Open Educational Practices

Open Educational Practice - Approaching a Definition for a New Concept

Why is it important to extend the concept of open educational resources to open educational practices?

Although open educational resources (OER) are high on the agenda of social and inclusion policies and supported by many stakeholders in the educational sphere, their use in higher education (HE) and adult education (AE) has not yet reached a critical threshold. This is posing an obstacle to the seamless provision of high quality learning resources and practices for citizens’ lifelong learning. This is explained by the fact that the current focus in OER is mainly on building more access to digital content. There is little consideration of how OER are supporting educational practices, and how OER promote quality and innovation in teaching and learning.

We aim therefore to extend the focus of OER beyond access to innovative open educational practices (OEP). The term ‘open educational practices’ is an emerging concept. OEP are defined as practices which support the (re)use and production of high quality OER through institutional policies, promote innovative pedagogical models, and respect and empower learners as co-producers on their lifelong learning path. OEP address the whole OER governance community, policy makers, managers/ administrators of organisations, educational professionals and learners.

In this positioning paper we outline basic characteristics and describe open educational practices in their current forms. The paper is based on a networked discussion between international experts in the field of OER, HE and AE.

How is open educational practice defined?

In general, open educational practice is defined as the use of open educational resources in such a way that the quality of educational experiences is raised. Whereas OER focus on content and resources, OEP represents the practice in which an educational method is employed to create an educational environment in which OER are used or created as learning resources.

Where OER focuses largely on the questions of how resources can be made available, OEP asks the question of how OER can be used in the educational context. In a sense, OEP means to put OER to the test by creating educational activities, feedback and interaction around a piece of open learning material. Whereas OER is sometimes a collection of often itemized resources (pictures, texts, websites, videos), OEPs focus on educational practice and thus represent a sequence of activities, in which (open) resources are used with a specific intention. OEP focuses more on the demand side of education and not so much on the supply side. Questions of educational processes are focused on where information and communication technologies (ICTs) are used to create, modify and reuse resources. This should be carried out in a manner that allows the quality of learning experiences to be raised.

The term “practice” signifies that a holistic context is addressed, not only one element of it, be it the resource, the learners or teachers, or the educational or organisational context. A certain educational context is associated with OEP. It is an educational context in which OER are used in a context of reflective educational concepts, in which learners’ peers and teachers validate the learning processes and results through critical dialogue.

OEP can be applied to formal as well as informal (and non formal) educational scenarios.

Teachers are assuming their role as guides rather than as content bearers. They help students to validate learning experiences rather than transferring knowledge to them. Validation in itself becomes a more and more reflective practice thus moving away from oral or written tests which are asking for reproduction of a predefined set of knowledge assets.

Why is quality development rather a matter of open educational practices and not of open educational resources?

In recent debate about the quality of OER and e-learning content in general, a structural problem becomes apparent. In many approaches, educational resources are evaluated and judged separately from their intended use, e.g. through certification or criteria based approaches. In these cases, learners and teachers are excluded from quality judgments because quality is seen as a characteristic of the content and not the educational experience – learners and teachers are separated from the educational context of practice. It is simply overlooked that quality is no fixed and stable characteristic of an educational resource, but that educational quality is only established in the situation where a resource is employed in a specific context through a specific learner, or teacher. Quality in such an understanding is constituted as a relation between a specific resource or a concrete offer and the way it is used, perceived and valued through interaction in an educational context. Education in this sense is the result of interaction between learners, teachers, resources, and other elements of an educational scenario in a specific context. Quality is thus a very specific phenomenon, depending on many influencing factors which – if not taken into account – lead to a restricted view. Quality can only be assigned to a specific and defined context.

The practice of evaluating quality up front or assigning a certain level of quality to a resource disconnected from its educational practice – e.g. through prescriptive concepts – is, contrary to frequently expressed opinion, not possible. Further it is not possible to define overarching quality criteria for educational quality which guarantee high quality without regarding the context of a learning environment. However, despite this, the current practice of evaluating and assuring quality is often dominated by instrumental and objectivist quality concepts (Bauer 1996). Quality is not an objective characteristic of a learning resource, or a service but is constituted as a specific characteristic of a context which – in turn - is formed through the personal, organisational, social and structural interaction of the stakeholders involved.

The dilemma is thus that educational quality on the one hand is a characteristic of educational practice, and not an educational resource, whereas on the other hand it would often be desirable and important to know the quality in advance by prescribing it to a certain resource.

However, OEP does not simply focus on any educational use of OER, but carries the intention that there should be an element of innovative practice through the use of OER in which educational scenarios go beyond reproducing “traditional” educational scenarios. Instead, they take advantage of OER so that educational practices become more open.

To support quality in the use of OER implies bringing transparency to usage practices. Use of an open resource must be carried out with consideration to quality, the contexts and conditions under which OER have been used must be described in highly effective and efficient ways, and the opinions of stakeholders sought in order to enable learners and teachers to learn from this information. If quality lies in the context, we have to focus on capturing contexts and making recommendations for the contexts of usage of an OER.

What are characteristics of open educational practices?

