Introduction to Open Education

The aim of this course is to provide a broad overview of Open Education (OE) and enable understanding of basic concepts needed for the rest of the programme.

Students will

• understand the whole OE ecosystem, basic elements of OE including national and organisational policies, the main building blocks and actors, basic OE processes, the added value of OE, implications and obstacles in the process of implementing OE in national, local or organisational environment;

• learn to recognize and envision implications of introducing OE into traditional educational environments,

• understand how OE connects with the topics covered in the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Required prerequisits include fundamentals of information and communication technologies and basic understanding of educational environments

1) History and evolution of OE
2) Open education: values, concepts, pro-cesses, roles, organization
3) Obstacles: service quality, assessment, legal barriers, critical thinking
4) Basic of Open Educational Resources
5) Open Practices and Open Pedagogy

After completing this course, students will:

• Understand and master the complexity of OE ecosystem, OE vocabulary, basic concepts, organisational and value added models, OE processes and actors;

• Understands the role, functions and needed competences of a leader in OE;

• Be able to evaluate the readiness of the existing learning environments for OE;

• Be able to construct the basic OE implementation scenario in an exsisting educational environemnt;

• Be able to distinguish between good and bad OE practices;

• Reflect on performance in terms of introducing new OE use models.

• Aksoy, D. A., & KurSun, E. (2024). Behind the scenes: A critical perspective on GenAI and open educational practices. Open Praxis, 16(3), 457-470. E-version
• Andrade, A., Ehlers, U.-D., Caine, A., Carneiro, R., Conole, G., Kairamo, A.-K., …, Holmberg, C. (2011). Beyond OER: Shifting focus to open educational practices. Open Education Quality Initiative. E-version
• Bozkurt, A., Gjelsvik, T., Adam, T., Asino, T. I., Atenas, J., Bali, M., Blomgren, C., Bond, M., Bonk, C. J., Brown, M., Burgos, D., Conrad, D., Costello, E., Cronin, C., Czerniewicz, L., Deepwell, M., Deimann, M., DeWaard, H. J., Dousay, T. A., Ebner, M., Farrow, R., Gil-Jaurena, I., Havemann, L., Inamorato, A., Irvine, V., Karunanayaka, S. P., Kerres, M., Lambert, S., Lee, K., Makoe, M., Marín, V. I., Mikroyannidis, A., Mishra, S., Naidu, S., Nascimbeni, F., Nichols, M., Olcott. Jr., D., Ossiannilsson, E., Otto, D., Padilla Rodriguez, B. C., Paskevicius, M., Roberts, V., Saleem, T., Schuwer, R., Sharma, R. C., Stewart, B., Stracke, C. M., Tait, A., Tlili, A., Ubachs, G., Weidlich, J., Weller, M., Xiao, J., & Zawacki Richter, O. (2023). Openness in Education as a Praxis: From Individual Testimonials to Collective Voices. Open Praxis, 15(2), pp. 76–112. E-version
• Cox, G., & Trotter, H. (2017). An OER framework, heuristic and lens: Tools for understanding lecturers’ adoption of OER. Open Praxis, 9(2), 151. E-version
• Cronin, C., & MacLaren, I. (2018). Conceptualising OEP: A review of theoretical and empirical literature in Open Educational Practices. Open Praxis, 10(2), 127-143. E-version
• Hegarty, B. (2015). Attributes of open pedagogy: A model for using open educational resources. Educational Technology. Retrieved from E-version
• Miao, F., Mishra, S., Orr, D., & Janssen, B. (2019). Guidelines on the development of open educational resources policies. UNESCO Publishing. E-version
• Schuwer, R. (25 March 2022). Open (Education | Educational (Resources | Practices) | Pedagogy | Science). Open Education – All Kinds of Information. E-version
• Schuwer, R., & Janssen, B. (2024). Let’s Get Practical! Two Frameworks to Improve Practices of Open Education. Open Praxis, 16(2), pp. 258–268. E-version
• Warso, S., & Keller, P. (15 September 2023). Open Source AI And The Paradox Of Open. Open Future. E-version
• Wiley, D., & Hilton III, J. L. (2018). Defining OER-Enabled Pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(4). E-version

