Open Education

Page en français : Education Ouverte – Seite auf Deutsch: Open Education

Introduction (suggestions of elements to include)

 * At the global level, the end of the covid crisis heralds a paradigm shift (see e.g. Peters et al, https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1777655 => portal metaphor: "We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it".
 * At the level of institutions, they have made investments during this period and must make decisions about the future (e.g. zoom licences, rooms set up for co-modality, valorisation of face-to-face and intelligent use of distance learning).
 * At the policy level, ecology, digital transition, digital sovereignty, etc. govern the current period 2021-2024 and it is a question of anticipating the next period by installing open and free in all its dimensions according to the UNESCO recommendations on open science and OER for example.
 * At the level of practitioners (teacher-researchers), they are at the end of their tether because they have practices that go against the educational mission of universities (universal, open) and the paradigm shift is an opportunity to be seized. Course design is done in a participatory way, including all stakeholders and types of knowledge (see e.g. Funk, J. (2021). Caring in Practice, Caring for Knowledge. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.5334/jime.648

Free education / open science ecosystem
Several visual representations of the open and free ecosystem exist (e.g. Stacey 2018, FOSTER 2018, Weller et al. 2018). We choose to start from the values of open and free as synthesised by Baker 2017 and start from a representation of our own (Figure x).

Figure x: Representation of the free and open ecosystem

Open and Free Educational Practices (OFEP)/Pedagogy/Andragogy
The theories and concepts underlying Free and Open Educational Practices (FOEP) are similar and emphasise social learning and the construction of knowledge and skills by learners. The associated concepts are rooted in constructivist, socio-constructivist and cognitivist approaches. Broadly speaking, PELOs include teaching and research, recognise the difference between PELOs and OERs, value context in the implementation of PELOs and recognise the need to address diversity and inequalities (Cronin and Maclaren, 2018).

Figure x:

From a conceptual point of view, other features were added later: i) students create new and useful artefacts beyond learning (renewable assignments) that are shared publicly using open licenses; and ii) the affordances of open licenses are highlighted as crucial for an OLEP. Teachers report the following barriers: student privacy, uncertainty about the contribution of PELO to learning, scepticism about the quality of student-created resources, lack of institutional support for PELO (Clinton-Lisell, 2021).

A framework has been proposed by Huang et al (2020) to show the different dimensions included in PELOs (Figure x).

Figure x:

Also based on the observation that during the pandemic, teaching-learning in the emergency room was characterised by a rather low quality, Funk (2021) proposes PELOs as an interesting alternative, using, among other things, a pedagogy of compassion and attention (care).

Pooling of teaching resources / pluralism
Knowledge is increasingly developed through multiple approaches and it is now possible to promote this diversity. Traditional knowledge, once sidelined, is now particularly valued, linked among others to the actions of global and international institutions. Epistemic justice supports several of the UN's sustainable development goals.

Type of resources
“Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, adaptation and redistribution by others.” (Green, 2021, p. 16) Swiss OER Conference. Wiley (2021) defines educational resources as informational resources with an extra. They are designed for educational purposes and follow the 5Rs rules.

Possible resources range from entire online courses to small-scale educational resources, games, simulations, quizzes, etc. (Jung, Sasaki und Latchem, 2016). They include all types of digital and non-digital files (Olcott, 2012). For a resource to be OER the 5Rs criteria must be taken into account. Indeed, if the resource does not follow all the 5R criteria, it does not qualify as OER (Wiley, 2021). This is why Creative Commons, "a non-profit organisation whose purpose is to provide a legal alternative for people who want to free their works from the standard intellectual property rights of their country, which are deemed too restrictive (Creative Commons, 2021), has a figure highlighting the different licences to choose from. This figure table also identifies which ones are considered as OER (Green, 2015).

Figure X:

However, the use of NC (Non Commercial) can be criticised (Klimpel, 2012, CC BY-SA 3.0 of).

NC-licensed content is not easy to distribute. For example, Wikipedia does not accept content under a non-commercial licence. The integration of Wikipedia in search machines is already considered as commercial use. From a legal point of view, the definition of commercial use remains unclear. When someone adds a non-commercial licence to their work, they probably think of multinational companies. However, the non-commercial licence affects all institutions and individuals who make money from their actions. It therefore includes any action that is not funded by the state or donations. For example, independent people working with children and young people will not be allowed to use an NC licensed resource, nor will a newspaper be allowed to publish it. We can also question whether OER with a CN licence can be published on a blog or portal, if that blog is funded by advertising. It is possible to ensure that the content remains freely accessible, without necessarily using the NC license: The SA (share-alike) license. Andrasch (2017) highlights the purpose of OER as learning and access. The main purpose of OER is not to prevent others from making money. OER is therefore a resource licensed under CC0, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA.

Figure X:

An OER enables engagement in the 5Rs activities. People are free to:


 * reuse - the right to reuse the content in its full text version (e.g. make a copy of the contents);
 * revise - the right to adapt, retouch, modify or alter the content itself (e.g. translate it into another language or modify a learning activity)
 * rearrange - the right to combine the original or modified content with other content to create new content (for example, incorporating content into a composite work);
 * redistribute - the right to share with others copies of content, whether in its original or revised form, and composite works incorporating it (e.g. give a copy of the content to a friend).
 * retain - the right to create, own and control copies of the content.

(Wiley, n.d. and Wiley, 2014 OERu, s.D.)

the resource.

