Open Education Co-Design as a Participatory Pedagogy in an Online Graduate Program

This paper builds on student-instructor partnerships by describing how an instructor, students, program coordinator, and members of a research team were involved in the co-design of an open educational resource in a graduate program in education. A four-part open learning design framework was used to guide the course design: (a) clarifying the co-design process; (b) buildingand sharing knowledge, and making thinkingvisible; (c) building relationships; and (d) sustaininglearning beyond the course. The framework, alongwith the collaborative team effort that was part of alarger research project, enabled the developmentof an openly licensed and accessible digital book.The project brought together a collaborative teamwho were passionate about learning more aboutopen education and a small grant supported theadditional expense of professional copyediting torefine the book.

Opening Doors to Open Digital Practice for Educators: The Open Page Project

This paper outlines the design and purpose of an open educational resource (OER) project focused on developing digital literacies and open educational practice (OEP) within a Canadian Faculty of Education. Called The Open Page, the project features a Tool Parade of videos and podcasts created with and by Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) students). Designed to enable students to build critical and participatory digital literacies with common classroom tools, and to encourage the development of OEP, the project assesses classroom uses of specific educational technology platforms. It also engaged student creators in analysis of various platforms' implications for student data and for differentiated learning. Featured on the University of Windsor Faculty of Education's website, The Open Page and its Tool Parade of OER offer professional development resources for faculty and practicing teachers and contributes to a common conversation about digital learning between educators at all levels. This paper will overview The Open Page and its creation, and the ways in which it represents an effort to focus pre-service teachers on the participatory and production capacities of the web for digital learning.

Open Resources in the Process Management of an Educational Organization in the Context of Integration and Inclusion

The formation of a digital education space is an important moment for the development of the education system in the modern world. The article analyzes the problems of ensuring the security of information technologies in the management of the educational process of organizations, the risks and threats of open Internet resources in the context of integration and inclusion. It is proposed to identify the process of forming digital mentors in a pandemic Covid time as a safe expert space that can reduce risks and threats. Materials and Methods. Using the method of descriptive analysis of datasets voluntarily made publicly available on the Internet by educational organisations allowed the authors to investigate examples of large-scale projects of virtual schools in the formats of exchange models for information subscribers and system integrators. The issues of ensuring the safety of underage users, legal shortcomings of access and protection of Internet consumers of open educational resources were discussed. Results. The study has shown that the evidence from innovative processes of developing and producing open educational resources is complex, context-specific and difficult to generalise. Such initiatives require significant organisational change, including external partners of educational organisations and stakeholders with different cultures and educational practices. The authors highlight the use of benchmarking technology as a tool for the quality of intellectual integrations and the effectiveness of educational activities as a whole as an important condition for the success of the processes taking place. In the context of the research, the authors raise the issue of computer addiction among pupils and students and their safe interaction with multifaceted information online, drawing attention to the need for legal and educational measures for online safety, which should be planned and implemented in the educational organisation on a regular basis. Open educational resource OER initiatives are related to institutional change and require appropriate pedagogical and psychological approaches and legal support to help all actors in the educational space adapt to changes in the IT culture. The materials of this article will be useful to specialists and educational managers, including inclusive education, in developing prospective strategies for digital education and models for the development, production and maintenance of open educational resources.

Participation in OER Creation: A Trajectory of Values

This paper provides an analysis of interviews with seven faculty members who engaged in creating Open textbooks funded by government grants at a university in Canada in 2018. Using four values—access and equity, community and connection, agency and ownership, and risk and responsibility—identified by Sinkinson (2018), McAndrew (2018), and Keyek-Fransen (2018), we traced the ways in which university faculty members’ understanding of Open changed through the process of Open Educational Resource creation. As a teaching support-focused unit, we explore ways to provide our faculty and instructors with meaningful opportunities to develop their Open pedagogy. These findings reconceive the way that Open Educational Practice can be promoted at our University and others. Instead of focusing solely on OER creation, our faculty started engaging in thinking through the different conceptions of Open educational practice and identifying which concepts resonated with them. By reframing the ways in which faculty thought about Open Educational Practices, we have been better able to address the ways in which we support them.

