If we want to motivate and engage students to learn in ways that will be longer-lasting and more ... more If we want to motivate and engage students to learn in ways that will be longer-lasting and more meaningful to them, we need to design rich learning experiences that facilitate this through flexible and adaptable activities and assignments. Learning management systems (aka walled gardens) provide teachers and learners a safe and controlled space for threaded discussions, storing grades, uploading assignments, posting content, communicating notices, and deploying some constructed assessment components like quizzes. However, learning management environments are limited in their abilities to engage students in deep learning and meaningful educational activities. To do so, requires instructors to move beyond the walled garden into a less organized and less controlled digital world. In this session, we will outline supportive teaching strategies and learning activities (facilitated by the digital environment) that promote higher levels of engagement for learning \textendash{} and are accessible and relatively easy to implement using open practices and resources. This learning happens outside the walled garden and requires careful consideration and attention to care for the students and the learning they will embark upon. But where to start? There are so many options, tools, apps, platforms and parameters to consider when designing a more open and flexible learning experience. Using a collection of evidence-based principles of learning, we'll outline how designing rich online learning experiences may be easier than you think. Participants will be exposed to 7 key learning principles and appropriate tools to use within and outside of learning systems. We'll share some of our favourite examples of aligned assignments and activities. We'll engage youin a discussion of other examples that might fit within the principles, gather ideas and share back with everyone. Come prepared to share your best examples of online learning outside the walled garden - learning out in the open!
The development of open and collaborative internet technologies has been a major support for the ... more The development of open and collaborative internet technologies has been a major support for the movement towards more open and accessible practices in education and has provided new methods and techniques for contributing knowledge as part of pedagogy. Further research is still needed on understanding the notion of open education practices, the impacts to student's personal knowledge management practices, and the impacts this has on pedagogy. This research focuses on the latter, investigating how faculty describe open education's impact on their approaches to teaching and learning.
In recent years, open education has gained significant interest among educational institutions, i... more In recent years, open education has gained significant interest among educational institutions, innovation leaders, and within popular media. In this study, we use Twitter social media data to examine the discourses surrounding openness as well as the people who participate in the discourse around openness. By targeting hashtags related to open education, we gathered the most extensive dataset of historical open education tweets to date (n = 178,304 tweets and 23,061 users) and conducted a mixed methods analysis of openness from 2009 to 2016. We find that the movement towards openness in education has a variety of meanings for different people and has evolved significantly over time. Findings show that the diversity of participants has varied somewhat over time and that the discourse has predominantly revolved around open resources, although there are signs that an increase in interest around pedagogy, teaching, and learning is emerging.
Open pedagogy, open educational practices, open teaching, or open practices, often used interchan... more 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\textemdash making and open educational practices. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 1\textendash 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\textendash 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\textendash 34. Knox, J. (2013). Five Critiques of the Open Educational Resources Movement. Teaching in Higher Education, 18(8), 821\textendash 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\textendash 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\textendash 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
VIU's take on open pedagogy centres around the making of learning visible through community engag... more VIU's take on open pedagogy centres around the making of learning visible through community engagement and the design of authentic and lived learning experiences, including non-disposable assignments. This isn't about using open textbooks or open educational resources (however it may be a side effect) but rather about making the entire learning experience live, unedited and unfolding in the moment following many of the attributes of Hegarty's (2015) model for open pedagogy (learner generated, peer review, participatory technology, innovation and creativity, sharing, reflection, trust and a connected community). We have a number of faculty applying open pedagogy components in their classes and we'll share some examples. We also are building a course redesign institute around this impactful learning practice. This session will explore the evolving components of open pedagogy and how it might manifest for optimal student learning. Participants will engage in a mini-version of our course redesign model and uncover the key attributes of open pedagogy. Come explore visible learning with us!
