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Can open educational resources (OER) contribute to continuous improvement in teaching and learning? It is believed that OER can contribute to promote innovation in pedagogy practices. The Hewlett Foundation has invested a lot to support the OER movement since its emergence in 2001, but research on the potential benefits of OER to improve the quality of education is scarce (William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, 2013). In the past years, the use of OER was focused mainly on providing access to educational materials to reduce the cost of textbooks. Therefore, faculty in higher education settings are not aware of how OER can lead to the improvement of teaching and learning practices. Thus, to encourage faculty to use OER in their courses, it is imperative to provide evidence-based practices that demonstrate how OER are effective in innovating teaching and learning practices in college courses (Allen & Seaman, 2014).
The proponents of OER insist that “the goals of effective teaching and learning should drive OER adoption” (DeBarger, 2019, para. 2). To date, the majority of publications have focused on exploring students’ and faculty perceptions of OER and the impact of OER on cost-savings in education. Thus there is a lack of research that addresses how OER can improve educational practices (Wiley, 2013). , This study used a design-based research approach to explore the best practices for integrating OER in college courses where the focus is on open which defined as the “the set of teaching and learning practices only possible or practical when [users] have permission to engage in the 5R activities” (Wiley, 2017, para. 7) . Specifically, this study aimed to examine the student-created OER approach in which students are co-producers of OER content. Mainly, this study sought to generate design principles that support the integration of OER in a college course to enhance open educational practices, and thereby, to inform the design and development of an integrative student-created OER intervention. A student-created OER intervention was developed by redesigning course assignments in an instructional design graduate program at a mid-Atlantic university utilizing the principles of open pedagogy and open educational practices. The underlying principle was to redesign the course based on learner-centered pedagogical models employing the principles of constructivism that promote the active participation of students in knowledge construction (Ehler, 2011; Geser, 2012). The instructions for the main assignments of the course were restructured in order to engage students in the 5R practices to revise the previous OER renewable assignments for this class and to encourage students to publish their assignments under the CC license in OER databases.
An implication of this study is that the generated design principles can be used as a heuristic guideline for faculty in other institutions to integrate OER effectively in their courses. The most obvious finding to emerge from this study is the importance to make connections among assignments in the selected course as well as throughout the courses in the entire Instructional Design program, which would cultivate the 5R practices in the courses.
References
Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2014). Opening the Curriculum: Open Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2014. Available at http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthecurriculum2014.pdf
DeBarger, A. (2019). Beyond Access: Using Open Educational Resources to Improve Student Learning. [Online] William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Available at
https://hewlett.org/beyond-access-using-open-educational-resources-to-improve-student-learning/ [8 July. 2019].
Ehlers, U. D. (2011). Extending the Territory: From Open Educational Resources to Open Educational Practices. Journal of Open, Flexible, and Distance Learning, 15 (2), 1-10.
Geser, G. (2012). Open educational Practices and Resources: OLCOS Roadmap 2012. Available at http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED498433.pdf
Wiley, D. (2017). