The cascade must go on: Invitation to a webinar introducing “Creativity for edupunks”

This webinar will introduce “Creativity for Edupunks”, a wiki-based resource (http://creativity4edupunks.pbworks.com ) produced by Phil Johnson and Craig Hammond based at University Centre at Blackburn College in the context of the second phase of the UK Open Educational Resources programme. This resource seeks to develop OER literacy and encourage the use, reuse and subsequent production of such resources. It was created as a result of the authors’ participation in the  ‘Cascading Social Science Open Educational Resources’ project and puts forward ‘anarchogogy’ as a pedagogical position. In its entirety, it is intended to be a staff development programme for lecturers working at HE in FE institutions but its composite parts can be individually used by anyone interested in different approaches to teaching and learning. The resource adopts reflexive and recursive methods in order to access the circles of feedback facilitated by the OER movement.

The webinar will take place on Friday, October 07, 2011 at 3 p.m., to join please follow the link below on the day:

Click here to join the webinar

Strictly come cascading…at Teesside University, 16 September 2011

The event is part of our efforts to realise the principles of the cascade framework in practice. Participation is free with lunch and refreshments provided, however you will need to contact Anna Gruszczynska (a.gruszczynska@bham.ac.uk) to book your place. For travel directions please see Teesside University website.

Cascading Open Educational Resources – a dissemination and networking event at Teesside University, 16^th September 2011, 11:00-16:00 (Clarendon Building)

The aim of the event is to disseminate early results of the cascade project, with an emphasis on issues involved in OER creation and re-use. The event will also be a networking opportunity, allowing the participants to learn more about initiatives currently being undertaken within the JISC/HEA funded UK Open Educational Resources Programme as well as the SCORE [Support Centre for Open Resources in Education] project funded by Open University.

The provisional programme is as follows (subject to change)

11:00-12:15	Presentations by the C-SAP cascade team Anna Gruszczynska (C-SAP)– Introduction and overview of the cascade projectMichael Teague(Teesside University):  OER and staff perceptions Phil Johnson (University Centre at Blackburn College): Anarchogogy in the UK? Craig Hammond (University Centre at Blackburn College):  Creativity for Edupunks – Embedding OERs within an HE in FE context Dafydd Trystan (Coleg Cymraeg): Welsh medium OERs
12:15-13:00	Review and Endorsement of OERs by Graduate Recruiting Employers in HumBox– presentation by SCORE fellow, Antonio Martinez-Arboleda (University of Leeds)
13:00-14:00	Lunch
14:00-16:00	Workshop on using, finding and creating OERs

Antonio Martinez-Arboleda is Senior Teaching Fellow in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Leeds. He is currently working on a research project “Review and Endorsement of Open Educational Resources by Graduate-Recruiting Employers” as part of his SCORE fellowship.

C-SAP cascade team:

Anna Gruszczynska coordinates the cascade project on behalf of C-SAP. She is currently a SCORE fellow exploring issues related to the use of images in OERs.

Michael Teague acts as the e-learning co-ordinator for the School of Social Sciences & Law at Teesside University.

Dafyd Trystan is Development Manager for Coleg Cymraeg whose main aim is to increase, develop and broaden the range of Welsh medium study opportunities at universities in Wales.

Phil Johnson and Craig Hammond are lecturers at the School of Law, Justice and Community Studies at the University Centre at Blackburn College.

Strictly come cascading…at University Centre at Blackburn College, 1 September 2011

The event is part of our efforts to realise the principles of the cascade framework in practice. Participation is free with lunch and refreshments provided, however you will need to contact Anna Gruszczynska (a.gruszczynska@bham.ac.uk) to book your place.

Anarchogogy in the UK? Free (the) resources and free (your) self: How Open Educational resources can change your life.

11:00-2:30pm, 1 September 2011, University Centre at Blackburn College (Lecture theatre)

Teas and coffees will be provided from 10:30

University Centre at Blackburn College
University Close
Blackburn
BB2 1LH
http://www.blackburn.ac.uk/findingUs.html

The aim of the event will focus on the potential of OERs for pedagogic innovation within curriculum design. The speakers will also explore the challenges of embedding OERs within an HE in FE institutional context. Confirmed speakers are as follows:

Diana Laurillard “Supporting the teacher as learner”
Diana Laurillard is Professor of Learning with Digital Technologies at the London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, leading research projects on (i) developing a learning design support environment for teachers, and (ii) developing software interventions for learners with low numeracy and dyscalculia. Her book Rethinking University Teaching: A conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies (2002, RoutledgeFalmer) is one of the most widely cited in the field.

