Open Educational Practices: What, Why and How

Editor's Notes

• #6: Blessinger & Bliss 2019. Introduction to Open Education: Towards a Human Rights Theory. https://www.ijoer.org/introduction-to-open-education-towards-a-human-rights-theory_doi-10-18278-ijoer-1-1-5/ Spatial dimension of open: “Regarding the spatial dimension, open education (e.g., open educational resources, open courseware, massive online open courses) allows people to access and participate in education regardless of their physical/geographic location, provided of course that they have the means” Temporal dimension “allows people to access and participate in education regardless of the time of day, month, or year, and independent of others’ time considerations. In other words, open education need not be a synchronous form of communication as in the traditional higher education model” Process dimension “Within the structural constraints of the educational platform and the usage policies and rules, students are free to determine if, when, and how they will access and participate in open education and they are free to self-determine what learning needs (outcomes) they want to meet”
• #8: Beetham et al (2012) Open scholarship includes open access publication, open science and open research
• #9: Open pedagogy having to do specifically with teaching practices with students
• #11: “In introducing the idea of OER-enabled pedagogy, we ask what it means to add the 5R permissions to these public entities - to be consciously engaged in either building upon work previously done by another or to construct a new public entity that explicitly offers other learners permission to publicly transform and adapt it. When student works are openly licensed, granting others 5R permissions in their use of the artifacts, each work becomes the beginning of an ongoing conversation in which other learners participate as they contextualize and extend the work in support of their own learning. Open licensing also ensures that these artifacts will be perpetually and freely available to all who wish to engage them as part of their learning.” We propose the following four-part test to determine the extent to which a specific teaching and learning practice qualifies as OER-enabled pedagogy, as exemplified by the idea of renewable assignments: Are students asked to create new artifacts (essays, poems, videos, songs, etc.) or revise/remix existing OER? Does the new artifact have value beyond supporting the learning of its author? Are students invited to publicly share their new artifacts or revised/remixed OER? Are students invited to openly license their new artifacts or revised/remixed OER?
• #14: Link to info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Ed/UBC/ENG470D-003_Canadian_Studies_(2017) 400 level English course at UBC, Canadian Studies: Kathryn Grafton, instructor. CanLit Edit-a-thon (43 students plus instructor), 2017. “This CanLit Edit-a-thon assignment asks you to address the exigence of equitable representation in Wikipedia by contributing new or expanding existing articles about Canadian literature. … As a group, choose a topic relevant to our focus on Canadian literature (e.g., an author, text, or institution) that you argue is currently underrepresented in and symptomatic of systemic bias on Wikipedia.”
• #15: Links: Antologia Abierta de Literatura Hispana: https://press.rebus.community/aalh/ Environmental Science Bites: https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/sciencebites/ A guide to making open textbooks with students: https://press.rebus.community/makingopentextbookswithstudents/ The following is from Rebus’ Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students: Dr. Julie Ward, an assistant professor of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Latin American literature at University of Oklahoma…. In the fall 2016 semester, she embarked on a project in her Spanish-language literature course, Introduction to Hispanic Literature and Culture, in which groups of four to five students selected ten texts from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century to include in a critical edition. Ward and a graduate student “research guide” had pre-established lists of texts students could review and choose from. For each work, the student groups compiled context in the form of an introduction, at least ten annotations on the text about style, references and colloquialisms, an image and a biography about the author… and a bibliography. The content of the critical edition was developed in the class, but the work on the text didn’t end there. In the subsequent semester, two students were paid to take the critical edition, verify the facts and public domain licenses, and format it using Pressbooks. Environmental Science Bites From Letter to Readers: “This book was written by undergraduate students at The Ohio State University (OSU) who were enrolled in the class Introduction to Environmental Science.  The chapters describe some of Earth’s major environmental challenges and discuss ways that humans are using cutting-edge science and engineering to provide sustainable solutions to these problems.  Topics are as diverse as the students, who represent virtually every department, school and college at OSU.  The environmental issue that is described in each chapter is particularly important to the author, who hopes that their story will serve as inspiration to protect Earth for all life.”
• #16: Montgomery College UN SDG assignments (see MC assignments tab): https://www.montgomerycollege.edu/offices/elite/unesco/ One example: The Hidden Costs assignment https://mcsdg.wordpress.com/the-hidden-costs/ Regarding apparel industry, create infographic, PSA, or cartoon about hidden costs of this industry (e.g., pollution, habitat destruction, human rights abuses). Infographic includes: Original computations/statistics comparing the cost of production with the retail price and also demonstrating the human cost involved (based on a garment/item that you purchased) A plan detailing where and how the infographic will be distributed
• #17: Links: Ds106 assignment bank: http://assignments.ds106.us/ Jhangiani Social Psychology course: https://thatpsychprof.com/why-have-students-answer-questions-when-they-can-write-them/ Student video tutorials explained: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3022/4222 DeRosa First Year Seminar: http://robinderosa.net/higher-ed/extreme-makeover-pedagogy-edition/ From above article on student video tutorials: “… at certain points in the course where students have struggled in the past, all students are given the opportunity to raise their grade if they create a tutorial video for a particular assignment. These tutorial videos are evaluated and a few of these are selected to be placed into the course. “Finally, after demonstrating high levels of mastery, strong students are offered the opportunity to be a teaching assistant for the upcoming semester. These students create notes for each unit, study guides for exams, tutorial videos, and review presentations and games that are all added to the course and released as OER.” From Jhangiani’s blog post: The students were asked to write 4 questions each week, 2 factual (e.g., a definition or evidence-based prediction) and 2 applied (e.g., scenario-type). For the first two weeks they wrote just one plausible distractor (I provided the question stem, the correct answer, and 2 plausible distractors). They also peer reviewed questions written by 3 of their (randomly assigned) peers. For the next two weeks they wrote two plausible distractors; For the next two weeks they wrote all 3 plausible distractors; For the remainder of the semester they wrote the stem, the correct answer, and all the distractors. From DeRosa: “In OpenSem, I decided to let students design the grading process.  It took a couple of weeks (while we simultaneously did other things as well) to hammer it out. Basically, they designed a competency-based model where they would have unlimited time within the confines of the course to improve each assignment if it initially they did not “achieve the competency.” Achieving the competency would require them to meet all of the parameters of the rubrics, which were often designed by the students as they crafted the assignments.”
