Across the science community and society at large there are increased calls to make science, its data, analyses, and approaches more transparent (Burgelman et al., 2019), open (Kuzilek et al., 2017), accurate (van der Zee & Reich, 2018), and reproducible (Nosek et al., 2015). At the Annual General Members (AGM) meeting at LAK2021 a motion was discussed originally proposed entitled “Let’s prioritize open data, analyses, and science in LAK and JLA!” (Brooks, 2021). As Brooks argued, “we should help our society improve our game with respect to open science! Educational research is difficult to replicate and thus doesn't get replicated, leading to spurious results going undetected as such. As one of the largest educational technology societies which has a strong history of empirical research, we are in a great place to help push forward a change!“
The 2021 SoLAR AGM supported the motion on 15 April 2021, which states that SoLAR “recognizes the importance of open, accessible, reproducible, repeatable, and replicable data and analyses approaches. SoLAR also recognizes a diversity of epistemological, ethical, and legal challenges and opportunities which such approaches face. SoLAR will develop a statement that will inform and guide research and practice associated with these approaches.” The AGM motion reflected both the priorities and concerns raised in connection with open science and scholarship as the motion was formulated.
This workshop will explore these issues in more depth, using a three-part format. For the first part, participants will be asked to propose ten-minute presentations on any aspect of the relationship across open science, open scholarship, and learning analytics. In the second part, participants will be split into groups, where they will discuss the issues raised in the presentations, relating these issues to their own experiences where appropriate. In the final part of the workshop, participants will work to produce a draft of the SoLAR statement to ‘inform and guide practice’.