OEP means the use of OER and the opportunity to benefit from experiences and expertise of others. It is inherently based on collaboration between content creators and users because it involves the re-use of resources which have been created by other persons (often peers). Collaboration is further explicit when OER are modified and then republished as OER, so that the original creator can take advantage of the amended – often validated – resource.

OEP also opens the door to the incorporation of social learning in the learning environment. The social learning element is coming in because learners can use educational resources, modify them and present them to other learners (modification of OER or User generated Content), knowledge environments on the basis of OER can be created by learners and shared with other learners or teachers (e.g. social bookmarking, Wikis, collection of resources) and social interaction is changing focus from the transfer of knowledge to social practices which involve reflection and peer-reflection of one’s own experiences, creating content together and validation through peer-interaction between learners, and between learners and teachers or experts.

OEP already considers the localisation of resources since it is educational practice. A core element of practice is that it does not separate the resource from its usage but takes into account the interplay between stakeholders, organisational elements and resources.

OEP entails the use and creation of educational resources which are openly available. It thus multiplies openly and freely available resources. It also allows learners to become professional in using open resources and validating their usefulness for their own learning and development processes. Thirdly, it opens educational scenarios to focus more on applying knowledge and working with knowledge rather than on transferring knowledge.

A collection of stories could be a possible way to capture the quality of the educational practice which has been developed and implemented based on an OER. This selection of stories, or case descriptions could be collected under a certain structure, enabling learners and teachers to learn from it and to benchmark and bench-act.

OEP might be a bridge between formal and informal learning experiences since it involves creating learning resources in one environment (e.g. formal) which can be used additionally in another (e.g. informal) environment in addition - or vice versa. OEP opens the vision to create an open source curriculum of learning materials for degree relevant education. It would thus fundamentally change the nature of the way educational organisations operate today. Where educational organisations today are gatekeepers of content and knowledge transfer, they would become professional validation agencies.

OEP involves the whole educational governance community, consisting of policy makers, management, administration, educational professionals, and learners. When elaborating concepts for quality it is necessary to define how the role of each stakeholder in an environment of open educational practices is affected and changed. Under the conditions of OEP everybody can be seen as a learner. Learners, however, change their roles and become producers, and are also active as teachers. Learners are also peers who enter into peer-review and mutual assessment validation processes.

What is the state of the OEP adoption process?

Looking at OEP from a global perspective we can acknowledge that while the adoption of OEP in EU countries might be slow, Brazil, China and other regions are changing rapidly as shown by the number of self-learners accredited by agencies. There is a tension between the vision of OEP today and the reality in higher education and adult education.

Depending from which perspective one looks at OEP, the analysis of OEP adoption varies considerably. While the take up of OEP by learners might be promising, teachers often very much prefer certified content. Moreover, there are only relatively few institutions which have developed and implemented OEP policies.

The adoption of OEP is also hindered by language issues.

Open educational practices entail changes in transfer oriented learning environments. Thus the adoption of OEP means a shift in approaches, roles constellations and required competences. Thus it encompasses the educational scenario as a whole.

General barriers to the adoption of OEP:

• Tools and access to OER are not yet facilitated by all institutions
• A necessary and general mind shift in the culture of learning and teaching is implied through a successful uptake of OEP, where teachers must evolve from their role as content bearers to one of educational artists. This poses obstacles to their currently predominant role.
• OEP is not incentivised, and there is thus no opportunity for OEP practitioners to receive recognition as exponents

Barriers to adoption for teachers and institutions

• OEP means a power shift - teachers lose their current roles and have to assume other roles. Teachers who remain in an authoritarian and transfer oriented position are a threat to OEP.
• New competences are necessary and professors have to change their role from that of content bearers to facilitators.
• No general portfolio of documented experiences in institutions is in existence which could constitute the body of experience for the use of OER in a positive, recognized and highly reputed manner. While OEP encourages open and novel teaching approaches, other transfer oriented teaching approaches predominate.
• There is a lack of strategy development within institutions in the field of OEP. Strategies are necessary on both pedagogical and institutional/ organisational levels
• The role of institutions is changing. Whereas institutions are predominantly involved in content transfer and certification, their role will change to one of validating learning processes involving free and openly available learning resources.
• The necessary perspective switch is difficult to realise in existing organisational cultures.

Requirements for the adoption of OER: skill demands for OEP

• OEP demands validation skills to validate open educational resources
• Work with OEP requires helping learners to make sense of open learning resources
• Open educational practice requires open educational practitioners
• OEP demands skill in the field of self- and peer-assessment in order to assess learning on the basis of free resources
• OEP requires OER literacy.
• The use of OER for OEP requires specific skills to create, collaborate, validate and assess learning assets and experiences

Technical Assets and Requirements for adoption of OEP

• OEP can be supported through intelligent use of technologies
• OER and OEP are associated with web 2.0 environments allowing for the collaborative creation of resources, and web 3.0 for the use of semantic structures to support learning based on openly available and free resources
• OEP can be supported through technologies involving user-based annotation, tagging, and user rating mechanisms