[Open-education] Open Data within Comparative Education studies in Higher Education

Wed Nov 26 13:35:54 UTC 2014

Re: 'Open data potential in higher education' (Marieke Guy)

Working with graduate students to develop skills with open data is one 
of the aims of a project beginning next year on the web. Over this year 
myself and Professor David Turner began work building and connecting 
with a network of professors and students from the social sciences 
working in education, with the aim to begin a project in 2015. This 
project will introduce students to open data principles, tools and to 
data visualisation. It will also serve to connect a broad community of 
graduate students at different academic institutions who work on similar 
types of problems in the social sciences (eg comparative education).

The use of data particularly in the governance of education systems has 
become of key interest within the field of comparative education in 
recent years, particuarlly with the empahsis on surveys such as PISA and 
TIMSS. Eg. Martin Lawn's recent book: 
http://www.symposium-books.co.uk/books/bookdetails.asp?bid=86

We have made a bid for initial seed funding, with a proposal to the 
British Association for Comparative Education for a grant to establish a 
network of researchers internationally, with a disciplinary focus on 
comparative education. We will also be hoping to present initial work at 
the global conference of Comparative and International Education 
Societies in Washington in March http://www.cies.us/

We will begin activity in earnest in January 2015 on the web using an 
open platform, with a view to expand the project over the year with 
graduate students and PhD students at a range of institutions. Initial 
work and experimentation has begun at Beijing Normal University within 
faculty of education, and will also proceed at Cape Peninsula University 
of Technology at the Center for International Teacher Education (CITE).

We are now also exploring partnerships with other universities in 
different countries with groups that have a specific interest in 
different areas of education. We will also be including an Open Badges 
component to the project over the year as well.

This is a presentation describing the rationale for the project which 
can be viewed online or downloaded:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1crsXEdQaTWbg6q86dQm-t7wtIaUIcfbcr-Vdbb_Cutg/edit?usp=sharing

We anticipate that we will seek further support over the year from 
institutions and bodies with an interest in supporting this kind of 
work. We will also be working with the software providers Tableau who 
now offer their desktop software for free to full-time HE students, and 
also with existing networks of data experts such as Codata and other 
established networks of support with experience in capacity 
building:http://www.codata.org/ecdp-core-members 
<http://www.codata.org/ecdp-core-members>

We also hope to work alongside and transfer materials and successful 
approaches into the social sciences from projects like Data Carpentry, 
(which has a workshop tomorrow in Manchester) http://datacarpentry.org/

We would invite any groups or institutions particularly with a focus on 
education at a graduate level that would like to be involved with their 
students in 2015 to get in touch. We also will conduct research into the 
process of transfering working / successful models for capacity building 
around open data in academic contexts to involve institutions from 
different contexts, (not just within the UK), with a specific focus on 
the disciplinary area of comparative education and social science. 
Please see contact details below.

 From the perspective of looking at data about Higher Education, in 
South Africa (where I will be based from February), there has already 
been some research into how open data on performance indicators in 
Higher Education can be used to better assess performance.

http://www.chet.org.za/data/sahe-open-data
http://www.opendataresearch.org/project/2013/uct

Kind regards

Thomas Salmon
-- 
Post-Graduate (M.Ed) candidate
Cape Peninsula University of Technology 
|http://www.cput.ac.za/research/centres/cite
University of Sussex | http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/research/cie/
Linkedin <http://www.linkedin.com/in/tomsalmon12345> |  Blog 
<http://intedanddevelopment.blogspot.co.uk/>

On 25/11/2014 12:00, open-education-request at lists.okfn.org wrote:
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>     1. Open data potential in higher education (Marieke Guy)
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 10:41:08 +0000
> From: Marieke Guy <marieke.guy at okfn.org>
> To: "open-education at lists.okfn.org" <open-education at lists.okfn.org>
> Subject: [Open-education] Open data potential in higher education
> Message-ID: <54745CC4.6060601 at okfn.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; Format="flowed"
>
> Earlier this month the ODI, Universities UK and 8 top UK universities
> launched a project to unlock open data potential in higher education:
> http://theodi.org/news/odi-uuk-and-top-uk-universities-launch-project-to-unlock-open-data-potential-in-higher-education
>
> It will explore the opportunities open data presents the higher
> education (HE) sector in the UK. The project is called "Creating Value
> from Open Data"
>
> "/The project will see the partners research how open data can bring
> about tangible benefits for UK higher education institutions. For
> example, the project team will initially create an open data application
> to help support the student experience at university. The project will
> explore the practical challenges of developing and implementing open
> data across higher education./
>
> /It will also publish one or more HE datasets, develop custom open data
> training package(s) for HE institutions, create a road map for future
> work developing open data in the sector, and a white paper setting out
> the case for greater open data adoption across HE. The project is due to
> compete in summer 2015./"
>
> I was wondering if any other countries are embarking on similar
> projects? Love to hear about them!
>
> Marieke
>
>

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