Ester Ehiyazaryan OERs in research methods teaching (presentation now available on Slideshare)

Ester Ehiyazaryan is Lecturer in Professional and eLearning Development at University Centre Doncaster and a current SCORE (Open University Support Centre for Open Resources in Education) fellow. Her fellowship explores ways of enhancing practice in multi-disciplinary research methods teaching at University Centre Doncaster through the use of open educational resources.

Phil Johnson and Craig Hammond “Creativity for Edupunks”

Phil Johnson and Craig Hammond are lecturers at the School of Law, Justice and Community Studies at the University Centre at Blackburn College. They are currently academic partners on JISC [Joint Information Systems Committee]/HEA [Higher Education Academy] funded Open Educational Resources project “Cascading Social Science Open Educational Resources”.

OER project deadlines: Time to reflect and time to evaluate

Ah, the smell of deadlines in the morning – suddenly the first thing you notice after logging into the project wiki is a pile-up of deadlines in different shades of red… Still, deadlines can be quite motivating and so within the C-SAP team we tried to see the requirement to produce a draft final report as a good opportunity for embracing the reflexive elements of project methodology. This time, most of our reflection was related to the process of evaluation (undoubtedly, the realisation that there are only two months left on the project will do that to you). So what does evaluation mean in the context of our project where we try to adopt a critical perspective on processes of OER creation and release? And what are the challenges of trying to practice what we preach?

We do not have access to formative evaluation report yet and it will be fascinating to see what emerges from the work of the evaluation and synthesis team.  At the same time, formative evaluation has been on-going throughout the lifetime of the project and so partners had the opportunity to engage in informal evaluation through reflexive tasks designed by the project team and offer feedback on their emerging understanding of the cascade framework. Some of that formative evaluation has taken place in the context of engaging students with the cascade framework. Where possible, partners have incorporated OERs into their teaching and involved students in testing of the resources being developed as part of the cascade project.

In terms of evaluation, the C-SAP project team has greatly benefitted from the input of our critical friend – also known as a trusted person who asks provocative questions, provides data to be examined through another lens, and offers critiques of a person’s work as a friend. The conversations of C-SAP critical friend with our project partners reveal useful insights into their perception of project methodology. Judging from those interactions, the C-SAP cascade framework seems to be challenging what our partners consider to be part of their “normal” academic practice and pushing them beyond their comfort zones, as one of the partners mentioned “when the project first began it all seemed quite daunting and uncertain”.  There are some positive elements to being challenged in that way and on a number of occasions we hear people mention that they were reluctant to return to the “real world”. That so-called real world can make it quite difficult to be able to spend time reflecting on OERs, as one of the partners has commented that there are times when he would rather  focus on getting the resources into the correct format for JORUM rather than take the time to complete tasks. This could be quite a serious limitation of our project methodology and, the approach we have chosen could be seen as potentially too time-consuming and at odds with the needs of busy lecturers who might only be interested in gaining technical competence in creating OERs. At the same time, our project partners did recognise the long-term potential of the C-SAP cascade approach and the perhaps less tangible awards of being able to spend some time on reflexive activities and focus on the “why” rather than “how-to” of OERs; and hopefully their reflections will be one of longer-lasting legacies of the cascade framework.

A Tweet a day makes the project go a long way

Yesterday was quite an exciting day in the life of the cascade project. Given that we are such a distributed team, it is a rare occasion that we actually have a chance to see each other in person. Such meetings are quite special and provide the vital glue to keep the connections between the partners well and alive and maintain their enthusiasm for the project. This is even more important as we are getting that stage in the project where suddenly deadlines loom and the reality of commitment to the project and delivering the teaching resources and other outputs sinks in.