This research focuses on how educators are using openly accessible sources of knowledge and open-... more This research focuses on how educators are using openly accessible sources of knowledge and open-source tools and how that impacts their pedagogical designs. Reporting on a phenomenological study with open education practitioners, I will share how open educational practices (OEP) are being actualized in formal higher education and impacting learning design. Specifically, how educators are bringing elements of openness into their everyday teaching and learning practice. I define OEP as teaching and learning practices where openness is enacted within all aspects of instructional design practice, including the development of learning outcomes, the selection of teaching resources, and the planning of activities and assessment. OEP engage both educators and students with the use and creation of OER, draw attention to the potential afforded by open licences, facilitate open peer-review, and support participatory student-directed projects (Author, 2017). This presentation reports on how OEP are impacting the pedagogical choices and learning design strategies of educators teaching in formal higher education and how educators are navigating the issues, challenges, and supports which make this work possible. I draw upon Giddens (1986) structuration theory, further developed for use in information systems research most notably by DeSanctis and Poole (1994) and Orlikowski (2000). The theory explores the relationships between information communication technologies and the individuals who use them in their practice. Orlikowski's practice lens (2000) draws focus to how individuals, while interacting with technologies, enact practices and structures which shape their emergent and situated use of that technology. These practices ``are not fixed or given, but constituted and reconstituted through the everyday, situated practice of particular users using particular technologies in particular circumstances'' (Orlikowski, 2000, p. 425). Orlikowski's work positions technologies as continually socially and physically constructed, interpreted, and put into practice. In an organizational context, the use of technology is intrinsically linked with institutional properties, rules and norms, as well as individual perceptions and knowledge (Halperin, 2016). The literature on the impact of OEP suggests three key themes which need further investigation. These include the development of new learning designs which are afforded by the open nature of resources, networks, and the internet; opportunities for the increased personalization, autonomy, and self-regulation of student learning; and open education as a way of engaging our communities in an enhanced way. For those educators taking on OEP as part of their teaching, a greater understanding of the issues, challenges, and necessary supports are needed prior to further expanding and promoting OEP as a learning design strategy (Beetham, Falconer, McGill, \& Littlejohn, 2012; Borthwick \& Gallagher-Brett, 2014; Camilleri, Ehlers, \& Pawlowski, 2014; Pitt, 2015; Littlejohn \& Hood, 2016).
While an official definition for open educational practices is still emerging, from a learning de... more While an official definition for open educational practices is still emerging, from a learning design perspective these may be considered teaching and learning practices where openness is enacted within all aspects of instructional practice; including the design of learning outcomes, the selection of teaching resources, and the planning of activities and assessment. (Paskevicius, 2016). Open educational practices are teaching and learning designs that take advantages of the affordances of open educational resources, challenge students to learn more openly, engage our communities, and make our professional practice more accessible.A number of scholars have advocated for open practices: in supporting student success through increased access to educational resources (Mulder, 2011; Carey, Davis, Ferreras, \& Porter, 2015); to support faculty engagement with educational developers in the co-creation of reusable and adaptable courseware (Conole \& Weller, 2008; DeVries \& Harrison, 2016); through the experimentation and reflection of the practice of teaching in the open (Veletsianos, 2013; Cronin, 2017); and in fostering learning communities across institutions (Petrides, Jimes, Middleton-Detzner, Walling, \& Weiss, 2011). This session will focus on the stakeholder role of the educational developer, whose consultative work may support more open practices to address institutional goals, missions, and objectives. Educational developers are well positioned to support change by infusing professional development with open practices at the departmental, program, and course level. Open educational practices may be situated as a lens to support these change initiatives and provide new conceptualisations of teaching and learning (Bossu, \& Fountain, 2015). In this research presentation I'll present the findings from a literature review of open educational practices in the context of learning design and engage participants in thinking about how to integrate ``open'' into learning outcomes, teaching resources, pedagogy, and assessment.
