In this final topic of the course, I really appreciated the choice in reading. Wiley & Hilton do an excellent job communicating clearly about some of the concepts that I was having some trouble defining. Namely, open education practices, which from my understanding includes the fulfillment of some or all of the 5R’s (Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute), and the use of Open Educational Resources in the instructional setting. Reading further, the 4 metrics that the authors propose as a test for labeling a learning approach as open-pedagogy also helped clarify the concept of what an OER is as well. This piece made me think on just how valuable open-pedagogy approaches can be for students, especially when applied in the right settings. Their examples in the text made me realize how engaging open practices can be, especially for younger students who have never been given an opportunity in a traditional educational setting to be in a place of control over their own learning. Thinking back on my art courses in junior high, I can still remember a lot of the pieces we made simply because we worked on them ourselves and chose what we got to make. Moments where students are in control of their learning can be very powerful, and have very positive impacts on future students as well when enabled.
As for the four part test, I think these metrics can serve as good tools to identify some key aspects of OER- enabled pedagogy, however I think they are a bit unrefined. Particularly the second example of OER-enabled pedagogy on page 139 brought up a key factor in my consideration for the widespread adoption of OER-enabled pedagogies. That being privacy of minors, seeing as many of these approaches would be most effective on early learners, the public sharing and open licensing may present some barriers to entry early on in the advancement of OER. I think if I were going to be a teacher, I would be hesitant to adopt these two parts of the test, aside from allowing students to make their work publicly available on their own. Reading about the Creative Commons Licenses also helped me understand the importance of what these tools do for the education community, and how important they may be for OER moving forward. The conclusion of the reading does an excellent job highlighting the importance of successful OER-enabled pedagogies, as they can serve to be examples of the benefits of adopting these approaches for institutions, and educators.
Finally, to answer some of the questions the paper asks on future research, I would say a lot of them are highly dependent on material being taught in the course. For example, on whether or not students assigned to create, revise, or remix artifacts find these assignments more valuable, is heavily dependent on what is being taught, the interest of the student, and how the student learns. Courses such as mathematics would be very different from courses such as art education, despite them sharing some qualities.
I would like to mention that I think the widespread adoption of OER-enabled pedagogies would have extremely positive impacts for students, and I think the concept shares a lot with Indigenous ways of knowing as well.
I have done way more learning about learning in this course than I could have imagined! Thanks to everyone for all your posts, and my group members for being so lovely 🙂
Wiley, D. & Hilton, J. (2018). Defining OER-enabled Pedagogy. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 19(4)
Hi Aiden!
Thanks for your post.
I appreciate how you brought up the privacy of minors when it comes to the use of OER. I wonder if there is a way for students to publicly share their work anonymously? What do you think? I think posting anonymously might take away some of that feeling of ownership over their work as there wouldn’t be a name to credit.
You mentioned the concept of OER-enabled pedagogy shares a lot with Indigenous ways of knowing and I’m curious to hear more! I really try to integrate Indigenous ways of knowing into my lessons so I’m interested to hear how you think OER-enabled pedagogy could be a tool to further that.
Thanks again for sharing 🙂
Hello Aiden!
You have some excellent points and ideas! I agree with when you say that giving students choice over their learning can be very powerful and have beneficial impacts. This increases their eagerness to interact with the content and attend school in general.
As I was reading the article, I had the same thoughts as you did about the online privacy of minors. I think this point of view is really valid and should have been discussed more by the authors.
Hey Aiden! 🙂
I completely agree with you, student-centered learning is extremely valuable and really helps students feel like they are in control of their own learning! In this context, I would imagine that interactions from these environments would be more engaging! You said there wasn’t much opportunity for you to do this in high school but what about university? How did you feel about your learning there compared to a more ‘traditional’ method of instruction?
I also was wondering about the role of minor’s privacy in OER-enabled pedagogy. Can you think of a way to accomplish this without compromising students’ information?
Thanks!
Hi Aiden!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this topic! I definitely agree with you on the value of allowing student choice (even in elementary settings). I like how you connected this to your own experiences in your art class. It made me think about how often art class can be very uniform in younger grades. The teacher presents the end goal (showing an example of what the product should look like) and students follow steps to get there. This is more of craft making and less of art education as students have no chance to explore their creativity. I wonder if this happens more in elementary classrooms because younger students need more structure? Or maybe because it is often a general teacher teaching this subject, unlike in the older grades when there is a specifically trained art teacher.
I think OER-enabled pedagogy would really help provide the opportunity for more student choice, but yes the privacy aspect is a concern. Would students take as much pride in their work if it was not being shared online? Would sharing a project with other classes or inviting parents/community members in to see be enough? Could you publish and openly license work as a class or would that take away students identity/ownership as well as their autonomy?