At the same time, yesterday felt like a lived expression of our cascade methodology in action as it was somewhat of an experiment in terms of capturing the stories we tell about OERs within the project and sharing them with the wider community. That story-telling aspect is vital to our methodology which is based around a reflexive yet critical approach towards Open Educational Resources, which encourages exposing and challenging some of the tacit assumptions about academic practice and sharing teaching resources. While we are keen to impress the world with new and shiny OERs, it is just as important to document the journey that got us there and accordingly, we use a number of tools to help people extract that tacit element of their practice via visualisation/mindmapping tools, reflexive tasks, and sharing elements of our work in progress as we go on. Twitter is one of the tools that the project team have embraced quite early on in the project and personally, I found Twitter to be an extremely useful project management tool. To start with, it is quiet an effortless way of tapping into the existing OER networks and resources provided by the OER community. As project assistant for the C-SAP OER pilot phase project I spent way too much time trawling the web for OER programme related updates, newly released reports and articles, information about events etc. Now that time has been significantly cut because all the relevant updates arrive straight to my Twitter stream and equally, I have used the tool to let the world know about any relevant resources that have been produced in the context of C-SAP OER projects.

The project meeting yesterday saw a renewed commitment to Twitter on the part of our academic partners. While we continued our conversation about pedagogy and critical approaches towards OERs, we simultaneously tweeted some of the questions that arose (using the #csapoer hashtag for the meeting) and this way went from sitting in a small room with six people to interacting with a much broader audience who retweeted our comments, responded to some of the questions and kept the conversation going. And despite the 140-character limit, Twitter helped us yesterday to engage with some quite profound questions and encouraging a perspective where OERs could be seen as a way of reminding the students of what education could be about-becoming somebody different in the process. Our colleagues introduced a very interesting concept of “anarchogogy“-pedagogy that empowers students to ask questions and become creative co-producers of knowledge who start questioning the purpose of education, where OERs become a disruptive intervention to academic and pedagogic practices.  At the same time, we also questioned whether the call for anarchy will be appreciated in the new financial climate of £9k fees? Especially given that context, what if you discover, the horror of horrors; that the OER resource is of better quality than what you can offer to students as a tutor? Not all of the questions had (or can ever have) immediate answers, but we see the questions and the stories from the day as the essential part of developing a cascade framework that will hopefully live beyond the current iteration of the UKOER programme.

2011 OER or Year Zero?

The OER 2011 conference got off to a provoking start with the opening keynote, Towards the Triumph of the Commons, considering higher education’s potential to mirror the ugly effects of the process of enclosure that devastated the use of English common land in the late eighteenth century:

Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be common land.

The potential of Creative Commons to deal with the pernicious claim that knowledge can be ring-fenced was addressed by the keynote debating higher education’s ability to provide a public good or a private benefit. It was heartening to hear that someone so involved in the senior management of higher education could identify with the views felt by those currently working the common land:

education is not a commodity like a bar of chocolate or a café latté, which is physically consumed until there’s nothing left.

The lack of logic in such a zero sum conception of education was supported by the keynote’s citation of the views of Thomas Jefferson with regard to a more realistic portrayal of the creation of knowledge:

no one possesses the less because everyone possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me receives [it] without lessening [me], as he who lights his [candle] at mine receives light without darkening me.

Whilst the analogy effectively illustrated the delusion in treating education purely as a business transaction; it could have been expanded thanks to OERs’ ability to increase the brightness of the original candle via its sharing and re-sharing processes.

The conference’s final keynote also addressed the economic challenges facing contemporary higher education and it adopted a vision based on ‘BOTWOO’ (Building On The Work Of Others). Whilst the acronym is instantly forgettable the visible demonstration of its potential to model pedagogy thankfully was not and Supporting the teacher as learner explicitly demonstrated how OER can provide both clarity and efficiency for pedagogical deliberations. It is hoped that the presentation itself will become available for repurposing as it used extremely effective presentational devices to convey its message.

In between these two keynotes was a collection of papers that sought to address the conference’s themes. The width in themes provided numerous options in the breakout papers and therefore enabled a variety of benefits of OERs to be seen, such as encouraging conceptual analysis from students (e.g. OLI and REQUALLO) and also revealing their creative possibilities from tools such as Xerte).

The powerful aspect of OER with regard to technological wizardry was though most clearly seen by the highly innovative approach towards video resources as created by Learning from WOERK.

Whether it was the impressive presentation of these papers or the numbers of people who were seemingly being influenced by them, it was hard not to get carried away with the evangelical feel of the conference. Several papers referred to the ‘mind boggling’ numbers of people who used OERs (e.g. the 335,000 visitors, from 206 countries, to OpenLearn in March 2011) and such figures supported Martin Hall’s claim from the opening keynote that the OER movement should be now be  considered as ‘the new public university’.