This dataset contains eight transcripts from interviews conducted with educators as part of a PhD... more This dataset contains eight transcripts from interviews conducted with educators as part of a PhD study exploring open educational practices. The research focuses on how educators are using openly accessible sources of knowledge and open-source tools in ways that impact their pedagogical designs. Using a phenomenological approach with self-identifying open education practitioners, I explore how open educational practices are being actualized in formal higher education and impacting learning design. Specifically, I examine how educators are bringing elements of openness into their everyday teaching and learning practice using educational technologies. I draw upon Giddens (1986) structuration theory, further developed for use in technology adoption research most notably by DeSanctis and Poole (1994) and Orlikowski (2000). This approach positions technologies as being continually socially constructed, interpreted, and put into practice. In an organizational context, the use of technology is intrinsically linked with institutional properties, rules and norms, as well as individual perceptions and knowledge. The findings suggest that open educational practices 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 widely, demonstrates to them that their work has inherent value beyond the course and can be an opportunity to engage with their community.
If we want to motivate and engage students to learn in ways that will be longer-lasting and more ... more If we want to motivate and engage students to learn in ways that will be longer-lasting and more meaningful to them, we need to design rich learning experiences that facilitate this through flexible and adaptable activities and assignments. Learning management systems (aka walled gardens) provide teachers and learners a safe and controlled space for threaded discussions, storing grades, uploading assignments, posting content, communicating notices, and deploying some constructed assessment components like quizzes. However, learning management environments are limited in their abilities to engage students in deep learning and meaningful educational activities. To do so, requires instructors to move beyond the walled garden into a less organized and less controlled digital world. In this session, we will outline supportive teaching strategies and learning activities (facilitated by the digital environment) that promote higher levels of engagement for learning \textendash{} and are accessible and relatively easy to implement using open practices and resources. This learning happens outside the walled garden and requires careful consideration and attention to care for the students and the learning they will embark upon. But where to start? There are so many options, tools, apps, platforms and parameters to consider when designing a more open and flexible learning experience. Using a collection of evidence-based principles of learning, we'll outline how designing rich online learning experiences may be easier than you think. Participants will be exposed to 7 key learning principles and appropriate tools to use within and outside of learning systems. We'll share some of our favourite examples of aligned assignments and activities. We'll engage youin a discussion of other examples that might fit within the principles, gather ideas and share back with everyone. Come prepared to share your best examples of online learning outside the walled garden - learning out in the open!
The development of open and collaborative internet technologies has been a major support for the ... more The development of open and collaborative internet technologies has been a major support for the movement towards more open and accessible practices in education and has provided new methods and techniques for contributing knowledge as part of pedagogy. Further research is still needed on understanding the notion of open education practices, the impacts to student's personal knowledge management practices, and the impacts this has on pedagogy. This research focuses on the latter, investigating how faculty describe open education's impact on their approaches to teaching and learning.
In recent years, open education has gained significant interest among educational institutions, i... more In recent years, open education has gained significant interest among educational institutions, innovation leaders, and within popular media. In this study, we use Twitter social media data to examine the discourses surrounding openness as well as the people who participate in the discourse around openness. By targeting hashtags related to open education, we gathered the most extensive dataset of historical open education tweets to date (n = 178,304 tweets and 23,061 users) and conducted a mixed methods analysis of openness from 2009 to 2016. We find that the movement towards openness in education has a variety of meanings for different people and has evolved significantly over time. Findings show that the diversity of participants has varied somewhat over time and that the discourse has predominantly revolved around open resources, although there are signs that an increase in interest around pedagogy, teaching, and learning is emerging.
Open pedagogy, open educational practices, open teaching, or open practices, often used interchan... more 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\textemdash making and open educational practices. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 1\textendash 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\textendash 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\textendash 34. Knox, J. (2013). Five Critiques of the Open Educational Resources Movement. Teaching in Higher Education, 18(8), 821\textendash 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\textendash 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\textendash 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
VIU's take on open pedagogy centres around the making of learning visible through community engag... more VIU's take on open pedagogy centres around the making of learning visible through community engagement and the design of authentic and lived learning experiences, including non-disposable assignments. This isn't about using open textbooks or open educational resources (however it may be a side effect) but rather about making the entire learning experience live, unedited and unfolding in the moment following many of the attributes of Hegarty's (2015) model for open pedagogy (learner generated, peer review, participatory technology, innovation and creativity, sharing, reflection, trust and a connected community). We have a number of faculty applying open pedagogy components in their classes and we'll share some examples. We also are building a course redesign institute around this impactful learning practice. This session will explore the evolving components of open pedagogy and how it might manifest for optimal student learning. Participants will engage in a mini-version of our course redesign model and uncover the key attributes of open pedagogy. Come explore visible learning with us!