• Attendance and participation (20%)
• Read and annotate assignments using Hypothesis and participation in assignment discussions (30%)
• Summary of the Weekly Read Assignments submitted on MiTeam: (20%)
• Final presentation and website (30 %)

Dr. Robert Schuwer is an independent consultant and researcher on OER and adjunct professor at
the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia. From 2014-2022 he was professor Open Educational
Resources at Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. In September
2016 he was appointed Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair on OER at Fontys. Since 2006 the
majority of his work is about OER and Open Education. His current research is on adoption of OER
and other forms of open online education by the early and late majority of teachers.

In 2022, Dr. Robert Schuwer was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from Open Education Global for his contribution to the advancement of open education. In 2020, he was awarded the Dutch SURF Education Award for his passion, leadership and creativity in innovating open educa-tion in the Netherlands.

More detailed information available at: https://www.robertschuwer.nl/?page_id=306
and https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertschuwer/

Selected bibliography

Baas, M., & Schuwer, R. (2020). What about reuse? A study on the use of open educational resources in Dutch higher education. Open Praxis, 12(4), 527-540. https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.12.4.1139

Baas, M., Schuwer, R., Van den Berg, E., Huizinga, T., Van der Rijst, R., & Admiraal, W. (2022). The role of brokers in cultivating an inter-institutional community around open educational resources in high-er education. Higher Education. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00876-y

Baas, M., Schuwer, R., Van den Berg, E., Huizinga, T., Van der Rijst, R., & Admiraal, W. (2022). What’s in it for me? A mixed-methods study on teachers’ value creation in an inter-institutional community on open educational resources in higher education. Education and Information Technologies, 28(5), 6049-6074. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11424-7

Bozkurt, A., Gjelsvik, T., Adam, T., Asino, T. I., Atenas, J., Bali, M., Blomgren, C., Bond, M., Bonk, C. J., Brown, M., Burgos, D., Conrad, D., Costello, E., Cronin, C., Czerniewicz, L., Deepwell, M., Deimann, M., DeWaard, H. J., Dousay, T. A., Ebner, M., Farrow, R., Gil-Jaurena, I., Havemann, L., Inamorato, A., Ir-vine, V., Karunanayaka, S. P., Kerres, M., Lambert, S., Lee, K., Makoe, M., Marín, V. I., Mikroyannidis, A., Mishra, S., Naidu, S., Nascimbeni, F., Nichols, M., Olcott. Jr., D., Ossiannilsson, E., Otto, D., Padilla Rodriguez, B. C., Paskevicius, M., Roberts, V., Saleem, T., Schuwer, R., Sharma, R. C., Stewart, B., Stracke, C. M., Tait, A., Tlili, A., Ubachs, G., Weidlich, J., Weller, M., Xiao, J., & Zawacki Richter, O. (2023). Openness in Education as a Praxis: From Individual Testimonials to Collective Voices. Open Praxis, 15(2), pp. 76–112. DOI: https://doi.org/10.55982/openpraxis.15.2.574

Janssen, B., Schuwer, R., & Orr, D. (2023). Key Policy Issues on Open Educational Re-sources (ED/GEMR/MRT/2023/P1/09). UNESCO. https://doi.org/10.54676/PLDD8708

Schuwer, R., & Baas, M. (2023). Reuse of OER, a Process Model Approach. In D. Otto, G. Scharnberg, M. Kerres, & O. Zawacki-Richter (Eds.), Distributed learning ecosystems: Concepts, resources, and re-positories (p. 117–137). Springer Nature. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38703-7_7

Schuwer, R., & Janssen, B. (2024). Let’s Get Practical! Two Frameworks to Improve Practices of Open Education. Open Praxis, 16(2), pp. 258–268. DOI: https://doi.org/10.55982/openpraxis.16.2.653

Versantvoort, M., & Schuwer, R. (2023). Towards Sustainable OER Practices: The Case of Bachelor Nursing in the Netherlands. Open Praxis, 15(2), pp. 113–123. DOI: https://doi.org/10.55982/openpraxis.15.2.542