Improving the student learning experience through the student-led implementation of interactive features in an online open-access textbook

This case study highlights the work of Students as Partners (SaP) as a balanced approach for implementing and evaluating an online open-access textbook in introductory animal physiology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Started in 2017 with an eCampus Ontario grant, the project involved undergraduate and graduate students developing and improving an open-access e-textbook to support student learning in a second-year undergraduate introductory animal physiology course. This case study focuses on the 2019–2020 academic term and the work of two undergraduate students working alongside faculty and two librarians. As part of their research, the partners consulted the literature and gathered feedback from students taking the course in which the open e-textbook was used. Student partners added updates and new interactive features to create a more engaging educational resource to support student learning. The partners also reflected on their role in the open educational resource development process.

Multimedia Open Educational Resource Materials for Teaching-Online Diversity and Leadership: Aligning Bloom’s Taxonomy and Studio Habits of Mind

Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore, develop, test, and refine processes to incorporate meaningful and equitable use of open educational resources (OER) in online classrooms. Method: The intent of this qualitative study was to use an action research process of interactive discussions between higher education practitioners to shape collective understanding of how to teach in an online learning environment using OER. Results: The study resulted in the identification six exemplar learning opportunities which could be incorporated into the blended pedagogical model. Each exemplar OER included all four types of knowledge as defined by Bloom's taxonomy and required skills of observe and envision as defined in the Studio Habits of Mind (SHoM). A second criteria for our purposive selection was that each exemplar could be used to teach in multiple contexts for multiple purposes across a spectrum of higher education online courses. Conclusion: This study reminds us that educators need a new mindset to work with multimedia and visual resources. The blended pedagogical model provides scaffold teaching and learning opportunities that were not visible in either Bloom's taxonomy or SHoM alone. This blended pedagogical model scaffolds the “how” when using a visual approach to curriculum development that may enrich the learning experiences of students when presented in online higher education classrooms. Implication for Practice: Educators might replicate this study or transfer findings for purposes of comparing and testing further the use of OER in their online higher education classes to further engage student learning. Applying new understanding in a project that is shared with the larger learning group is essential as students understand and begin to own new skills and insights. The blended pedagogical model presented in this paper could be helpful to educators to maximize the benefits from the integration of technology and OERs to support online higher education.

OER as a Tool for Sustainable Development: The Ukrainian - Latvian Experience of Forensic Science Experts

One of the important factors influencing the quality of modern education is Open Educational Resources. The new form of education was recognised by UNESCO and become an important element in achieving the main goals of Sustainable Development in the field of Education. Open Educational Resources play transformative role in the cases of supporting both regular and specific fields of education. The paper examines the role of Open Educational Resources in the field of such a specific industry/occupation as forensic experts. Forensic experts’ learning process has several levels that start from the access to higher education. The requirements to receive forensic expert’s certificate stems from the national law. And these requirements could vary from country to country. Open Educational Resources represent an opportunity for a great number of learners in various study fields. Nevertheless, those resources are not used in forensic expert education. To clarify the possibility to use Open Educational Resources in specific forensic expert education field, a research on forensic expert education in Latvia and Ukraine has been conducted. Open Educational Resources can improve the quality of education on at least two levels. The first one is the quality of teaching content and the second is the modern learning environment, providing access to all necessary researches that are necessary to pass the forensic expert examination. Authors found out that nowadays Open Educational Resources are not applied in forensic experts’ education. As the research reveals, the main resources are legal documents and practical knowledge provided by academic staff. From the authors perspective it is suggested to create an Open Educational Resource that could provide forensic experts with the information necessary to pass the examination and to improve both practical and theoretical skills. Nevertheless, Open Educational Resources in such a specific field can met several challenges.

Evidence-Based Educational Innovation Model Linked to Digital Information Competence in the Framework of Education 4.0

Education 4.0 promotes visualizing how teachers’ traditional digital competencies adopt innovative practices. The present research analyzes the relationship between the perceived digital information competencies (DICs) of university teachers and the implementation of evidence-based, innovative actions (EBEI) in a model that supports innovative practices. The research method applied was the mixed method. In the quantitative phase, the final sample consisted of 271 teachers. The ad hoc digital competency-open educational resource scale (DC-OER) was applied to measure their perception of DIC. In the qualitative phase, 15 teachers were interviewed. The results showed (a) a close relationship between the fulfillment of EBEI and the support of DIC; (b) in quantitative results, in most cases, the means are close to the central value 3, and the standard deviation is close to 1, which indicates higher DIC; (c) the qualitative results indicate that teachers search, select, evaluate information, and produce new knowledge; and (d) the theoretical model of EBEI links DIC to the formation of digital citizenship. The data can be of value to the academic community in relevant environments within the framework of Education 4.0. As a future line of research, we envision analyzing the perceived digital competencies of teachers versus their effective behavior.