This research focuses on how educators are using openly accessible sources of knowledge and open-... more This research focuses on how educators are using openly accessible sources of knowledge and open-source tools and how that impacts their pedagogical designs. Reporting on a phenomenological study with open education practitioners, I will share how open educational practices (OEP) are being actualized in formal higher education and impacting learning design. Specifically, how educators are bringing elements of openness into their everyday teaching and learning practice. I define OEP as teaching and learning practices where openness is enacted within all aspects of instructional design practice, including the development of learning outcomes, the selection of teaching resources, and the planning of activities and assessment. OEP engage both educators and students with the use and creation of OER, draw attention to the potential afforded by open licences, facilitate open peer-review, and support participatory student-directed projects (Author, 2017). This presentation reports on how OEP are impacting the pedagogical choices and learning design strategies of educators teaching in formal higher education and how educators are navigating the issues, challenges, and supports which make this work possible. I draw upon Giddens (1986) structuration theory, further developed for use in information systems research most notably by DeSanctis and Poole (1994) and Orlikowski (2000). The theory explores the relationships between information communication technologies and the individuals who use them in their practice. Orlikowski's practice lens (2000) draws focus to how individuals, while interacting with technologies, enact practices and structures which shape their emergent and situated use of that technology. These practices ``are not fixed or given, but constituted and reconstituted through the everyday, situated practice of particular users using particular technologies in particular circumstances'' (Orlikowski, 2000, p. 425). Orlikowski's work positions technologies as continually socially and physically constructed, interpreted, and put into practice. In an organizational context, the use of technology is intrinsically linked with institutional properties, rules and norms, as well as individual perceptions and knowledge (Halperin, 2016). The literature on the impact of OEP suggests three key themes which need further investigation. These include the development of new learning designs which are afforded by the open nature of resources, networks, and the internet; opportunities for the increased personalization, autonomy, and self-regulation of student learning; and open education as a way of engaging our communities in an enhanced way. For those educators taking on OEP as part of their teaching, a greater understanding of the issues, challenges, and necessary supports are needed prior to further expanding and promoting OEP as a learning design strategy (Beetham, Falconer, McGill, \& Littlejohn, 2012; Borthwick \& Gallagher-Brett, 2014; Camilleri, Ehlers, \& Pawlowski, 2014; Pitt, 2015; Littlejohn \& Hood, 2016).
While an official definition for open educational practices is still emerging, from a learning de... more While an official definition for open educational practices is still emerging, from a learning design perspective these may be considered teaching and learning practices where openness is enacted within all aspects of instructional practice; including the design of learning outcomes, the selection of teaching resources, and the planning of activities and assessment. (Paskevicius, 2016). Open educational practices are teaching and learning designs that take advantages of the affordances of open educational resources, challenge students to learn more openly, engage our communities, and make our professional practice more accessible.A number of scholars have advocated for open practices: in supporting student success through increased access to educational resources (Mulder, 2011; Carey, Davis, Ferreras, \& Porter, 2015); to support faculty engagement with educational developers in the co-creation of reusable and adaptable courseware (Conole \& Weller, 2008; DeVries \& Harrison, 2016); through the experimentation and reflection of the practice of teaching in the open (Veletsianos, 2013; Cronin, 2017); and in fostering learning communities across institutions (Petrides, Jimes, Middleton-Detzner, Walling, \& Weiss, 2011). This session will focus on the stakeholder role of the educational developer, whose consultative work may support more open practices to address institutional goals, missions, and objectives. Educational developers are well positioned to support change by infusing professional development with open practices at the departmental, program, and course level. Open educational practices may be situated as a lens to support these change initiatives and provide new conceptualisations of teaching and learning (Bossu, \& Fountain, 2015). In this research presentation I'll present the findings from a literature review of open educational practices in the context of learning design and engage participants in thinking about how to integrate ``open'' into learning outcomes, teaching resources, pedagogy, and assessment.
