Festival of Learning 2018

Awareness has now grown in terms of how open educational resources (OER) can impact educators and learners, the potential cost savings, and the impact on collaboration and sharing (Pitt, 2015; Weller, de los Arcos, Farrow, Pitt, & McAndrew, 2015). This is a significant shift that has impacted many students in positive ways, by ensuring broader access to educational resources for free and in flexible formats. Beyond replacing traditional forms of educational resources, there is a need to understand how access to OER impacts pedagogical practice. How are educators using these resources in ways which impact their pedagogical designs, especially now that the internet enables access to a wealth of information and knowledge ubiquitously? This question shifts the focus from popular discourses focusing on resources such as OER and open textbooks, to educational practices that are associated with open education (Deimann & Farrow, 2013).

Open educational practices (OEP) are those teaching and learning practices which use OER, as well as tools such as open-source or collaborative software, and implementation resources such as open licensing systems and open learning designs (Hodgkinson-Williams & Gray, 2009; Hylén & Schuller, 2007). Scholars have suggested OEP can impact the ways in which we design learning (Hood and Littlejohn, 2017; Paskevicius, 2017); support opportunities for increased personalization, autonomy, and self-regulation (Dohn, 2009; Ehlers, 2011); and position open education as a means to engaging our communities in an enhanced way (McGill, Falconer, Dempster, Littlejohn, & Beetham, 2013; Willinsky, 2014).

My Ph.D. research explores how educators are bringing elements of openness into their everyday teaching and learning practice within the structural confines of formal higher education. I draw upon structuration theory which explores the relationships between information communication technologies and the individuals who use them in their practice DeSanctis and Poole, 1994; Giddens, 1986; Orlikowski, 2000). Reporting on a phenomenological study with open educators, I'll share how they describe their experiences in relation to their teaching and community engagement.

In this session participants will have a chance to engage with the findings of this study and discuss ways of expanding open educational practices within their contexts.