• #18: Links: Intro to philosophy: http://blogs.ubc.ca/phil102
• #21: From DeRosa and Jhangiani essay open pedagogy: http://openpedagogy.org/open-pedagogy/ “So one key component of Open Pedagogy might be that it sees access, broadly writ, as fundamental to learning and to teaching, and agency as an important way of broadening that access. OERs are licensed with open licenses, which reflects not just a commitment to access in terms of the cost of knowledge, but also access in terms of the creation of knowledge. Embedded in the social justice commitment to making college affordable for all students is a related belief that knowledge should not be an elite domain. Knowledge consumption and knowledge creation are not separate but parallel processes, as knowledge is co-constructed, contextualized, cumulative, iterative, and recursive. In this way, Open Pedagogy invites us to focus on how we can increase access to higher education and how we can increase access to knowledge–both its reception and its creation. This is, fundamentally, about the dream of a public learning commons, where learners are empowered to shape the world as they encounter it.” Blessinger and Bliss (2019; Introduction to Open Education: Towards a Human Rights Theory) point to Kahle (2008: Designing Open Education Technology), who also adds: Ownership: “Open education is also designed for ownership when technology and content are licensed in such a way that users can both modify and retain the resource in perpetuity.” (Blessinger & Bliss 2019). Participation: “Open education is designed for participation when it is well-designed for access, agency, and ownership. In other words, these aspects lead to participation by learners and educators. As open education promotes these fundamental principles, students and teachers are more likely to collaborate and participate in inclusive activities.” Experience: referring to user-friendliness and human-centred design.
• #23: DeRosa & Jhangiani, “Open Pedagogy”: http://openpedagogy.org/open-pedagogy/ “we might think about Open Pedagogy as an access-oriented commitment to learner-driven education AND as a process of designing architectures and using tools for learning that enable students to shape the public knowledge commons of which they are a part.” Jesse Stommel: https://www.slideshare.net/jessestommel/open-pedagogy-building-compassionate-spaces-for-online-learning ”Open pedagogy creates a perforated community—a networked group of learners tat extends beyond the bounds of those officially enrolled in a term-based class. And hopefully a community that outlives the course that gave birth to it.”
• #24: Open Edu 60s & 70s http://blogs.ubc.ca/chendricks/2017/10/21/open-education-in-the-60s-and-70s/    Claude Paquette, 1979: Individual differences, individual growth directing the learning Instructors having an indirect influence: not to make students assimilate info but help them progress individually Flexible space and time Student choice in activities and students proposing activities themselves Learning activities should be such that there could be multiple answers, multiple pathways to reaching goals; also bringing different disciplines together Class rules established by teacher and students   Don Tunnell (1975) provides what he takes to be a list of characteristics many conceptions of open education share (p. 12 of Kindle edition; emphasis mine): (1) Students are to pursue educational activities of their own choosing; (2) Teachers are to create an environment rich in educational possibilities; (3) Teachers are to give a student individualized instruction based on what he/ she is interested in, but they are also to guide the student along educationally worthwhile lines; (4) Teachers are to respect students. The following count as exhibiting respect for the student (a) the student is granted considerable freedom; he/ she is, for the most part, autonomous, (b) the student’s interests and ideas are considered to be important and he/ she receives individual instruction and guidance based on his/ her interests, (c) there is considerable interaction between teacher and student; they are considered to be equal in some sense, (d) students are rarely commanded; uses of authority are minimized, (e) students’ feelings are to be taken seriously. Brian V. Hill: Hill, B.V. (1975). What’s open about open education? In D. Nyberg (Ed.), The Philosophy of Open Education (International Library of the Philosophy of Education Volume 15). Taylor and Francis. “We suffer from “attempts to lump diverse trends together under the rubric of ‘open education’. Let us press for more specific and descriptive labels to identify the values, objectives or procedures that are being commended to us ….” “An excellent candidate for sloganizing is the word ‘open’. Immediately one uses it, the options polarize. To be open … is to be not closed, restricted, prejudiced or clogged; but free, candid, generous, above board, mentally flexible, future-oriented, etc. The opposite does not bear thinking about, and there can be no third alternative. ‘Open’ is yum.”
• #25: Links: What students have to say about Oped Ed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90jgIU6wzmE Student at Keene State: http://blogs.ubc.ca/chendricks/2017/11/05/perceptions-of-open-pedagogy/
• #26: Keene state college student link: http://blogs.ubc.ca/chendricks/2017/11/05/perceptions-of-open-pedagogy/
• #28: https://savasavasava.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/the-fallacy-of-open/