This dataset contains eight transcripts from interviews conducted with educators as part of a PhD... more This dataset contains eight transcripts from interviews conducted with educators as part of a PhD study exploring open educational practices. The research focuses on how educators are using openly accessible sources of knowledge and open-source tools in ways that impact their pedagogical designs. Using a phenomenological approach with self-identifying open education practitioners, I explore how open educational practices are being actualized in formal higher education and impacting learning design. Specifically, I examine how educators are bringing elements of openness into their everyday teaching and learning practice using educational technologies. I draw upon Giddens (1986) structuration theory, further developed for use in technology adoption research most notably by DeSanctis and Poole (1994) and Orlikowski (2000). This approach positions technologies as being continually socially constructed, interpreted, and put into practice. In an organizational context, the use of technology is intrinsically linked with institutional properties, rules and norms, as well as individual perceptions and knowledge. The findings suggest that open educational practices 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 widely, demonstrates to them that their work has inherent value beyond the course and can be an opportunity to engage with their community.
A new academic year presents opportunities for ways education can be more affordable and accessib... more A new academic year presents opportunities for ways education can be more affordable and accessible to students. With tuition costs ever increasing and an ongoing lack of funding from the BC government, creative approaches to addressing student debt
This paper presents the case of how a department of applied science went about implementing a tab... more This paper presents the case of how a department of applied science went about implementing a tablet initiative in a two-year diploma program. Tablets were a required tool for entry into the program with a goal of reducing textbook purchase costs for students, mirroring industry standard practices in mobile device usage, and enabling collaborative and active learning in the classroom. Based on surveys, interviews, and classroom observations we found that the integration of tablets, when explicitly positioned as a teaching and learning tool supported new forms of peer-to-peer collaboration, encouraged the use of open educational resources, and shifted traditional classroom dynamics reformulating the division of labour between faculty and students. Using activity theory as a lens for the analysis, we examine how the introduction of this tool changes the system of activity and impacts the division of labour, community, and rules both within and beyond the classroom.Cet article pr\'esente la fa\c{c}on dont un d\'epartement de sciences appliqu\'ees a mis en \oe uvre un projet d'int\'egration de tablettes dans un programme de deux ans menant \`a un dipl\^ome. Les tablettes \'etaient requises pour entrer dans le programme, et ce, afin de r\'eduire les co\^uts d'achat de manuels scolaires, de refl\'eter les pratiques courantes de l'industrie en ce qui concerne l'utilisation des appareils mobiles, et de faciliter un apprentissage collaboratif et actif en classe. En nous basant sur des sondages, des entrevues et des observations en classe, nous avons constat\'e que l'int\'egration des tablettes, explicitement positionn\'ees comme outils d'enseignement et d'apprentissage, favorisait de nouvelles formes de collaboration entre pairs, encourageait l'utilisation de ressources \'educatives libres et modifiait la dynamique traditionnelle des salles de classe en red\'efinissant la division du travail entre professeurs et \'etudiants. En nous appuyant sur la th\'eorie de l'activit\'e, nous examinons comment l'introduction de cet outil modifie le syst\`eme
This paper presents findings from a study which explored the ways in which post-secondary educato... more This paper presents findings from a study which explored the ways in which post-secondary educators in British Columbia are reforming their teaching and learning practice as result of open education. Using a phenomenological approach with self-identifying open education practitioners we explore how openness is being enacted through learning design. Structuration theory is used as a theoretical lens to explore innovations to pedagogy through three modalities, which include facilities, norms, and interpretive schemes. The analysis identifies how participants in this study draw upon these modalities to support openness in their teaching. The findings suggest that open educational resources and practices can support learner-centered educational designs and should be considered design technologies, those that have the capacity to enhance teaching and learning practice; rather than simply content delivery technologies, those that influence the cost and access to education.
