Finding, adapting, and producing materials
DigCompEdu identifies three core competencies in regards the use of digital resources in higher education:
- Selecting digital resources
- To identify, assess and select digital resources for teaching and learning.
- To consider the specific learning objective, context, pedagogical approach, and learner group, when selecting digital resources and planning their use
- Creating and modifying digital resources
- To modify and build on existing openly-licensed resources and other resources where this is permitted.
- To create or co-create new digital educational resources.
- To consider the specific learning objective, context, pedagogical approach, and learner group, when designing digital resources and planning their use.
- Managing, protecting and sharing digital resources
- To organise digital content and make it available to learners and other educators.
- To effectively protect sensitive digital content. To respect and correctly apply privacy and copyright rules.
- To understand the use and creation of open licenses and open educational resources, including their proper attribution.
It is clear that there is a particular emphasis on 'open educational resources' not just in terms of the last of these, but also in that only openly licensed content is technically able to be edited, adapted, and redistributed. The European Commission has separately constructed an Open Education Framework and a recent variant of DigCompEdu has brought this component into the overall set of competencies. We will discuss this aspect in more detail later in this lesson.
But our main focus here is on thinking about how we decide what materials and resources to use in our courses and programmes and being aware of opportunities for being innovative in how we approach this. Clearly, the traditional university course is typically underpinned by core readings such as well-established textbooks or other reading materials. For those of us who teach, a significant part of our time can be spent in developing our own materials and lecture notes, either augmenting a core text or indeed substituting for one. For some staff, whose priorities may be more oriented to research than teaching this can sometimes be seen as a chore, whilst for other colleagues who thrive by teaching it can be an opportunity for creativity and innovation. Some become enthusiastic about how technology can help produce rich and engaging presentations, quizzes, video vignettes, podcasts, simulations, and much else. For others, the technology is intimidating, and hence the need for those of us who lead teams or manage courses and programmes to think carefully about digital competencies and how we might nurture the development of our colleagues' confidence and willingness to experiment. This is one of the key ways in which the DigCompEdu framework can be particularly helpful.
Few staff who taught during the COVID pandemic years will be complete novices in using technology to produce materials and, indeed, some may well have developed high levels of skill in areas such as video recording and editing, setting up online quizzes, and even using or producing multimedia simulations. Necessity, as they say in English, is the mother of invention! Although it is not clear whether, in the absence of such necessity, this flurry of creativity and production is still prioritised by a busy academic team. It would be a pity to let these skills ossify, and so recognition of effort, encouragement from peers and students, will all play an important role in further development. Your role as a leader and manager is an important one in this regard.