However, the reasons why people were choosing not to study at this new institution were not put forward as frequently. Instead, the numbers of those involved in OER caught the eye and supported the belief in the distinctive nature of post millennium higher education students:

Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.

However, such views have been noted for their limitations and several of the papers’ presenters, similar to researchers at a Cascade Development workshop, were of the opinion that whilst ‘the new undergraduate’ may exist, innate digital prowess was not their identifying factor. These conversations queried the extent of students’ internet use and acknowledged the many barriers obstructing ‘openness’. Whether digital identities are influenced by social class is not known but the opening keynote’s citation of the views from the Minister of State for Universities and Science makes the decision in 2010 to treble tuition fees seem even more reprehensible:

The competition for jobs in the professions is like English tennis, a competitive game, but largely one the middle-classes play against each other

Therefore, the astounding numerical data illustrating the use of OERs should not be seen as the harbinger of a new era of unfettered access to higher education as it may be that victims of the 2008 capitalist meltdown are still paying the price.

Good things happen when people talk about OERs

Inspired by recent conversations we had about the technical aspects of the cascade project with John Robertson from CETIS, the cascade team for a one-off development workshop on the 6^th May to discuss with our partners any technical issues and challenges that are emerging in the context of the project. Among other things, we explored the functionality of pbwiki platform (which currently functions as a closed workspace for project partners but will be opened up in September) as well as Web2.0 tools such as VoiceThread or prezi we are relying upon to capture the process of releasing OERs.

While the aim of the workshop was to focus on the technical aspects of the project, we spent some time simply talking to each other about approaches to OER release and creation. I believe that this rather low-tech approach is probably one of the best ways to use the limited face-to-face time we have with our academic project partners. Importantly, this approach is also at the core of C-SAP cascade framework which encourages reflection and a critical approach towards the processes of sharing and releasing resources. In one way or another, we have been constantly striving to create opportunities for the partners to simply talk about and describe the teaching materials that they are opening up, whether in the form of reflexive tasks, visualisations of the cascade framework or simply partner meetings. In doing that, we are continually building on the approaches developed in the context of the C-SAP pilot project where we created a toolkit to help explore processes around the release and sharing of modular teaching content and with the aid of that toolkit, collated case studies of opening up teaching resources in social sciences (and if you want to hear more about what has happened with the toolkit since the pilot project come and find us at the OER2011 conference and listen to Richard Pountney’s paper on Mapping the curriculum through shared representations of intentions to teach).

Overall, our focus on providing space for reflection on the process of opening up teaching resources is directly related to the emphasis on exploring issues around tacit practice – the “story” of what is being taught, the institutional and pedagogical context in which the teaching process takes place etc. Ideally, we would like our partners’ stories about their teaching materials to evolve into stories of reusing those resources by academics and  students. The stories that were shared at the development workshop pointed to the high relevance of the institutional background to OER release/reuse, especially in terms of finding the space and encouragement to be creative when it comes to processes of curriculum design and development. At least for our partners, their institutional location (whether at a post-92 university or a HE in FE institution) could be seen as a vital element of their description of resources released in the context of the cascade project, and probably just as relevant as other elements of resource description and tagging. The discussion we had at the workshop ultimately brought us to what still remains an unanswered question related to the generalizability (or not) and transferability of the cascade framework we are developing in the context of the project. That is, what elements in the stories of OER creation/release are unique to a given project partner and what should form part of the cascade? Or could we get away with having a very loose approach to what is an essential part of the cascade framework and instead make the story-telling the central element of that framework? Within our team, we’ll certainly keep thinking, talking and writing about those issues.

