New windows on Open Educational Practices

2020 has been a year of immense change and challenge — individually, globally, and as an education community. We bring different selves to the ones who gathered for last year’s Winter Conference. With a recognition of this changed context, and a sensitivity to the huge demands placed on teachers and learners in the past year, this session aims to both reflect and look forward with respect to the use of open educational practices (OEP). The benefits of OEP are often considered in three key areas: access, equity and pedagogy (Bali, Cronin & Jhangiani, 2020). How have these potential benefits been realised in post-COVID-19 teaching and learning, and how might they be? In April, UNESCO called on the global community to support the use of OER “for sharing learning and knowledge openly worldwide with a view to building more inclusive, sustainable and resilient Knowledge Societies”. In an environment where all in-class teaching quickly transitioned to remote and online, and continues to transition to multiple modes, how widely have OER and OEP been used? Has the use of OER helped to facilitate flexibility and/or reduce the overall cost of education for students? How have OEP been used, e.g., to build online community, to develop essential digital and data literacies, to encourage students to contribute to public knowledge, to enable new forms of authentic assessment, and to contribute towards “building more inclusive, sustainable and resilient Knowledge Societies”. This session will both invite and share recent examples of OEP for teaching, learning and assessment, and facilitate discussion and sharing among participants.
References:

Bali, M., Cronin, C., & Jhangiani, R. (2020). Framing open educational practices from a social justice perspective. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2020(1). https://jime.open.ac.uk/articles/10.5334/jime.565/

UNESCO Call for Joint Action (28 April 2020): Supporting Learning and Knowledge Sharing through Open Educational Resources (OER) https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/covid19_joint_oer_call_en.pdf