Enhanced ability to critically evaluate their personal contribution to the results of the team.

To prepare for the project work:

R. Newton: The Theory and Practice of Project Management: Creating Value Thorough Change. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. ISBN 978‐0‐230‐53667‐8

Due to the nature of the subject other literature is not prescribed in advance. It is determined each year and for each group according to the contents of selected projects by mentors. Addition-al sources are found by students with a help of their mentors as a part of the study process.

• Monitoring of project developments and deliverables, including capabili-ties for project communication and management of group dynamics, with elements of peer- and self-evaluation (20 %) • Interim presentations (20 %) • Final presentation of project results with discussion (60 %)

Tel Amiel completed his PhD in Instructional Technology at the University of Georgia. He is currently Adjunct Professor at the School of Education at the University of Brasília where he coordinates the UNESCO Chair in Distance Education, and is Adjunct Professor at University of Nova Gorica in the Masters in Open Leadership program. He was previously the UNESCO Chair in Open Education (Unicamp), was a visiting fellow at the University of Wollongong and Stanford University, and a visiting professor at Utah State University. More information on https://amiel.net.br.

Selected bibliography:

Amiel, T., ter Haar, E., Vieira, M. S., & Soares, T. C. (in press). Who benefits from the public good? How OER is contributing to the private appropriation of the educational commons. In P. N. Mizukami & J. F. Reia (Eds.), Shadow libraries – From the photocopier to the cloud: Access to knowledge, piracy and education. Rio de Janeiro: CTS/FGV.
Amiel, T., Duran, M. R. da C., & Costa, C. (in review). Building institutional policies on openness through open educational resources: An analysis of the Open University of Brazil.

Zancanaro, A., & Amiel, T. (2017). The academic production on open educational resources in Portuguese. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 20(1).
doi.org/10.5944/ried.20.1.16332

Amiel, T., & Soares, T. C. (2016). Identifying tensions in the use of open licenses in OER repositories. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 17(3). dx.doi.org/
10.19173/irrodl.v17i3.2426

Amiel, T., & Duran, M. R. da C. (2015). Desafios do trabalho com recursos educacionais abertos na
formaçăo inicial docente. Revista EmRede, 2(2), 76–92. Retrieved from aunirede.org.br/revista/
index.php/emrede/article/viewFile/66/84. The challenges of working with open educational resources in initial teacher training.

Amiel, T., Kubota, L. C., & Wives, W. W. (2016). A systemic model for differentiating school technology integration. Research in Learning Technology, 24. dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v24.31856

Amiel, T., & Soares, T. (2015). O contexto da abertura: Recursos educacionais abertos, cibercultura e suas tensőes. Em Aberto, 28(94), 109–122. Retrieved from emaberto.inep.gov.br/index.php/
emaberto/article/view/1673/1644. The context of openness: Open educational resources, cyber cultur

Duran, M. R. C., Costa, C. J. da, & Amiel, T. (2014). The Open University System of Brazil: A study of learner support facilities in the northern, north-eastern and southern regions. Policy Futures in Education, 12,221. dx.doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2014.12.2.220

Amiel, T. (2014). Recursos Educacionais Abertos: Uma análise a partir do livro didático de história. Revista História Hoje, 3(5), 189–205. dx.doi.org/10.20949/rhhj.v3i5.128. Open educational resources: An analysis through the lens of History textbooks.

Amiel, T., & Amaral, S. F. do. (2013). Nativos e imigrantes: Questionando a fluęncia tecnológica de alunos e professores. Revista Brasileira de Informática Na Educaçăo, 21(3), 1–11. dx.doi.org/10.5753/
RBIE.2013.21.03.1. Natives and immigrants: Questioning the technology fluency of teachers.

Amiel, T., & Santos, K. (2013). Uma análise dos termos de uso de repositórios de recursos educacionais digitais no Brasil. Trilha Digital, 1, 118-133. Retrieved from: editorarevistas.mackenzie.br/index.php/Tdig/article/view/5892. An analysis of the terms of use in repositories for digital educational resources in Brazil.

Amiel, T. (2013). Identifying Barriers to the Remix of Translated Open Educational Resources.
International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 14(3), 126–144.
dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v14i1.1351