Beyond providing alternatives to traditional learning resources, there exists a gap in the litera... more Beyond providing alternatives to traditional learning resources, there exists a gap in the literature in understanding how openness is impacting teaching and learning in higher education. This paper explores the ways in which educators describe how open education is impacting their pedagogical designs. Using a phenomenological approach with self-identifying open education practitioners, we explore how open educational practices (OEP) are being actualised in formal higher education in the context of British Columbia (BC), Canada. The findings suggest that OEP represent an emerging form of learning design, which draws from existing models of constructivist and networked pedagogy, while using the affordances of open tools and content to create and share learning in novel ways. Faculty members report finding ways to use open approaches and technologies to support and enable active learning experiences, present and share learners' work in real-time, support formative feedback, peer review, and, ultimately, promote community-engaged coursework. By designing learning in this way, faculty members offer learners an opportunity to consider and practise developing themselves as public citizens, develop their knowledge and literacies for working appropriately 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 more widely, demonstrates to them that their work has inherent value beyond the course and can be an opportunity for them to engage directly with their community.
Like many universities worldwide, the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa has joined th... more Like many universities worldwide, the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa has joined the open educational resources (OER) movement, making a selection of teaching and learning materials available through its OER directory, UCT OpenContent. However, persuading and then supporting busy academics to share their teaching materials as OER still remains a challenge. In this article, we report on an empirical study of how UCT postgraduate students have assisted in the process of reworking the academics' teaching materials as OER. Using the concept of contradictions (Engestr\"om, 2001), we endeavor to surface the various disturbances or conflicts with which the postgraduate students had to engage to make OER socially inclusive, as well as Engestr\"om's ``layers of causality'' (2011, p. 609) to explain postgraduate students' growing sense of agency as they experienced the OER development process as being socially inclusive.
This chapter presents the findings from a study assessing learners' access to educational materia... more This chapter presents the findings from a study assessing learners' access to educational materials in select institutions within the Commonwealth countries. In July 2019, a questionnaire was distributed to learners in Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Saint Lucia, and Uganda collecting both quantitative and qualitative data. The findings from the questionnaire suggest that increasingly, learners report working in a complex ecosystem of learning resources, some of which are prescribed by their teachers and some of which they seek out to supplement and enhance their learning. Learning materials are now available in a mix of both print and digital formats, in a multitude of differing formats, with various terms of use and durations for sustained access. This research has resulted in the following recommendations which should be considered by educators, learning designers, and administrators. First, some careful attention should be given when considering accessibility of learning materials prescribed as part of formal coursework. Second, considering the growth of available open educational resources (OER), learners should be made explicitly aware of how to recognize these resources and have an understanding of what is possible with openly licensed material. Finally, educators using OER should make explicit the allowances enabled by open licences and provide examples of how such resources may be used by learners and the wider population.
The effectiveness of instructional videos as a teaching tool in the chemistry laboratory curricul... more The effectiveness of instructional videos as a teaching tool in the chemistry laboratory curricula at both Simon Fraser University (SFU) and Vancouver Island University (VIU) is examined. Five categories of videos used in first, second and third year laboratory courses were developed, either in-house (by faculty) or with the assistance of visual media professionals. Short student feedback surveys from both institutions indicate that students find the videos to be an effective tool in their education. Most students felt they were better prepared and more confident about their experiments after watching the videos.
This poster represents my masters research with students involved in a volunteer social outreach ... more This poster represents my masters research with students involved in a volunteer social outreach education project in Cape Town, South Africa. In the thesis I investigated the potential for open education resources to be used in social outreach projects. I explore the perceptions of six students participating in the project to investigate the main issues with the reuse of open educational resources. Through a curriculum development workshop and a series of open ended interviews, the students reflect on how they use and reuse digital educational resources and share some of the challenges ...
