Cardiff OER event. 15/03/10

Glamorgan Building - Committee Room

It was a sunny morning when we arrived at the University of Cardiff’s elegant Glamorgan Building, constructed in 1889 and originally home to the Glamorgan county council. The room itself was covered in elegant Victorian boiserie from which hung portraits of past Glamorgan county councillors. Not necessarily the first place you would expect an event to illustrate the benefits of OER and simulation learning.

To begin the day Professor Paul Maharg of Northumbria University gave a presentation on simulation learning and how it can be used in higher education. He covered the pros and cons of creating simulations and offered advice for creating your own. Slides of the presentation are available on his slideshare site and there will be a slidecast available from the Simshare site shortly. He has also written a short  blog about the event here.

There was a short break for coffee and conversation before the day progressed to a series of case studies of simulation led learning.

• Martin Lynch, University of Glamorgan, opened with his game based simulation ‘Tileworld’. He also covered a very realistic medical simulation and a disaster management simulation which included battlefield casualties
• Karen Counsell, University of Glamorgan, discussed her repurposing and reapplication of simulations she had adapted as OER simulations
• Finally Julie Price & Pat Brand, University of Cardiff, discussed a project involving real life situations (defending clients through a pro bono clinic) which could potentially be adapted as a simulation.

The afternoon workshop was led by Karen Barton from the University of Strathclyde. Karen is part of the Simshare team and as such has extensive knowledge of using simulation in education. Her session described the best tools and practices for creating effective simulations. There were several group discussions each giving way to ideas for creating simulations. Karen’s presentation was recorded and will be available as a slidecast on the Simshare site shortly.

Patricia McKellar then gave a presentation on Simshare, hopefully the future home of any sims born of the previous session. People were talked through the various features of the site, particularly the social features. Simshare’s success depends upon the ‘community’ of users surrounding it. Collaboration and sharing are essential so everyone was invited to sign up and begin accessing the simulations already housed there. You can join the community even if you’re without a simulation, comment on an existing resource, share how you used it in class; any contribution, no matter how small, is welcome!

The last presentation of the day was an informal panel discussion, with the purpose of clearing up any further confusions of OER and simulation learning. It was also a chance for people to give comment on what they had seen of Simshare. The feedback was generally positive; some highlights included compliments on the site being easy to use and relief that there are no excessive forms to fill in or restrictions on file types.

Throughout the day it became apparent to some of the delegates that they have been using sims for years but didn’t recognise it as such (e.g. some PBL case studies lend themselves to sim learning). Other delegates were not entirely sure and don’t necessarily understand what is meant by OER so we need to do a bit more on this in future. We’re looking at ways to get the message across and in the post event discussions Paul Maharg suggested something along the lines of the Yale Admissions video- although not sure if we’ve got the singing voices!