[19/01/2023] Vidminas Vizgirda, Fiona McNeill and Brian Mitchell (course organisers for INF1B, Object-Oriented Programming) set out to give their course a modern revamp. They will improve the materials’ presentation and accessibility and enable access for the wider public by hosting them on a public-access website, available under a CC-BY-SA open license. Image This initiative is in line with the University’s Open Education Resources policy that encourages staff and students “to create and publish OERs to enhance the quality of the student experience, increase the provision of learning opportunities for all, and contribute to the global pool of open knowledge”. Students co-creating their own learning materials Following the Informatics Teaching Festival and the Learning and Teaching Conference in summer 2022, the course team decided to pivot the INF1B course assessment from students individually solving toy problems to co-creating small programming tutorials and peer reviewing each other’s materials. The best materials could be added, with the students’ permission, to the new public course website, both adding real meaning to the students’ work and improving the course over time. This pivot is in line with the new Curriculum Transformation Programme goals. Courses content accessible for the public INF1B would be the first course in the School of Informatics to explicitly make materials accessible for the public by ensuring the new site is indexed by search engines and includes ways for the public to contribute, using comments/feedback sections on webpages and issues/pull requests on code repositories. The project “Set Them Free! Open Publishing of INF1B Course Materials” will be funded from the Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme Small (PTAS) Grant Award. Related links Open educational resources Object-Oriented Programming on DRPS This article was published on 2024-03-18