We’ve got the power? Casting a critical social sciences perspective on OERs

We have recently participated in the Elluminate session “OERs Across Sectors” on April 12th 2011, led by Lou McGill from the UKOER Evaluation and Synthesis project (the recording of the session can be accessed here). The three speakers (that includes us – you can access the presentation from our slideshare account) discussed the ways in which OERs are used by (HE in) FE students, their tutors and institutions. Within this blog, we have previously covered issues of relevance to our HE in FE academic partners, such as for instance high teaching workloads and very little time to devote to undertaking research (33 hours of release for scholarly activity is all you can expect in some places). At the same time, during the Elluminate session, as much as possible we tried to explore not just the differences between HE/HE in FE but possible synergies and attempted to Highlight the contributions of HE in FE institutions when it comes to teaching and providing support to students. yet another theme which came up during the session was that of power relationships, not only  when it comes to the boundary between HE and HE in FE, but also more broadly conceptualised  power differences between producers and users of content, students and tutors. There are further contradictions between teacher-centred pedagogic models prevalent at higher education institutions and the ethos of open education which calls for a more learner-centred and decentralized approach. Finally, there are a number of tensions embedded within the ethos of open education, including questions around access and who might be marginalised in the context of OER production/creation/release (especially if you take a more business-model like approach to OERs).

Questions around power relationships were quite prominent on the agenda of the most recent meeting of the project team, where we tried to critique the concept of the cascade framework itself (importantly, our involvement in the OER programme draws on a critical social science perspective on the processes of sharing digital educational resources!). After all, the problem with cascade as a metaphor is that it is unidirectional and you cannot really cascade above and if you are being cascaded to that might imply having less power within the process. That critique is also related to a question on what are the conditions under which individuals take risks with their pedagogy and in the climate of heightened student expectations most academics cannot really afford to take those risks. Those aren’t really new concerns, as demonstrated in this quote from the one of the partners in the OER pilot project:

Another point anthropologists make is where ‘power’ lies in this process. Once something is produced, finalised, packaged, presented, given, put in a repository for all to see, it all comes down to who has the power to decide what gets given to whom and when. The production is hidden, and the inequalities within are mystified. (…) Who has access to the materials and why? Are these ‘places of access’ free to all? What is the relationship between the funding bodies that set up projects like OER and universities that use these? Who is making these decisions? How are the objects produced and exchanged? Are our disciplinary subjects (and the teachers and students in these disciplines) getting a sense of empowerment with these projects when they use them?

It will be interesting to see what questions our current partners will come up with, especially as they are now working through yet another reflexive task, where this time they get to explore, among other things, power relationships as they relate to the project within the framework of peer review. At the same time, I would like to make a parallel between our efforts to make explicit the power relationships inherent to OERs and the attempt to explore the tacit nature of pedagogic description in the context of “opening up” teaching resources. This happens to be a topic for the forthcoming OER2011 conference presentation as part of the symposium on Research Methods OERs in the Social Sciences, where I am presenting a paper on OERs in the social sciences and the tacit models of resource creation. After all, the ways in which resources are used in a teaching context are often unrecorded and to re-use material effectively and repurpose it as an OER, such tacit understandings might have to be revealed and made open. My suggestion would be to extend this approach should to exploring power relationships in the context of the OER programme.

Have spare time, will create OERs

What can you accomplish within 33 hours? You could certainly try and go beyond the minutiae of just getting on with your week and perhaps have a go at breaking some records, as did recently a bunch of couples in Thailand who managed to lock lips for 33 hours, breaking the current Guinness World Record for longest kiss, which stood at 32 hours. Or, if you happen to be  a lecturer at a HE in FE institution where two of our project partners happen to be based, you will have precisely 33 hours release from teaching duties to engage in broadly conceived scholarly activity. Even better, you could decide to spend that time working through an OER that our partners are in the process of putting together and which looks really promising. The provisional title of the resource is “Creativity for Edupunks” so as to emphasise our partners’ interest in approaches to teaching and learning practices that stem from a do it yourself (DIY), anti-corporate attitude). The initial brief is to design a resource aimed at HE in FE staff that will comprise of eleven approximately 3-hour long activity-based sessions, that will cover the issues related to identifying, locating, releasing and putting OERs into curriculum, understanding the concept of “openness” as well as pedagogical issues around student engagement and in particular innovative assessment. More broadly, the resource will also encourage reflection on the space of research in the working lives of teaching professionals.

Ideally, the resource will be officially accredited as counting towards staff personal development and/or research activity release from teaching. The official stamp of approval would make it easier to get institutional support and would help our partners follow through with their long-term plan where within the next two or three years the course is repurposed as an optional one for students. At the same time, our colleagues plan to go ahead with the course regardless of management approval as this is something they feel very passionate about. They even jokingly mentioned a desire to smash the system at one point as well, however we are not sure whether the magic powers of OERs extend that far… On a more serious note, once completed, the resource will be a fantastic way of cascading what our partners are learning in the context of the project both to colleagues within their institution and beyond. The process of developing the resource will also give us an excellent opportunity to practise what we preach, that is, a reflexive engagement with OERs based around open sharing of practice and resources as well as inclusion of student voices.