A presentation about my Ph.D. reserach in which I am exploring how open educational practices (OE... more A presentation about my Ph.D. reserach in which I am exploring how open educational practices (OEP) are evolving and being actualized in formal higher education through a three-paper thesis. As an educational developer, I am interested in how to support faculty in moving to more open practices in the design of teaching and learning. I have published in Open Praxis proposing a learning design model for open pedagogy. My next two studies will explore the experiences of faculty innovating with OEP, as well as the student experience of being engaged with OEP.
The potential benefits of openness in education are currently a topic of significant research. A ... more The potential benefits of openness in education are currently a topic of significant research. A study was conducted addressing the gap in the available literature by exploring how discourses around open education have evolved over time. Twitter posts and user profiles were used as data sources to identify the focal points of social media discourse around openness. By targeting sixteen hashtags related to open education, 178,304 tweets, profile information from 23,061 users, and associated metadata was identified to represent the most extensive dataset of historical open education tweets to date. This session will examine the findings of this study that show the diversity of participants contributing to the open discourse has varied somewhat over time. Participants will engage in critically exploring the dominant discourses within the open movement.
This thesis is founded on the rapidly emerging opportunity that our society has been presented wi... more This thesis is founded on the rapidly emerging opportunity that our society has been presented with; an opportunity to increase access to education throughout the world using information and communication technologies. Up till now the open education movement has seen strong growth in the supply side of open educational content, but an understanding of how that content may actually be useful to organizations has gone largely under researched. This case study explores the perceptions of six students participating in a volunteer social outreach project at the University of Cape Town in 2011. The students are volunteers in the Students' Health and Welfare Centres Organisation (SHAWCO) that has a vision to improve the quality of life of individuals in developing communities by increasing access to education. Through a curriculum development workshop and a series of open ended interviews, the students reflect on how they use and reuse digital educational resources and share some of the challenges they experience in curating and reusing educational resources for use within SHAWCO. Additionally, a newly introduced online curriculum database shared by all curriculum stakeholders is explored, with a focus on how the system facilitates materials' reuse. The collected data is analysed qualitatively within the framework of an activity system (Eng\"estrom, 1987) and the primary systemic tensions are discussed using the concept of contradictions. This study has exposed some of the tensions regarding how the rules, community, division of labour and technologies are perceived and impact upon individuals practice in this context. This study has reinforced that it is largely human and institutional factors which are limiting some of the potential afforded by new technologies and the OER movement.
This research focuses on how educators are using openly accessible sources of knowledge and open-... more This research focuses on how educators are using openly accessible sources of knowledge and open-source tools in ways that impact their pedagogical designs. Using a phenomenological approach with self-identifying open education practitioners, I explore how open educational practices (OEP) are being actualized in formal higher education and impacting learning design. Specifically, I examine how educators are bringing elements of openness into their everyday teaching and learning practice using educational technologies. I draw upon Giddens (1986) structuration theory, further developed for use in technology adoption research most notably by DeSanctis and Poole (1994) and Orlikowski (2000). This approach positions technologies as being continually socially constructed, interpreted, and put into practice. In an organizational context, the use of technology is intrinsically linked with institutional properties, rules and norms, as well as individual perceptions and knowledge. 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 widely, demonstrates to them that their work has inherent value beyond the course and can be an opportunity to engage with their community
The purpose of this report is to assess students' access to educational materials in select insti... more The purpose of this report is to assess students' access to educational materials in select institutions within Commonwealth countries. The report starts with a review of the existing literature on problems and barriers to students' access to educational materials, including textbooks. The review is used to develop a research study and appropriate questionnaire tools to undertake a survey of students in select institutions. Quantitative and qualitative approaches are then used to analyse the data. The findings indicate that learners are now engaging with a complex ecosystem of learning materials, both print and digital, in a multitude of differing forms and formats, with various terms of use and durations of sustained access. Furthermore, the results show that learners are not acutely aware of open educational resources (OER) and in some cases conflate OER with online knowledge resources, indicating that much more work needs to be done to educate learners about OER, where to find them, and how they can be used.
