The Self as an Open Educational Resource [1091] Members : #OER16

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Wed, Apr 20 2016, 10:30am – 11:30am

Authors: Suzan Koseoglu, and Maha Bali

Room: Pentland (East)

Theme: Converging or diverging cultures of openness

Type: Presentation

Description

Most discourse on open educational resources (OER) revolve around issues with access to educational content, which may include “full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge” (The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, 2015). However, such common definitions of OER overlook an important educational resource in the formal education system: teachers/facilitators and learners, in other words, the learning community itself. Thus, we propose a broader understanding of OER, which includes the processes and products of open scholarship as valuable resources. Here, building on Veletsianos and Kimmons’s (2013) work, we define open scholarship as any teaching, learning, and research practices that are public and that “espouse openness” (p. 167). A few important questions come to mind when we consider open scholarship as a distinct form of OER:

How might the processes and products of open scholarship align/intersect with the goals of open education?

What might the 5Rs of open education (Wiley, 2009; Wiley 2014)—reuse, revise, remix, redistribute, and retain—mean in the context of open scholarship?

What are some ethical considerations in using and repurposing the traces of open scholarship?

We acknowledge the fact that not all educators may want to position their open educational practices as resources for others to use. However, simply by engaging in public activities (e.g., blogging, Tweeting) we open ourselves to an authentic audience where our work and ideas “can be read, viewed, used, shared, critiqued and built upon by others” (Cronin, 2014, p. 408). Thus, the complex interplay and overlapping of the imagined and authentic audiences suggest that anyone can be “a human OER” (Funes, 2014) intentionally or unintentionally.

In this session, we will critically explore these issues in the context of our own research and open educational practices. Suzan will particularly focus on the ethics of using and repurposing the products of open scholarship. Maha will refer to specific practices she undertook as facilitator of open educational learning experiences, as an open researcher, and as an open teacher. Implications on educational research and open educational practices will be also discussed.

References

Catherine, C. (2014). Networked learning and identity development in open online spaces. In: 9th International Conference on Networked Learning. [Online] Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Networked Learning 2014, p.408. Available at: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fss/organisations/netlc/past/nlc2014/abstracts/pdf/cronin.pdf [Accessed 26 Nov. 2015].

Funes, M. (2014). A human OER. [Blog] doublemirror. Available at: http://mdvfunes.com/2014/10/22/a-human-oer/ [Accessed 26 Nov. 2015].

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. (2015). Open educational resources. [Online] Available at: http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education/open-educational-resources. [Accessed 26 Nov. 2015].

Veletsianos, G. and Kimmons, R. (2014). Assumptions and challenges of open scholarship. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(4), p.167.

Wiley, D. (2009). Defining “open.” [Blog] iterating toward openness. Available at: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/1123 [Accessed 26 Nov. 2015].

Wiley, D. (2014). The access compromise and the 5th R. [Blog] iterating toward openness. Available at: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221

Wiley, D. (2014). [Blog] The access compromise and the 5th R. Available at http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221 [Accessed 5 Feb. 2016].

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