About me
Sarah Alcock has 20 years’ experience in tuition, examination and marking operations in an international setting. She believes passionately in the value of education, and has a strong sense of fairness.
Having co-founded and developed an accountancy tuition provider, Training-by-Eos, her skills include learning design and implementation, learner relationship management and strategic relationship development.
This website was created as part of Sarah's work towards a Masters Degree in Online and Distance Education and was presented by her at the Open University H818 "Open Education in an Open Landscape" conference in February 2021. She was delighted to receive a Presentation Star award, voted for by the audience.
Sarah welcomes new connections, thoughts and feedback:
Watch the Presentation
Questions and Answers
The live Q&A session has not been included in the recording for privacy reasons, however the questions raised during session and my answers are provided here.
Who is your website for? Who do you imagine using it? How have you let them know about it?
The website is for commercial education managers who, like me, are sceptical about the growing academic movement to Open Education. It aims to answer the question of money and time; how can freely available, open to all education be commercially viable. It is not aimed at the academic world.
Users might not primarily consider themselves educators, but as someone with knowledge to share – like Joe Wicks. Their knowledge might be using IT, garden design, knitting, carpentry – any expertise at all.
Letting potential users know about the website is therefore difficult – such a wide potentially audience and finding that ‘community’ is my next challenge.
This is not only about making profits but covering costs. This was talked about re. Open Textbooks initiative back in the day, and David Wiley was in charge of that in early days. What do you think open practitioners can learn from your project?
That non-traditional routes have a big part to play. For Joe Wicks it was the advertising revenue from YouTube that created a win/win situation – free for learners and the expert being paid.
Have you been able to convince your commercial business partners to use OEP?
The short answer, unfortunately, is No! There is little reason to change when the business works as it is. However, I’d like to think that new business would consider this model, and if we were starting from the beginning now we would take a non-traditional approach.
Has Joe Wicks been in touch?! I'm sure he'd be interested in your work
No, he hasn’t! Taking this project forward may well include contacting him directly, but he is a busy man.
You had success with Twitter. Any advice for those who haven’t had their fan moment yet?
I was pleased with my one moment of success, although my Twitter reach is still minimal. I think the targeted approach worked – a direct question to a person about their work.
What do you think are the limitations of using only YouTube for open practice?
The main limitation from a commercial perspective is the audience size needed to generate revenue. Joe Wicks videos have up to a million views each – I know my own market would be around 4,000 people which isn’t enough to be sustainable. YouTube is one element amongst many – websites and publishing are not going away quickly. However, new platforms are coming along regularly so being aware of and open to change is important.
Do you have any ethical concerns about using Youtube (eg dodgy advertising, being associated with dodgy people)?
Absolutely. I could have made a whole website and presentation about the dangers and ethics of mixing YouTube / Social media with education. It would be a particular concern if children were the target learners – although my children (9 & 13) seem to watch YouTube more than anything else.
Do you think that video is less open than other media (more difficult to remix?)
It’s certainly the most difficult to remix, but as I said in my presentation I do not think the remix requirement is the most important element of OER, particularly videos. If the video can be linked to or embedded by another practitioner than I consider that to be Open.