Group Admins
Description
Session Description
Open pedagogy, open educational practices, open teaching, or open practices, often used interchangeably, have been defined as “the next phase in OER development, which will see a shift from a focus on resources to a focus on OEP being a combination of open resources use and open learning architectures to transform learning” (Camilleri & Ehlers, 2011, p. 6). Open educational practices (OEP) have been defined as those teaching and learning practices enabled and supported by the open movement, either in making use of OER, engaging learners in openness, or making our professional practice more accessible (Lane & McAndrew, 2010; Porter, 2013; Littlejohn & Hood, 2016). While there is a growing body of literature which discusses how access to open resources and engagement with the open web is changing teaching and learning practices (see for example Banzato, 2012; Beetham, 2011; Cronin, 2017; Nascimbeni & Burgos, 2016), it has been argued that further research is still needed concerning the pedagogical implications of openly accessible information on educator and learner practices (Banzato, 2012; Hood & Littlejohn, 2017; Kimmons, 2016; Knox, 2013; Rolfe, 2017). There remains a gap in the literature in understanding how educators implement OEP in their daily practice (Cronin, 2016; Czerniewicz, Deacon, Glover, & Walji, 2016; Nascimbeni & Burgos, 2016).
This research presentation focuses on how educators describe using openly accessible sources of knowledge and open-source tools in ways that impact their pedagogical designs and practices. The study explores how openness is impacting the broader ecosystem of learning design and shifting the teaching and learning practices of faculty in higher education. Using a phenomenological approach with a group of self-identifying open education practitioners located in British Columbia, Canada, I explore how OEP are being actualized in formal higher education and impacting learning design. Specifically, I examine how educators are enacting OEP in the design of teaching and learning through the use of emerging educational technologies, openly accessible sources of knowledge, and open source tool. The goal of the study was to better understand how OEP impacts the development of learning outcomes, the selection and development of teaching resources and activities, and the planning of activities and assessment.
The findings suggest that OEP represents an emerging form of learning design, which draws from existing models of constructivist and networked pedagogy. Open technologies are being used to support and enable active learning experiences, presenting and sharing learners work in real-time, allowing for formative feedback, peer review, and ultimately, promoting community-engaged coursework. By designing learning in this way, faculty offer learners an opportunity to consider and practice developing themselves as public citizens and develop the knowledge and literacies for working with copyright and controlling access to their online contributions, while presenting options for extending some of those rights to others. Inviting learners to share their work and engage more openly, demonstrates to them that their work has inherent value beyond the course, and can be an opportunity to engage with their community.
References
Banzato, M. (2012). A Case Study of Teachers’ Open Educational Practices. Journal of E-Learning and Knowledge Society, 8(3). Retrieved from http://www.je-lks.org/ojs/index.php/Je-LKS_EN/article/view/650
Beetham, H. (2011). Understanding the role of OERs in open educational practices. Education. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/loumcgill/understanding-the-role-of-oers-in-open-educational-practices
Camilleri, A. F., & Ehlers, U.-D. (2011). Mainstreaming Open Educational Practice: Recommendations for Policy. European Foundation for Quality in E-Learning: The OPAL Consortium. Retrieved from http://efquel.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Policy_Support_OEP.pdf
Cronin, C. (2016). Open, Networked and Connected Learning: Bridging the Formal/Informal Learning Divide in Higher Education. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Networked Learning. Retrieved from http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/abstracts/pdf/S3_Paper2.pdf
Cronin, C. (2017). Openness and Praxis: Exploring the Use of Open Educational Practices in Higher Education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 18(5). http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i5.3096
Czerniewicz, L., Deacon, A., Glover, M., & Walji, S. (2016). MOOC—making and open educational practices. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-016-9128-7
Giddens, A. (1986). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (1st ed.). Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
Hood, N., & Littlejohn, A. (2017). Knowledge Typologies for Professional Learning: Educators’ (re)generation of Knowledge When Learning Open Educational Practice. Educational Technology Research and Development, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-017-9536-z
Kimmons, R. (2016). Expansive Openness in Teacher Practice. Teachers College Record, Volume 118(Number 9), 1–34.
Knox, J. (2013). Five Critiques of the Open Educational Resources Movement. Teaching in Higher Education, 18(8), 821–832. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2013.774354
Lane, A., & McAndrew, P. (2010). Are Open Educational Resources Systematic or Systemic Change Agents for Teaching Practice? British Journal of Educational Technology, 41(6), 952–962. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01119.x
Littlejohn, A., & Hood, N. (2016). How Educators Build Knowledge and Expand Their Practice: The Case of Open Education Resources: How Educators Build Knowledge and Expand Their Practice. British Journal of Educational Technology, 48(2), 499–510. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12438
Nascimbeni, F., & Burgos, D. (2016). In Search for the Open Educator: Proposal of a Definition and a Framework to Increase Openness Adoption Among University Educators. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 17(6). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2736
Porter, D. A. (2013). Exploring the Practices of Educators Using Open Educational Resources (OER) in the British Columbia Higher Education System (Doctoral Dissertation). Simon Fraser University. Retrieved from http://summit.sfu.ca/item/13663
Rolfe, V. (2017). Striving Toward Openness: But What Do We Really Mean? The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(7). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3207
