File:POERUP D4.3 IE.pdf

Executive Summary

This report is Deliverable 3.4IE, Options Brief Pack – Ireland. It makes the following recommendations.

Higher Education

POERUP regards the approach of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education as well-researched and in line with good practice in Opening Up Education towards Open Access, OER, MOOCs etc.

Key specific recommendations from POERUP are:

A. HEA should recommend to HEIs that they should work to improve and proceduralise their activity on APL (Accreditation of Prior Learning, in its various submodes) and in particular to accredit knowledge and competences developed through all kinds of online study, informal and work-based learning, including but not restricted to OER and MOOCs, within agreed limits. In this context, QQI and other interested parties should consider whether the specific Ireland context needs an Open Accreditor to assist small and specialist institutions to handle APL for students entering these institutions and seeking to accredit prior study. The work can build on QQI’s Green Paper on the Recognition of Prior Learning. Direct accreditation by the Open Accreditor should be a last resort.

B. HEA should consider whether there are programmes or specific teaching situations (e.g. first year studies, pre-university studies) where a common approach to provision makes sense, and in the light of a successful outcome to such initiatives, foster the developments of common bases of OER material to support such provision.

C. HEA should fund research into the cost basis for university teaching in both traditional and non-traditional modes and consider the implications of the results on its approach to funding. This is likely to be controversial (as it was in Scotland) but should be done.

Other recommendations from POERUP include:

d. HEA should set up an innovation fund to support one new online initiative each year within an overall commitment to opening up education. This is happening now but should be ongoing year on year.

e. QQI should, with reference to the Ireland context: Continue to develop its understanding of new modes of learning (including online, distance, OER and MOOCs) and how they impact quality assurance and recognition; Engage in debates on copyright within the Ireland legal context; Consider the effects of these new modes on quality assurance and recognition as they impact on Ireland HEIs and the specific delivery regime in Ireland (including Irish language and bilingual); Ensure that there continues to be no implicit non-evidence-based bias against these new modes when accrediting new providers (if relevant in the Wales context) and inspecting institutions/programmes. This is slow-burn but should start now.

f. HEA and QQI should contribute to the debate about a more flexible approach to measuring credit ratings of modules, less based on study times, drawing on the Ireland experience with credit transfer, WBL, flexible learning and APL (both APCL and APEL): leading to the development of a Bologna-bis framework based primarily on competences gained not duration of study. This process should start now, but (or because) progress will be slow.

g. HEA should encourage Ireland’s HEIs to keep their continuous professional development programmes up to date in terms of newer modes of teaching and learning, including not only campus-based online learning but distance learning, OER, MOOCs and other forms of open educational practice, and to move such programmes online and increasingly open and collaborative between institutions. A funded pilot implementation is recommended.

h. HEA, Irish Research Council and related Ireland funding bodies should continue to ensure that any public outputs from their funded programmes are made available as open resources under an appropriate license.

i. Ireland’s HEIs should adopt a standard license for all openly available educational material. This is straightforward and essentially cost-free.

Colleges

Key recommendations are:

I. Reduce any regulatory barriers against new non-study-time-based modes of provision in further education.

II. Establish (and adequately fund) a professional development programme to help lecturers and administrators understand the benefits and uses of OER and open licensing. This would support CPD on the creation, use and re-use of OER, with coverage of distance learning, MOOCs and other forms of open educational practice, and also IPR issues.

III. Increase scrutiny of the cost basis for further education delivery and consider the benefits of output-based funding for qualifications.

Schools

Key recommendations are:

i. The Irish Government should ensure that budgets for digital educational resources are flexible enough to support the development (and maintenance) of openly licensed materials, possibly in collaboration with publishers.

ii. The Irish Government should ensure that their Quality Assurance or materials approval processes permit that OER are allowed to be included on approved instructional materials lists, subject to fulfilling relevant criteria.

iii. The Irish Government should continue their focus on improving the ICT in education infrastructure (and levelling out disparities of access) so that it is able to exploit potential pedagogical and financial advantages of OER.

iv. Target areas for the use of OER in schools should include:

• literacy and numeracy
• Irish-medium education1
• online material including OER to support teaching and learning at Leaving Certificate level, especially but not only in mathematics2
• Support for homeschooled children, both directly and via institutions such as iScoil3
• employability in the context of 21st century skills