Model for democratisation of the contents hosted in MOOCs

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have emerged as a new educational tool in higher education, based on gratuity, massiveness and ubiquity. Essentially they suggest an evolution of the Open Learning Movement based on principles of reusing, revising, remixing and redistributing open educational resources (OER). However, in contrast with the content of OERs, content hosed in MOOCs tends to be paywalled and copyrighted, which restricts its reuse. Philosophically, the main problem with MOOCs is the inaccessibility and inadaptability of their resources, challenging democratic open access to knowledge. A number of authors and organisations consider it an ultimate necessity to open up MOOC resources. Therefore in this paper three strategies to open up MOOC contents are proposed: to deposit the materials in repositories of OER (ROER) as individual objects, to archive them in ROER in data packages as learning units or to convert them into OpenCourseWare (OCW) as self-taught courses

A vision of quality in repositories of open educational resources

In the future, Open Educational Practices (OEP) will facilitate access to open materials by promoting collaboration among educators, who will share, reuse and evaluate digital pedagogical content using Repositories of Open Educational Resources (ROER)

Revistes d’accés obert en biblioteconomia i documentació

Texts published in BiD are subject to a Creative Commons licence (Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative works). They may be consulted and distributed freely provided that the author and publisher are quoted. However, no derivative works (translation, change of format, etc.) may be made without the publisher’s permission.This article presents a directory of the most outstanding open access journals in the field of library and information science, whose selection is based on the quality of the contents and the prestige of the issuing institutions.Peer reviewe

Crowdsourcing quality (or, why openness matters)

In a trajectory that did not simply begin from MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), via Open Educational Resources (OER), and latterly arrive at a promised land of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), a plethora of institutions, organisations and individuals have attempted through various and numerous interventions to ‘open up’ the education landscape to a wider range of travellers, inhabitants and tourists. And in a way, the question of quality has always dogged open education’s steps. Would open universities attract ‘quality’ students? Would open resources and courses be of good enough quality, and how could we be sure? Open, it seemed, might pose a threat to quality, or at least place a question mark over it. Yet, as openness has gained traction, it has also been suggested that quality might be bolstered and supported through the wisdom of crowds

Education in the Open Government Partnership commitments

The improvement of education is a recurring objective within the commitments of the countries that participate in the Open Government Partnership (OGP). There are several national commitments related to the opening of Data, Information and Education Materials as teaching and learning tools within the national plans for Open Governance. In this context, we examine how these elements are related to the OGP commitments of countries at the international level and to propose strategies for the implementation of concrete policies that support these commitments with respect to education and to citizenship education. To achieve this objective, we will present the results of an exhaustive study on the models of education and civic education of different national OGP commitments, and based on the results of this study, we will present a diagnosis regarding how really open and sustainable these are. The results of this study allow us to present a series of strategies to promote open education (understood as those practices based on content released under open licenses that allow universal and democratic access to quality educational materials) as a tool to promote educational development amongst OGP member countries. The strategies to be presented include the effective promotion of the use of open government data as learning and teaching tools, citizen education focused on promoting understanding of access to public information, promoting the creation and development of initiatives national and international programs that promote sustainable open education in public education systems, and finally, the proposal of open education policy development models that allow the commitments made by governments and ministries to have a practical application. As summary: our goal is to provide to the Open Education Community practical tools that allow supporting the different countries of the region in the adoption of open education by generating policies that encourage open educational practices