It has to be said that we are very much at a brainstorming stage when it comes to that particular resource, hence the visions of global impact… to be obliterated soon through loads of down-to-earth discussions on format, design, content etc. Some of that brainstorming involves making decisions about best ways of capturing the process of developing the resource as well as the challenges of sharing the messiness of that journey which is a topic for a yet another blog post! It will certainly take more than 33 hours and might be a bit of a bumpy ride but hopefully the effort will pay off.

Parlez-vous OER? Open Educational Resources in multilingual contexts

As mentioned earlier in a series of posts on project progress, our cascade partners are busy creating/repurposing their OERs, with the process bringing up quite interesting issues related to our partners’ specific institutional contexts. For instance, one of issues which became quite prominent for our Welsh colleagues from Bangor and Cardiff is that of creating teaching resources in a minority language. They are currently working on repurposing a number of resources into Welsh, which include an SPSS OpenLearn module and as well as a series of short video clips on research methods in social sciences, to be incorporated into the MA in Language Policy and Planning.

Some of the discussion on non-English OERs centres on the accessibility and relevance of OER materials in non-Western settings, with concerns being raised about the risk of New Colonialism in OER, with the materials bearing implicit educational values of the West/global North. A number of those concerns are mentioned in a blog post by Graham Attwell who warns about the risks of OERs contributing to the process of marginalisation, rather than empowerment of non-Western learners and asks at “what point do OERs and open education become part of a post-colonial discourse focused upon new markets”?

At present, English-language content dominates the OER landscape. Approaches to allow for provision of multi-language OERs include initiatives such as Universia, a consortium that maintains higher education portals for Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, and CORE (China Open Resources for Education), a consortium of Chinese universities with the mission to enhance quality education in China. Both initiatives began their involvement with OER by translating MIT’s OpenCourseWare courses and wherever necessary, adapting the materials to the local cultural and pedagogical context (by the way, a recent blog post on OER reuse and repurposing by the Leicester Beyond Distance Research Alliance makes quite an interesting reading in this context!). As the collaborators involved in the “Conversations in cyberspace” (a UNESCO internet forum on open education organised in 2005) argue, the reliance on translation can magnify some of the problems inherent in OER production, such as issues around quality assurance or the reluctance of universities to use course material not generated within that institution.

Yet another approach to multi-language OER provision has been adopted by repositories which are primarily English-based but make an effort to ensure that the content is available in other languages. Those include for instance Rice University-based Connexions where   volunteers are translating modules and courses into a variety of different languages, including Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Thai or temoa (Tecnológico de Monterrey System) which, according to its mission statement, functions as a public and multilingual catalogue of OERs. Another initiative worth mentioning is the Multilingual Open Resources for Independent Learning project initiated by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) where participating members can submit resources in their own languages. Apart from those big projects, involved in producing “big OERs”, there are also examples of less formal initiatives. For instance, Stian Haklev explores a vision of a multicultural classroom where students from a variety of   language/cultural backgrounds would engage with OERs as users and producers. In the spirit of “little OERs”, students would contribute articles in their own language to Wikipedia or create blog posts about their learning experiences. This approach would also fit neatly within our own efforts to embed student engagement within the cascade framework.

Obviously, this blog post will not be able to do justice to the numerous challenges of offering courses in a bilingual teaching context, in particular the need to address a wide linguistic variety of native speakers and learners of Welsh (however, there is some excellent research being undertaken by ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice, alternatively, the Education Subject Centre team have made available a brief yet succinct overview Welsh Language use: from Primary to Higher Education). Our colleagues involved in the project already have experience of producing and sharing Welsh-medium online resources in the context of the Y Porth (literally “the gateway”), which is a collaborative e-learning platform and a central repository for the Welsh medium Higher Education sector. At the same time, resources within Y Porth are not truly open as they can only be accessed by students and members of staff from Welsh institutions. It will be quite fascinating to see what issues will emerge in the process of releasing those materials “into the open” and beyond the walled garden of the Welsh resource gateway.