Open Education in Industry and Business

The aim of this course is to give students the overview of the role and prospects of implementing OE and OL to businesses and organisations and make them able to sucessfully and efficently setup and run Human Resource Management (HRM) based on OE. The final goal is to give students enough knowledge and competences to be able not just to take into consideration the existing OE approaches in HRM, but master the model development process as well.

Students will acquire the following competences:

• Deep understanding of the importance of open education introduction into companies and organisations and ability to effectively establish and efficiently control human resources management (HRM) with the use of open education;

• Ability to develop curricula for open education in companies, in accordance with the necessary competences and skills in the company;

• Ability to connect company competences with international standards, capacity to analyse and model competencies, including the development of new models with the aim to provide improvements in the HRM area in relation to open education;

• Understanding broader business of OE and OL with a deep insight in some of the most affected industries and organisations like higher educational institutions, NGOs, publishers, telecommunication industries;

• Knowledge and skills to critically evaluate existing models, understand the value and risks of implementation;

• Ability to setup, run, monitor and manage manage HRM in an organisation based on OE and OL.

Students should have a general understanding of the OE ecosystem, actors, processes, tools and approaches to OE and OL. They should be familiar with the basics of business operation, organisation and the role of education in companies and organisations. They should have a good understanding of human resource management (HRM) role, processes and operation in companies and basic understanding of skills and competences development. Students should be able to use communication and collaboration tools, and should be prepared to work in interdisciplinary teams.

During the course students will be learning about the role of education in businesses and organisations. They will be exploring how busi-nesses and organisations could benefit from OE, how these fit into the existing HRM and organisational culture in a company. They will be exploring these in the wider context of openness which include open access, open da-ta, open science, open organisations, open source software and open education.

To understand the wider OE business contexts, students will be learning about the business in OE and OL, in particular in the existing busness landscapes like publishing industry, higher edu-cation, NGOs and startups. They will be study-ing disruptive entrants to the educational sec-tor and consequences.

In detail, they will be learning about skills and competency models, exsisting skills and com-petences standards and those in development, skills and competency assessment, modelling approaches and approaches to OE and Open Learning (OL)in businesses.

They will get an overwiev over the existing tools and mechanisms to support skills and competences development, good pactices and sucessful cases in business evolution through OE and OL.

The introduction part will be followed by the deep insight into the existing and potentially appropriate HRM supported with OE and OL. Students will study underlying learning pro-cesses, open culture of organisation, teams and individuals and the impact that OE and OL can bring to the organisational success. They will get deeper insight in the skills and competenc-es standards and how to relate internal models and learning processes to them.

Special attention will be put on the curricula development.

In addition, students will be learning how to assess the existing approaches and adopt them to their needs.

To conclude, the alternative and emerging or-ganisational models based on flexible and open learning will be studied.

Students will combine online lectures and self-learning to get a more detailed and specific knowledge about OE and OL in businesses and the prospects of OE and OL business develop-ment. The following topics will be explored in more detail:

1) Industry curricula and open education
2) Open competency and skills standards
3) Development and implementation of competency and skills models
4) Open education supporting Human Re-source Management
5) The publishing industry’s adaptation to OER
6) Disruptive entrants and open education
7) Open Education NGOs and startups
8) OI and the business of higher education

After completing this course, students will:

• Understand OE and OL in businesses and organisations.

• Have a good overview over the competency and skills standards, tools and mechanisms to assess, monitor and develop them.

• Gain competences on OE based curricula development that is linked to required skills and competences.

• Master the process of deploying OE and OL in an organisation and integrate it in the existing HRM.

• Interim presentations • Final exam, combining theoretical and practical part

Veronika Dolar has a Ph.D. in economics and has over 17 years of experiences in the field of education. She has been teaching at numerous universities and colleges in the United States including University of Minnesota and St. Olaf College in Minnesota, at Cleveland State Uni-versity, Kent State University, and Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, at Long Island University, and State University Of New York (SUNY) at Old Westbury College in New York where she is employed as an Assistant Professor. She collaborates with the University of No-va Gorica as Adjunct Professor. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in the field of economic education. She has received teaching awards and in May 2020 she became the winner of the SUNY Effective Online Practices Award Program for the project titled Use of PhotoVoice Project in Urban Economics. In addition, she is extremely involved with the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. She was asked to serve at the SUNY OER Advisory Council and was a SUNY OER Faculty Champion. She is currently a co-chair of the Ad Hoc OER Faculty Committee at SUNY Old Westbury. Professor Dolar received Crea-tive Commons Certificate for Educators Course and participated in Pedagogy Foundation Fel-lowship, focused on weekly reflection within a collaborative space to explore and implement evidence-based instructional practices using OER within Faculty Guild’s professional devel-opment platform. Professor Dolar is an active member of Creative Commons Global Network, Creative Commons Open Education Platform, and Open SUNY Online Teaching Community. She has also given numerous lectures and presentations on the teaching and learning with Open Educational Resources and about application of the open pedagogy. She has also partic-ipated, first as developed, and later as a mentor at the Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) – online international mentoring program.

Izbrane objave/Selected bibliography:

• Dolar, V. (2019). Online Open Educational Resources (OER) Course: Environmental and Health Concerns in Food Consumption and Production, Open Education for a Better World under UNESCO’s auspices

• Dolar, V. (2018). Nutrition, calories, and food prices. SUNY Open Assessment Anthology, 2018.

• Dolar, V. (2018). Does Instant Feedback on Online Homework Assignments Improve Student Learning in Introductory Economics Classes?, Journal of Economics and Economic Education Research, 19(2), 1-15.

• Isoldi, K., & Dolar V. (2016). Chapter 11: Blending Better Beverage Options: A Nutrition Education and Experiential Workshop for Youths, In Areej Hassan (Ed.), Pediatric Behavioral Nutrition Factors: Environment, Education, and Self-Regulation, Apple Academic Press.

• Dolar, V. (2016). Are we Teaching Outside the Box? A National Survey on Teaching Minimum Wage in Undergraduate Economics Classes, Forum for Social Economics.

• Isoldi, K., & Dolar V. (2016). Cooking Up Energy®: Improvements Following Participation in an Afterschool Cooking and Nutrition Education Program, American Journal of Health Behavior, 40(5), 634-644.

• Buttet, S., & Dolar, V. (2014). Design and Use of Rubrics in Undergraduate Economics Classes. Perspectives on Economic Education Research, 9(1), 36-55.

• Dolar, V. (2013). The Treatment of Minimum Wage in Undergraduate Economics Textbooks Revisited. International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, 4(2), 157-182.