Researching the registry: establishing an open education policy dataset

Much discussion of open education policy has occurred at the supranational level and in some cases, nations and subnational governments have taken up the challenge of incorporating open resources and practices into policymaking. What is less clear, and less straightforward to investigate is the extent to which individual institutions are developing policy to support openness. This session reports on work in progress towards the author's current study of OE policymaking in higher education institutions. In order to sketch some key features of the OE policy landscape for this wider study, it is necessary to collect and examine a wide range of existing institutional policy documents. The OER Policy Registry is an existing dataset, previously maintained by Creative Commons, which has been imported into the OER World Map (oerworldmap.org) in 2018. At the time of writing the registry contains 148 policies, or more accurately, records of policies indicating the source organisation and link and some metadata regarding type. It is not yet clear whether the current metadata held and/or schema are well-suited to the use cases of potential visitors to the registry. Furthermore, it is not yet clear that all records represent an actual 'policy', and if not, what other designations will be most appropriate. Therefore, prior to conducting research based on the registry as dataset, there is a need to audit the contents of the registry to understand what exactly it contains and establish inclusion and exclusion criteria for this aspect of the study, as well as helping to enhance the use of metadata to describe the current collection and future entries. This session will tell part of the author's research story, of identifying and describing an OE policy dataset, and initial findings from the investigation

Electronic management of assessment – administrative perspectives

Book synopsis: In 2014, the Bloomsbury Learning Environment (BLE) Consortium initiated a wide-ranging, two-year-long research and dissemination project focusing on the use of technology in assessment and feedback. Our aim was to understand and improve processes, practices, opportunities and tools available to the institutional members of the BLE Consortium. From the project, we produced three research papers investigating current practice and 21 case studies describing both technology-enabled pedagogy and technical development. Now presented as a free ebook, co-edited by Leo Havemann and Sarah Sherman, we offer the flavour of the variety and breadth of the BLE?s activities relating to the project theme as a contribution to the education sector?s widening conversation about the interplay of assessment, feedback, pedagogy and technology

Contextualising the electronic management of assessment lifecycle in Bloomsbury

Book synopsis: In 2014, the Bloomsbury Learning Environment (BLE) Consortium initiated a wide-ranging, two-year-long research and dissemination project focusing on the use of technology in assessment and feedback. Our aim was to understand and improve processes, practices, opportunities and tools available to the institutional members of the BLE Consortium. From the project, we produced three research papers investigating current practice and 21 case studies describing both technology-enabled pedagogy and technical development. Now presented as a free ebook, co-edited by Leo Havemann and Sarah Sherman, we offer the flavour of the variety and breadth of the BLE?s activities relating to the project theme as a contribution to the education sector?s widening conversation about the interplay of assessment, feedback, pedagogy and technology

Perspectives on Pandemic Pedagogy and the Need for an Open Pivot

This abstract was almost unwritten due to the ongoing demands of the rapid 2020 ‘pivot online’ in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Precisely because this move to online teaching, learning and assessment or 'Emergency Remote Teaching' (Hodges et al, 2020) has occurred so rapidly throughout the educational sectors of much of the world, many of us who work in support and development of (typically blended-mode) digital education have (certainly in the initial few months following the suspension of classroom teaching) spent more waking hours web conferencing from any available quieter spaces within our homes than we might previously have believed humanly possible (Beer, 2020). Meanwhile, edtech vendors and thought leaders have moved quickly into the space, framing the needs and concerns of this moment in accordance with particular agendas which might not, in fact, align with those of students or educators (Hess, 2020). A particular angle on the current crisis which has been voiced, but perhaps nonetheless has gone less heard than others, is that of the open education movement which presents an alternative vision of a sustainable online education ecosystem. The increased workload, in which each day has felt like a week, has been accompanied by a deluge of online advice and discussion from both renowned and rather newly minted experts, ranging from the helpful through the mundane to the damaging, the volume of which has made it challenging to even keep up with, let alone respond to. As a result it has been difficult, but we suggest, is imperative, for those in positions like ours to tell our stories. It is vital for those of us who have been at the screenface doing this work to think about what has been learned, and what this all means for online learning, our work, our colleagues, and our institutions going forward into a very different academic year. Our stories will amplify the relational and convivial narratives that were a major contribution to our survival and growth as open learners throughout the pandemic and beyond (Macgilchrist, 2020). This presentation will isolate and consider some key questions in an attempt at some synthesis of that discussion and reflection on the experiences from multiple perspectives and identities that were amplified as a result of the Covid 19 learning crisis

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

Questions of quality in repositories of open educational resources: a literature review

Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials which are freely available and openly licensed. Repositories of OER (ROER) are platforms that host and facilitate access to these resources. ROER should not just be designed to store this content – in keeping with the aims of the OER movement, they should support educators in embracing open educational practices (OEP) such as searching for and retrieving content that they will reuse, adapt or modify as needed, without economic barriers or copyright restrictions. This paper reviews key literature on OER and ROER, in order to understand the roles ROER are said or supposed to fulfil in relation to furthering the aims of the OER movement. Four themes which should shape repository design are identified, and the following 10 quality indicators (QI) for ROER effectiveness are discussed: featured resources; user evaluation tools; peer review; authorship of the resources; keywords of the resources; use of standardised metadata; multilingualism of the repositories; inclusion of social media tools; specification of the creative commons license; availability of the source code or original files. These QI form the basis of a method for the evaluation of ROER initiatives which, in concert with considerations of achievability and long-term sustainability, should assist in enhancement and development. Keywords: open educational resources; open access; open educational practice; repositories; quality assuranc

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

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

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