Media Education in Latin America: A Book Review

This book review examines Media Education in Latin America (Routledge, 2020) edited by Julio-César Mateus, Pablo Andrada, and María-Teresa Quiroz. This book provides insight to the contribution made by Latin American educators and scholars to global dialogue about media education and educommunicacion. This review explores the concepts and contexts as outlined in eleven case studies of specific Latin American countries and a series of critical essays This impressive book provides essential insights to enhance the fields of literacy, educommunicacion, and media education

Open learning designers on the margins [Preprint]

Prior to the global COVID-19 pandemic, learning designers and adjacent professionals worked closely with educators to develop technologically supported and enhanced learning opportunities – often particularly within online education spaces, though increasingly also in blended learning contexts. In the rush of pandemic mitigation, educational equity fault lines were exposed and exacerbated, as classroom-based teaching was rapidly redeployed into online and digital spaces. The authors offer this chapter as a reflection of their work as learning designers, but also as practitioners of open education, as part of a necessary collective effort to do better, through the open sharing of strategies, discoveries, questions and uncertainties. Here we propose the application of the concept of third space to illuminate the position of learning designers in higher education, especially as they attempt to navigate and negotiate a practice of open(ing) learning design that is intentional, equitable and reflective. Third space is explored as both a site of identity-building for learning designers and as a challenging, liminal, boundary-spanning location for learning design practice. We share some principles of open learning design and learner readiness. We share a contextual application for learning that prioritises students in the learning equation. As learning designers, we suggest that, to engage and inspire learning, our practice must be grounded on ethical considerations for human care, equity, criticality and openness

GO-GN Research Review 2022

This report summarises some state-of-the-art research relevant to open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) that was published recently. The reviews of these articles were written by doctoral and post-doctoral researchers who work in relevant fields and are members of the Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN)

Openness in Education as a Praxis: From Individual Testimonials to Collective Voices

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using individual testimonies, which may also be taken as living narratives, to reveal the value of Openness in Education as a praxis. Such testimonies serve as rich, personal narratives, critical introspections, and experience-based accounts that function as sources of data. The data gleaned from these narratives points to the understanding of Openness in Education as a complex, multilayered concept intricately woven into an array of values. These range from aspects such as sharing, access, flexibility, affordability, enlightenment, barrier-removal, empowerment, care, individual agency, trust, innovation, sustainability, collaboration, co-creation, social justice, equity, transparency, inclusivity, decolonization, democratisation, participation, liberty, and respect for diversity. This editorial, as a product of collective endeavour, invites its readers to independently engage with individual narratives, fostering the creation of unique interpretations. This call stems from the distinctive character of each narrative as they voice individual researchers’ perspectives from around the globe, articulating their insights within their unique situational contexts

The Go-GN Open Research Handbook

This Handbook draws together work done between 2020 and 2023 by members of the Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN). GO-GN is a network of PhD candidates around the world whose research projects include a focus on open education. GO-GN is currently funded through the OER programme of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and administered by the Open Education Research Hub from the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University, UK. In our current phase of activity, we began these collaborative writing efforts with a Research Methods Handbook which was created during the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic. Working together at distance provided an important way to strengthen community links when meeting in person was not possible. The Research Methods Handbook was well received by a much larger audience than we anticipated, and went on to win an Open Research Award. We followed this up with a sister publication, our Conceptual Frameworks Guide. This explores a less well traversed (but nonetheless important) area of scholarly focus. Together, these two explore open approaches to the theory and practice of research in open education. One distinctive feature of our presentation is to foreground the authentic experiences of doctoral researchers who have used specific approaches in researching open education. While it is not possible to cover all approaches in this detail, we hope that important insights are presented in this form of open practice. Throughout 2020-2022 we also regularly engaged our membership through collective reviews of recently published papers and articles. The Research Reviews serve as an overview of recent research but also as a snapshot of the critical responses recorded by doctoral and post-doctoral researchers working in relevant areas. No one volume can claim to comprehensively contain the diversity and variety of open approaches, and this is no exception. But one virtue of openness is that we can draw on the openly licensed works of others to increase our coverage of relevant areas. The Additional Resources at the end of this volume bring together a range of openly licensed texts on open education research and suggests places for further reading and research. Consequently, the information contained here represents a wide range of contributors and collaborators. The original and intended audience for this volume is the doctoral student working on an open education research project - in short, the typical student member of GO-GN and the profile the network exists to support. However, we’ve learned through feedback and analytics that the potential audience for works like this is much larger. Many people who wouldn’t describe themselves as researchers still do research and evaluation. Presenting accessible insights into research foundations and practices helps with this and can be understood as a form of open practice