Open Data as driver of critical data literacies in Higher Education

Participation in today’s datafied society requires a series of transversal skills. In fact, we need technical abilities and media literacies weaved in a critical approach to understand the socio-political and cultural mechanisms that affects individuals and groups. Higher Education (HE) must lead in the development of critical, socio-technical pedagogic approaches to understand and analyse data. To this end, adopting Open Data as the base of Open Educational Practices has potential to trigger authentic learning. situations. In this regard, the approach aims at going beyond the development of technical abilities to extract, elaborate and integrate Open Data in services, activities and projects. In fact, using data as OER in research-based learning activities for data journalism and civic monitoring techniques can be the catalyser for the appropriation of the datafied public spaces and also, to data ownership and activism. On the basis of these pedagogical practices, HE could play a key role in fostering critical approaches. The abilities developed in HE should transcend the classroom, to understand datafication in society. In time, HE students and teachers would contribute to shaping informed and transformative democratic practices and dialogue empowering citizens to address social justice concerns. This envisioned strategy requires of faculty development and engagement, as data literacies need of disciplinary and pedagogical efforts to innovate in curricular and learning design. Furthermore, supporting faculty’s awareness and practices to shape critical and ethical approaches to data implies care for spaces of dialogue at the juncture of technical and social needs. Care for interdisciplinary thinking and understanding the differences between “Psyche and Tekné”, building on Umberto Galimberti’s conceptualisation of the problem of balance between ethics/social sciences and technological advancement. Session content This workshop explores the educational potential of Open Data as a driver of interdisciplinary dialogue in learning design and pedagogical practices. It will offer instruments for designing educational interventions in two simple phases: 1- A conceptual (but dialogical!) introduction, to present the principles, the policy context and existing practices in citizen science, responsible research and innovation and Open Data, and the connections with data literacy in HE will be defined from the perspective of the researchers and their experiences in using Open Data for educational/learning purposes. An initial overview of the principles and resources to work with Open Data as OER in the context of Data in Education will be introduced. Also the frameworks to develop data literacy in HE will also be considered with a focus on the issues hindering these practices will be also displayed. 2- A “hands on” exercise in which the concepts above will be applied to the participants’ pedagogical practices, and their sense discussed on the light of both practical and deontological implications. The educational potential of Open Data in the participants perspective will collect personal reflections to understand in which extent the concept of open data could be applied to personal pedagogical practices. Which datasets could be useful? Which are the critical issues that I could face to use open data in my pedagogical practices? The reflections will be collected by using sticky notes and a map of possible future practices. Session recording: https://youtu.be/BZJX2BifYI

Opening teaching landscapes: The importance of quality assurance in the delivery of open educational resources

Scholars are increasingly being asked to share teaching materials, publish in open access journals, network in social media, and reuse open educational resources (OER). The theoretical benefits of Open Educational Practices (OEP) have become understood in the academic community but thus far, the use of OER has not been rapidly adopted. We aim to understand the challenges academics face with in attempting to adopt OEP, and identify whether these are related to or stem from the functionalities afforded by current repositories of OER (ROER). By understanding what academics and experts consider good practices, we can develop guidelines for quality in the development of ROER. In this article we present the findings from a study surveying academics using OER and experts who develop and/or work with ROER. We conclude by suggesting a framework to enhance the development and quality of ROER

Geographies of Access: Mapping the Online Attention to Digital Humanities Articles in Academic Journals

This poster aims to provide some answers in order to provide recommendations and best practices that might help democratise and increase the international access to peer-reviewed digital humanities research

Online Attention to Digital Humanities Publications (#DH2014 poster)

 This is the source dataset for Priego, Ernesto; Havemann, Leo; Atenas, Javiera (2014): Online Attention for Digital Humanities Publications (#DH2014 poster). figshare. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1094345 This dataset is based on an original report obtained with the Altmetric Explorer on April 23 2014. More recent reports are likely to vary. The original Altmetric Explorer data export was refined, modified and edited by Ernesto Priego, Leo Havemann and Javiera Atenas. This version might not reflect the latest versions used by the authors, and further refining might be required. This poster was presented in the Digital Humanities 2014 conference, Lausanne, Switzerland, July the 10th 2014, 2:00pm - 3:30pm. If you use, share or refer to this data please use the citation information above. This dataset is shared under a CC-BY license.   &nbsp

On the trail of OE policy co-creation

The workshop objectives are to give the participants with some basic policy co-design skills, and as well as an overview of the key techniques and elements needed to opening up the arenas to foster sustainable policies. To support these objectives the workshop is grounded on the participation and co-creation standard developed by OGP to foster the co-creation of national commitments, and uses a set of cards and a canvas (adapted from those developed by the UK Policy Lab) aligning the elements with those recommended by the Ljubljana Action Plan, and the JRC report, Policy Approaches to Open Education The workshop aim at raising awareness of the international landscape to widening participation to ensure that the policy co-creation process in a specific context, involving a wide range of partners to ensure the correct implementation, overseeing the opportunities and challenges of an OE policy, and the key elements these must comprise to foster global policy convergence [Haddad & Demsky (1995); Thompson & Cook (2014)]. By using a policy canvas and change cards, the participants consider issues such as who needs to be involved in the policy-making process, and who is needed to implement the policy considering the local context and the sociocultural issues at play, alongside with and other policies or regulatory models to draw upon. The first workshop was held at the OpenMed conference (Rome) with stakeholders from Egypt, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Spain, and UK participated. The second workshop was held at the Open Education Policy Forum (Warsaw_ with participants from Germany, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and The Netherlands The third workshop was held at OER19, with participants from Ireland, England, Scotland, Austria, The Netherlands, Australia and Spain discussed the potential of Open Education policies at international level