Open Learning

ACTIVITY:

Your students are completing a community project where they are asked to solve a community problem by presenting their idea to the city town council.

You are considering ways that students can document evidence of their learning and thinking so that others can see the process behind their project . Your school district has an ePortfolio software tool, but the students want to share their learning with the public.

Questions:

How can students share their learning with the community? What can/should they share? Why?

What kinds of open digital tools can they use to interact and connect with others?

What kinds of student data privacy and security questions should teachers ask themselves before considering open learning?

Through a series of interviews and direct examples, a panel of teachers from Alberta describe their use of open educational resources to create their own open communities of learners, following the first four attributes of Bronwyn Hagerty’s model of open pedagogy: participatory technology; people, openness, and trust; innovation and creativity, and the connected community. (Retrieved from: http://bolt.athabascau.ca/index.php/oer/multiply-k-12-alberta-oer-project/oer-videos/)

Overview:

Open educational practice is a learning perspective which emphasizes student voice, identity and culture by ensuring equitable access to learning resources and opportunities for all students. The focus of open learning is on sharing and building knowledge for all learners and encouraging learner participation in safe, respectful and supportive learning spaces. In K-12 learning contexts, there is a continuum of openness which considers how much learning occurs in publicly open environments which is dependent upon the individual open readiness (Cronin, 2017) of learners and teachers. "Open practice is not a one-time decision. It is a succession of personal, complex, and nuanced decisions" (Cronin, 2017).

The open learning experience for any K-12 learner will be directly influenced by the open readiness of their teacher.

Open Educational Practice (OEP) in K-12 learning contexts describes an intentional design that expands learning opportunities for all learners beyond classroom walls by collaboratively and individually sharing and building knowledge and encouraging networked participation by interacting with others from multiple cultural perspectives “

(Roberts, 2018 - Building from Cronin, 2017)

Indicators of Open Educational Practice:

• Co-Designing Learning (Teachers & Students)
• Sharing Learning Experiences and Resources/Digital Artifacts
• Connection to Community/Global Learning Networks
• Expanded Learning Environments Beyond Classroom Walls
  • Multiple Opportunities to Interact/ Connect with Others Outside of Classroom Walls
  • Multiple Opportunities for Giving/ Receiving Feedback
• Pedagogical approaches - dependant upon learning context/ flexible/iterative

Open educational practices (OEP) can help support the expansion from one formal learning space into multiple non-formal learning spaces because the student is in control of the learning environments that they wish to explore.

Open Learning Design Intervention (OLDI)

Retrieved from Proposing OLDI - Open Learning Design Intervention

Why use open practices?

Open educational resources are just one part of a global open education movement seeking to promote and support more equitable and sustainable education for all. A broader term, open educational practices (OEP), includes the use of OER as well as open pedagogy and open sharing of teaching practices. Openness, in all these forms, has many benefits for educators, learners, educational institutions and wider communities.

Benefits for educators:

• Why re-invent the wheel? Reusing existing open resources frees up time that can be spent on other aspects of the teaching and learning process. Use of OER can help you to expand your range of free, up-to-date learning and teaching materials.
• Creating OER can help to improve your teaching by exploring beyond your immediate environment, finding others interested in and teaching similar subjects, and broadening your views. Many who use, create, and share OER find that it reinvigorates their teaching.
• Working with OER can help you to develop your digital literacies (and your students’ digital literacies), particularly around working with digital content, intellectual property, networks, and a variety of digital and participatory media.
• Using OER and OEP can help expand your network, facilitating working across subject disciplines, institutions, and sectors, enabling you to benefit from diverse global networks and knowledge.
• Sharing your materials can help raise your profile and allow your resources to be used, adapted, and improved by other users. Overall, you can improve your profile and impact.
• By openly licensing the educational resources you create, you contribute to society in a unique way: sharing publicly funded resources publicly, enabling people in your local and national communities, as well as globally, to access, adapt, and gain benefit from them.