Openness in Education as a Praxis: From Individual Testimonials to Collective Voices

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using individual testimonies, which may also be taken as living narratives, to reveal the value of Openness in Education as a praxis. Such testimonies serve as rich, personal narratives, critical introspections, and experience-based accounts that function as sources of data. The data gleaned from these narratives points to the understanding of Openness in Education as a complex, multilayered concept intricately woven into an array of values. These range from aspects such as sharing, access, flexibility, affordability, enlightenment, barrier-removal, empowerment, care, individual agency, trust, innovation, sustainability, collaboration, co-creation, social justice, equity, transparency, inclusivity, decolonization, democratisation, participation, liberty, and respect for diversity. This editorial, as a product of collective endeavour, invites its readers to independently engage with individual narratives, fostering the creation of unique interpretations. This call stems from the distinctive character of each narrative as they voice individual researchers’ perspectives from around the globe, articulating their insights within their unique situational contexts

Openness in Education as a Praxis: From Individual Testimonials to Collective Voices

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using individual testimonies, which may also be taken as living narratives, to reveal the value of Openness in Education as a praxis. Such testimonies serve as rich, personal narratives, critical introspections, and experience-based accounts that function as sources of data. The data gleaned from these narratives points to the understanding of Openness in Education as a complex, multilayered concept intricately woven into an array of values. These range from aspects such as sharing, access, flexibility, affordability, enlightenment, barrier-removal, empowerment, care, individual agency, trust, innovation, sustainability, collaboration, co-creation, social justice, equity, transparency, inclusivity, decolonization, democratisation, participation, liberty, and respect for diversity. This editorial, as a product of collective endeavour, invites its readers to independently engage with individual narratives, fostering the creation of unique interpretations. This call stems from the distinctive character of each narrative as they voice individual researchers’ perspectives from around the globe, articulating their insights within their unique situational contexts

Media and digital literacies in Canadian teacher educators’ open educational practices: a post-intentional phenomenology

In this qualitative post-intentional phenomenological research I share insights into the lived experiences of teacher educators who infuse their open educational practices with media and digital literacies in faculties of education in Canada. Current research in the field of open educational practices has limited exploration in the field of teacher education and has yet to explicitly examine the critical role played by media and digital literacies. This research is grounded by theories of socio-constructivism, connectivism and pragmatism. Through a post-intentional phemonenological methodology research, I describe and differentiate between transcendental, interpretive, and post-intentional phenomenology. I explore conceptual frameworks for teacher education, open education, and an understanding of literacies. Through this dissertation, I work to untangle conceptions surrounding skills, fluencies, competencies, and literacies in the field of media and digital education as these apply to teacher educators. Through a crystallization approach in this research I generate materials from the data collected for this study, focusing on teacher educators’ open educational practices, and media and digital literacies. Facets in the open educational practices of the teacher educators I interviewed include access, choice, and connections. Facets in the lived experiences of the teacher educators relevant to media and digital literacies include communication, creativity, and criticality. [...

Cross-cultural mentoring: A pathway to building professional relationships and professional learning beyond boundaries

This paper offers insight from an informal cross-cultural mentoring experience of course development in higher education framed by the UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for Open Educational Resources and Open Learning project. The Open Education for a Better World is a tuition-free international online mentoring program established to unlock the potential of open education in achieving the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals. Drawing from mentor/protégé conversations and reflections, and examining the experiences of mentoring in the development of an online course for Indian teacher education faculty development, the authors illuminate a pathway toward building professional relationships and professional learning beyond borders and boundaries. This paper describes how mentorship can develop digital competencies foundational for transferring tacit knowledge about planning, designing, recording, implementing, and evaluating teaching and learning in education. Explicit knowledge-building for professional learning within a supportive mentoring relationship is explored