The role of educational developers in supporting open educational practices
Note: We are offering this workshop first at the OE Global Conference in South Africa in March and will revise and enhance for ETUG. While open educational resources (OER) increase in availability, sophistication, quality and adoption around the world there remains a gap in the utilization and contribution to open educational practices, amongst faculty. While an official definition for open educational practices is still emerging, we align ourselves with the following articulation which suggests nascent practices enabled by the affordances of OER and open technology infrastructure allowing for the transformation of learning (Camilleri & Ehlers, 2011) which invites students contribution, engagement, and ownership of knowledge resources thereby flattening the balance of power in student/teacher relationships (McGill, Falconer, Dempster, Littlejohn, & Beetham, 2013). Arguments have been made at various levels to engage and support faculty in using open educational practices – at the institutional level to support strategic advantage through lower cost access to OER textbooks and educational materials (Mulder, 2011; Carey, Davis, Ferreras, & Porter, 2015); through incentives which support faculty engagement with instructional designers in the co-creation of reusable high-impact courseware (Conole & Weller, 2008; DeVries & Harrison, 2016); through the experimentation and adoption of the practice of teaching-in-the-open (Veletsianos, 2013); and in the forming of learning communities across institutions (Petrides, Jimes, Middleton‐Detzner, Walling, & Weiss, 2011). This session will focus on the stakeholder role of the educational developer, often situated within teaching and learning centres, whose responsibility may include support of more open practices in higher education, to meet various institutional goals and objectives.
The role of educational developers in supporting open educational practices
- 1. The role of educational developers in supporting open educational practices Michael Paskevicius Vivian Forssman http://bit.ly/EdDevOpen
- 2. Our intended session outcomes At the end of the workshop participants will: • Develop a set of strategies for supporting and promoting open educational practices around learning outcomes, teaching strategies, and assessment • Considered the educational developers role of change agent in advancing openness • Reflected upon the privacy conundrum of supporting open educational practices
- 3. Your experience advocating for open education On your own: Take 2 minutes and jot down a few notes about your experience explaining, advocating for, or engaging others with the concept or practice of open education. 1. Identify the most significant barrier you have heard in response to the idea 2. Identify the most significant benefit you have heard in response to the idea 3. Identify a single strategy you might use to promote openness?
- 4. How can educational developers infuse and inspire open educational practices while supporting and consulting with educators and students?
- 5. Business as usual Shares resources among colleagues Engages in interinstitutional resource sharing Licensing and permissions often unclear Engages students in contributing or remixing open access, openly licensed and public domain resources Creates and shares T&L resources that are open access, openly license and/or public domain Shares practice at teaching conferences and events Uses open access, open licenses and public domain resources in T&L Adopts and prescribes an open textbook Engages students in using open access, open licenses and public domain resources Understanding of licensing usage rights Understanding and adoption of open licensing Uses open resources found online Often under fair use Spectrum of open educational practices Most common practices Emerging practices Bleeding edge practices
- 6. Teaching & Learning Activities Learning Outcomes Assessment & Evaluation Adapted from Biggs & Tang, 2011 Teaching & Learning Resources
- 7. Teaching & Learning Activities Teaching & Learning Resources Learning Outcomes Assessment & Evaluation Accessible, clear, transparent, expansive, and student-centred learning outcomes Accessible, adaptable, shared, and collaborative resources Student as producer, peer- reviewer, collaborator, and digitally literate contributor to OEP Exposed, collaborative, and collectively improved teaching and learning activities Paskevicius, M. (in press). Conceptualizing Open Educational Practices through the Lens of Constructive Alignment. Open Praxis.
- 8. A working definition for OEP in the context of educational development Teaching and learning practices where openness is enacted within all aspects of instructional practice; including the design of learning outcomes, teaching resources, activities, and assessment. OEP engage both faculty and students with the use and creation of OER, draw attention to the potential afforded by open licences, facilitate open peer-review, and support student-directed projects.
- 9. Come up with an open practice for each of the instructional elements (the articulation of learning outcomes and syllabus, teaching and learning activities, assessment and evaluation) • Describe the practice • What tools do you need? • What challenges can you imagine? http://bit.ly/EdDevOpen
- 10. OEP and Networked Learning
- 11. Open Educational Practices: A Conundrum for Educational Developers A reimagining and refocusing of high-impact teaching and learning practices peppered with open Often considered an ‘extra step’ towards the design of teaching and learning Sensitivity to student privacy and comfort with operating in the open Raise disciplinary particularities each with their own resources, strategies, norms, and values Parallels (murkiness) in relation to networked learning, student engagement strategies, SOTL, experiential learning, existing closed learning technologies
- 12. Prepared by: Michael Paskevicius Learning Technologies Application Developer | Centre for Innovation and Excellence in Learning | michael.paskevicus@viu.ca | @mpaskevi Vivian Forsman Director | Centre for Teaching and Educational Technologies (CTET) | Vivian.1forssman@RoyalRoads.ca | @vivforssman This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0