Open education: Design and policy considerations

This chapter explores the use of open educational practices (OEP) in higher education, the tensions posed by all forms of openness within the academy, the importance of critical approaches to openness, and specific policy considerations to facilitate open education approaches in the curriculum. Open educational resources and OEP emerged as some key areas of development within open education. Through the use of OEP, open educators aim to acknowledge the ubiquity of knowledge across networks and to facilitate learning that fosters agency, empowerment, and global civic participation. Open educators’ use of OEP is complex, personal, contextual, and continually negotiated within sometimes supportive, sometimes unsupportive institutional policy contexts and cultures. Intellectual Property policies at higher education institutions typically state that all work arising from the course of employment remains the intellectual property of the institution. Copyright is one specific form of intellectual property protection, the operation of which prevents the open re-use and sharing of materials.