Digital Competencies and Transformation in Higher Education

Extension action promotes inclusive, equitable, and quality education, a goal of sustainable development that guides educational actions around the world. The development of digital skills is a differential, together with the encouragement of open educational practices. This chapter provides reflections, as well as lessons learned, through experience in a biomedical engineering course. Encouragement, through the development of actions that correlate important skills and abilities, is essential for professional development. The carrying out of teaching, research, and extension activities and actions contributed to promote the interdisciplinarity of the various fields of study, necessary for professional development in the digital age. Thus, the actions developed stimulated the investigation, improvement, and study of topics of interest related to education and health and technology areas related to the role of the biomedical engineer, the main protagonist of this project.

Opening the Online Homework System: Toward Cooperation and Collaboration

One of the core tensions in open educational practice in current mathematics and physical science coursework is the use of online homework systems. Many such tools are from commercial providers and have profit to that provider as a motive. Open resources are pursued by those who, for reasons of cost or of pedagogy, seek to resist the tools of commercial providers. This pursuit is frequently made outside of the context of discussions of open educational practices; indeed, the first author of this presentation describes one such effort that started before he was even aware of open education as a discipline. It is important to ask how those faculty, particularly in the mathematics and physical science disciplines at non-elite institutions, assign homework in ways that encourage practice and skill-building, and more broadly, how such content can be shared more robustly and completely among faculty at different institutions.

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.

Theoretical and Methodological Approaches for Investigating Open Educational Practices

To date, the phenomenon associated with open education in relation to teaching and learning practices remains under-theorized in the literature, which represents both a challenge and opportunity for further research (Bulfin et al., 2013; Howard & Maton, 2011; Knox, 2013; Veletsianos, 2015). There exists an opportunity to develop new theory, as well as to connect the phenomenon to existing theory from education, learning sciences, and pedagogical research. Much of the literature has focused on case studies, strategies for implementation, and broad approaches to institutional change which do not draw upon or develop theory. A significant amount of the empirical work reviewed makes no mention of a theoretical base aside from that of openness as a conceptual framework for considering education. Further, critical studies which examine the pedagogical and educational implications of the use of open educational resources (OER) and engagement in open educational practices (OEP) are even less common (Knox, 2013). In this paper, we share the results of a literature review which investigates both methodological and theoretical approaches used in the available research on open educational practices, with the goal of engaging participants in a critical review of the theoretical and methodological approaches to further advance research in this emerging space.

An Analysis of Peer-Reviewed Publications on Open Educational Practices (OEP) from 2007 to 2020: A Bibliometric Mapping Analysis

This study undertook a bibliometric mapping analysis of research papers on Open Educational Practices (OEP) in the Web of Science and Scopus databases. This study functions as a guide for new research, serving to identify trends in the OEP field and compare the existing research so as to identify gaps and promising future paths. A total of 635 studies were obtained; however, only 156 were finally selected for the analysis. VOSviewer software was used to identify the most frequently used keywords and terms in the abstracts and titles. This software was also used to analyse the studies for co-authorship and citations. The findings showed that research on OEP started in 2007 and focused on higher education, including open and distance higher education. Most of the OEP studies were published in English as journal articles, in particular, many were published in Distance Education, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, and Open Praxis. The United Kingdom, Spain, and Australia were the top contributors to the OEP literature. The analysis of keywords and terms in the titles and abstracts revealed that current OEP trends covered only open pedagogy and open collaboration, suggesting a need for more research on other trends, such as open assessment, open data, and open science. The results also suggested that future research needs to focus more on inclusive open educational practices that accommodate students with disabilities.

Improving K-12 Teachers’ Acceptance of Open Educational Resources by Open Educational Practices: A Mixed Methods Inquiry

Teachers in K-12 settings increasingly demand instructional materials beyond textbooks to follow the upward momentum of personalized instruction. Especially during the outbreak of COVID-19, K-12 teachers are forced to quickly adapt to online teaching and thus have more difficulties of delivering personalized instruction in a relatively resource-restraint situation. Open educational resources (OER), allowing teachers to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute high-quality educational resources at no costs, can be a viable option for teachers. However, the acceptance of OER in K-12 education still remains low. Effective strategies are needed to reinforce teacher intention to adopt OER. This research showcased a two-phase sequential explanatory mixed method inquiry to investigate whether engaging K-12 teachers in open educational practices (OEP)—such as renewable assignments—increased their acceptance of OER. The quantitative phase, referring to the technology acceptance model (TAM), examined the change in factors influencing teachers’ acceptance of OER. The qualitative phase was followed up to provide supplementary perspectives of the quantitative findings. By integrating complementary findings, this research found that OEP increased teachers’ perceived ease of and self-efficacy towards using OER. Although teachers’ intention of implementing OER is not significantly improved, qualitative findings offered additional insights into the benefits of OEP in promoting OER usage and the recommended directions for future effort. Practical implications on improving teachers’ acceptance of OER in K-12 curriculum are discussed at the end.

Validation of the attitudinal scale of open educational practices in university teachers

The relevance of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the Latin American university context requires an instrument that measures the conceptual, procedural, and attitudinal aspects that teachers consider having in their open educational practices. The purpose of this research is to describe the process of design and validation of the Attitudinal Scale of Open Educational Practices (ASOEP) Scale. Consequently, the methodological approach corresponds to a descriptive, transectional, instrumental design that has three components: scale design, evaluation by expert judgment and validation with the pilot application. The pilot test was applied to a random sample with 123 teachers at a university in Colombia. The results from the validation of the content had the participation of five international experts who were classified according to coefficient K in the range between (k: .80 and k: 1.00). From the pilot application, the ASOEP Scale presented a general reliability of (α: .943). Keywords: Open Educational Practices, Open Educational Resources, Open Education, University teaching, Attitudinal scale

Developing an online learning community through an open reflective assessment

The concepts of learning communities, open educational practices and co-created teaching and learning are topics of current debate, particularly since the switch to online learning in 2020/21 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This case study uses student feedback to evaluate a new assessment method introduced within an online distance learning Master of Public Health programme. The assessment required students to blog about their motivations for studying public health, submitting their reflections to an open online platform, resulting in the co-creation of a shared, open-learning resource for current and future students. The assessment design was informed by the benefits of open educational practices and co-created teaching and learning, with the overall aim of developing an online learning community that will continue to grow and develop beyond the initial assessment and cohort. Feedback suggests that the open, reflective nature of the assessment had a positive impact on the student learning experience and contributed towards a sense of learning community through enhanced social cohesion within the group.

DESIGNING TEACHERS’ TRAINING ON ADOPTING OERS IN THEIR TEACHING

During the covid-19, it became apparent the imperative need for openly available digital educational resources to be used in education which has been shifted to Online Remote Teaching and Learning. It is important for teachers to be able to utilize Open Educational Resources (OERs) in education. This paper develops a framework for designing Teachers’ Training programmes on how to integrate OERs in the teaching practice. The framework consists from six modules: 1) Introduction to OERs, 2) Exploring & Evaluating existing OERs, 3) Using OERs, 4) Communicating & Sharing OERs, 5) developing OERs, and 6) Open Educational Practices (OEPs). The paper also defines OERs & OEPs competence. Finally, educational policy authorities may use this framework to design training programmes for teachers on how to integrate OERs in their teaching.