Uncertain times require prompt reflexes to survive and this study is a collaborative reflex to be... more Uncertain times require prompt reflexes to survive and this study is a collaborative reflex to better understand uncertainty and navigate through it. The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit hard and interrupted many dimensions of our lives, particularly education. As a response to interruption of education due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this study is a collaborative reaction that narrates the overall view, reflections from the K12 and higher educational landscape, lessons learned and suggestions from a total of 31 countries across the world with a representation of 62.7% of the whole world population. In addition to the value of each case by country, the synthesis of this research suggests that the current practices can be defined as emergency remote education and this practice is different from planned practices such as distance education, online learning or other derivations. Above all, this study points out how social injustice, inequity and the digital divide have been exacerbated during the pandemic and need unique and targeted measures if they are to be addressed. While there are support communities and mechanisms, parents are overburdened between regular daily/professional duties and emerging educational roles, and all parties are experiencing trauma, psychological pressure and anxiety to various degrees, which necessitates a pedagogy of care, affection and empathy. In terms of educational processes, the interruption of education signifies the importance of openness in education and highlights issues that should be taken into consideration such as using alternative assessment and evaluation methods as well as concerns about surveillance, ethics, and data privacy resulting from nearly exclusive dependency on online solutions.
Uncertain times require prompt reflexes to survive and this study is a collaborative reflex to
be... more Uncertain times require prompt reflexes to survive and this study is a collaborative reflex to better understand uncertainty and navigate through it. The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit hard and interrupted many dimensions of our lives, particularly education. As a response to interruption of education due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this study is a collaborative reaction that narrates the overall view, reflections from the K12 and higher educational landscape, lessons learned and suggestions from a total of 31 countries across the world with a representation of 62.7% of the whole world population. In addition to the value of each case by country, the synthesis of this research suggests that the current practices can be defined as emergency remote education and this practice is different from planned practices such as distance education, online learning or other derivations. Above all, this study points out how social injustice, inequity and the digital divide have been exacerbated during the pandemic and need unique and targeted measures if they are to be addressed. While there are support communities and mechanisms, parents are overburdened between regular daily/professional duties and emerging educational roles, and all parties are experiencing trauma, psychological pressure and anxiety to various degrees, which necessitates a pedagogy of care, affection and empathy. In terms of educational processes, the interruption of education signifies the importance of openness in education and highlights issues that should be taken into consideration such as using alternative assessment and evaluation methods as well as concerns about surveillance, ethics, and data privacy resulting from nearly exclusive dependency on online solutions.
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better understand uncertainty and navigate through it. The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit hard
and interrupted many dimensions of our lives, particularly education. As a response to interruption of
education due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this study is a collaborative reaction that narrates the overall
view, reflections from the K12 and higher educational landscape, lessons learned and suggestions from
a total of 31 countries across the world with a representation of 62.7% of the whole world population. In
addition to the value of each case by country, the synthesis of this research suggests that the current
practices can be defined as emergency remote education and this practice is different from planned
practices such as distance education, online learning or other derivations. Above all, this study points
out how social injustice, inequity and the digital divide have been exacerbated during the pandemic and
need unique and targeted measures if they are to be addressed. While there are support communities
and mechanisms, parents are overburdened between regular daily/professional duties and emerging
educational roles, and all parties are experiencing trauma, psychological pressure and anxiety to various
degrees, which necessitates a pedagogy of care, affection and empathy. In terms of educational
processes, the interruption of education signifies the importance of openness in education and highlights
issues that should be taken into consideration such as using alternative assessment and evaluation
methods as well as concerns about surveillance, ethics, and data privacy resulting from nearly exclusive
dependency on online solutions.