Benefits for learners:

• Learners have freedom of access to course and course-related materials before enrolling as a student, while a student (at work/home/on placement), and after being a student.
• Seeing/applying knowledge in wider contexts than their course/module typically allows.
• Using learner-centred, self-directed, peer-to-peer and social/informal learning approaches.
• Authentic or 'real-life' learning experiences through OER can link to employer or professional sector activities.
• Learners can also benefit from opportunities to contribute toward OER development and/or evaluation, or by creating their own OER.

Benefits for educational institutions:

• Increased sharing of ideas and practice within the institution, among all staff and students.
• Wider availability of academic content and focus on the learning experience (linked to widening access to higher education).
• Increased capacity to support remote students.
• Efficiencies in content production (e.g. generic content that can be used across subject areas).
• New relationships with students as they become collaborators in OER production and use.
• Increasing digital competencies, including understanding of intellectual property rights.
• New partnerships/collaboration with other institutions and organisations across other sectors.
• Recognition and enhanced institutional reputation.

Benefits for other individuals and wider communities:

• Access to quality peer-reviewed research and free, open, repurposable educational content.
• New potential partnerships with content providers and other sectors.
• Enabling collaborative approaches to teaching/learning (communities of practice).
• Enhanced communication and collaboration within educational institutions and with peers in other institutions/organizations, other sectors, and globally.
• Open access to legacy materials

References & Resources

• How openness impacts on higher education (UNESCO)
• Learning resources and open access in higher education institutions in Ireland (National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education, 2015)
• OER Research Hub (OER Hub)

Stages of K-12 Open Learning:

Figure 1. Stages of open learning

Open learning can be integrated in stages. An educator can integrate social networks and interactions into closed learning management systems (LMSs) like moodle or D2L or closed digital artifacts, such as blogs or wikis. This stage is teacher directed and the students would be limited to specific open educational content with learning interactions limited to specific participants. This type of learning environment would be considered a walled garden, in that the open learning is restricted by some kind of digital wall. Specifically, this means that the learners interact with each other and the public can “see” the interactions, but no one from “outside” the environment would be able to interact or collaborate with the learners without permission.

The second stage could be a course offered through a publicly viewable blog, or open LMS, so the public can see the course content and interactions; however, the participants and interactions are restricted. The public would be able to see participants interact, but they would not be able to interact with the participants. This method offers an opportunity for students to develop their digital identity and voice without the need to respond to public and anonymous feedback. The student content could be linked to and remixed by others, so the students would be developing their own open educational resources.

The final stage is creating a learning environment using an open digital tool like a wiki or blog or creating an open course in a LMS. The content is created by remixing or linking to open educational resources and promotes the students to create their own open content. The anonymous public can interact and give feedback to course participants.

In Canada, all three stages require signed authorization from a parent or guardian. The difference between the first two stages and the third is that the first two stages can be monitored by an educator. However, the third stage needs a larger learning community to monitor and ensure the safety of all students. One educator cannot be responsible for a stage three open learning environment in which students, parents and educators have to support, provide feedback and monitor each other.

Benefits of Open Learning

Developing an open classroom means creating opportunities for students to learn in the open, based on parental permission as well as student digital literacy level and digital identity awareness. Educators have to be prepared for students to have different abilities and comfort levels when encouraging open learning and must be respectful of the individual concerns of their students. However, by having an opportunity to learn in the open, students can make connections with learners, ideas and digital content from around the world. Students have authentic learning opportunities with the integration of social media. Open learning encourages students to use the digital tools and social networks they are already using outside the classroom. experiencing the integration of social networks and tools into formal learning opportunities, students described deeper and more meaningful understanding because they interacted and engaged with more people and more digital content. Students were able to examine the impact of their digital identity through blogging, public interactions and peer feedback. They were encouraged to create their own course content based on their own passions and become self-directed learners. Open learning promotes different roles for educators and students because when you learn in the open—you learn together.

From: Roberts, V. (2019). Open Learning and MOOCS in Canadian K-12 Online and Blended Learning Environments. Retrieved from: https://k12sotn.ca/papers/open-learning-and-moocs-in-canadian-k-12-online-and-blended-learning-environments/

Resources:

True stories of Open Sharing: http://stories.cogdogblog.com/

Open Learning Spaces - Building Futures

Multiplying K-12 OER Project