Granularity
As mentioned above, OERs can be entire online courses, games, quizzes, a document etc. (Jung et al., 2016). The granularities between these types of resources are different. Hoyle (2009 cited by Weller, 2010) distinguishes the granularity of OER between big and little OER. Big OER are resources produced by institutions. These OER are comprehensive and their quality is generally high. The educational objectives are explicit and the style of presentation is uniform (Weller, 2010). Small OER are resources produced by individuals privately, their quality varies (Wiley, 2010). Kerres and Heinen (2015) categorise the granularity of OER into three levels: worksheet, teaching module/coursebook and whole courses.

Table: Granularity levels (Kerres, 2016), translated

Collections ?
The ROTECO.ch project The aim of the Roteco project is to create a dynamic community of teachers in the field of robotics and computational thinking who share classroom practices and activities around educational robotics. Members are informed about new developments in the field and are offered training in the use of robots. The Roteco.ch website is a collaborative platform that aims to make information on educational robotics user-friendly and accessible in the form of an Open Educational Resource (OER). To support the start-up and building of a community of teachers, the Roteco project has designed, developed and hosted a web platform under the domain name Roteco.ch. Roteco.ch was developed with the specific needs of teachers in mind and based on them. This encourages the possibility of a bottom-up development of pedagogical tools and OER that could support teachers' needs. In addition to the platform, Roteco also offers training courses for teachers, educational resources and participates in different events to promote educational robotics, such as the FabLearn Europe/ MakeEd 2021 conference.

Roteco is a project promoted by several Swiss institutions: the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) and the Wyss Institute of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and the University of Zurich. These Roteco institutions are also leading the animation and community management in the three languages in partnership with the Universities of Teacher Education of the Swiss cantons of Vaud, St. Gallen, Lucerne, Schwyz, Valais, Zug, Zurich and the SEM (Service des médias des écoles de Genève). These universities of teacher education and science promotion associations have joined the project in order to strengthen and broaden the impact on the local teacher communities in the different Swiss cantons. In 2020, the Roteco team decided to open the access to teachers and experts in educational robotics and computational thinking from abroad in order to enrich the Swiss national community through collaboration and open discussion with teachers from all over the world. The project is funded by the Swiss Academy of Sciences and the ETH Board. Europe/ MakeEd 2021.

Community development
In order to make OER effective and functional, the learning community that supports these approaches can be a very important factor.

The social appropriation of information and communication technologies is leading to the formation of various forms of online gatherings, grouped under the common name of virtual communities.

under the common name of virtual communities. The research on this phenomenon, which is increasingly in the spotlight, has all the characteristics of an emerging paradigm, attempting to define the main elements of the social and cultural environment.

paradigm, attempting to define the main concepts, to delimit the contours of the object studied in order to find appropriate

appropriate methodologies.

Distance learning as a field has evolved from simple correspondence teaching to a highly sophisticated, distributed and interactive learning experience,

widely distributed and interactive. The fact that in 1982 the International Council for Correspondence Education (ICCE) was replaced by the International Council for Distance Education (ICCS) is an indication of the change in direction of distance education in recent decades. Modern interactive telecommunications technologies, such as video-conferencing, allow synchronous and asynchronous interactions between individuals on a scale never before imagined with correspondence courses (Vrasidas and Glass, 2002).

Students, educators, scientists, academics, researchers and practitioners participate in online communities, collaborate on projects, share information and build knowledge in ways that were not previously possible. However, the methods used and their effectiveness are far from guaranteed and often the arrangements in place are not very effective.

As "Connect and Inspire", the US Department of Education's report on online communities, shows, launching a successful online community of practice is much more than a technology project and requires a thoughtful strategy that takes into account community goals, roles, content and many other non-technological criteria. However, the technology must support the kinds of meaningful interactions that will make participation productive for community members. As there are dozens of collaboration platforms and tools, each with different functionalities, the choice of configuration can be very complicated. Countless collaboration initiatives have failed after considerable effort in gathering requirements and evaluating platforms with a focus on technology, to the detriment of objectives.

The solution is to engage in careful planning, but also to start small, focusing on a limited audience and set of features.

Raising awareness / promoting ownership
In order to raise awareness and encourage social interaction, Bourgois and Nizet (1997) have defined some favourable conditions:


 * Symmetry of social relations
 * Intensity of the relationship
 * Taking into account the socio-affective dimension of social interaction
 * Cognitive and social prerequisites (development of social skills, training in group work)
 * Tasks that facilitate controversy (introducing alternative viewpoints)
 * Ensuring the social significance of the task

Good practice
Here are some examples of favourable conditions in the framework of collaborative distance learning (LEARN-NETT) (Charlier & Peraya, 2003)


 * Objectives and context justifying collaborative distance learning
 * Meaningful project -> commitment
 * Coherent scenario
 * Clear instructions, planning
 * Integrated technical resources
 * Human resources (tutors, facilitators, trainers, technicians, etc.)
 * Preparation of learners (and tutors)
 * Social presence for students and tutors (forum, videoconference, personal pages...)
 * Reflection, formative evaluation
 * Regulation of the system

And the potential failure factors stated by Probst & Borzillo (2008):


 * Not having a cohesive founding group. The founding group of the project is not totally dedicated to this task, each member has other activities that prevent him/her from being totally dedicated to this community.
 * No interpersonal relationships. Interpersonal relations are complicated because of the covid, but also because of the structure of our school which is on several sites and in two languages.
 * No willingness to learn from others. Employees do not have dedicated time for training on their workload. So they have to take training time from other tasks.
 * Little identification with the group. Due to the fragmentation of our institution, over several sites, several languages, several fields, the feeling of belonging can be lacking.
 * Difficulty in discussing concrete practices. The relatively uncertain climate due to covid, accreditation, an interim director, and structural changes in the study plan in sight makes it relatively difficult to anchor concrete practices.

University of Teacher Education Bern – OER Policy
Translation required from the german page.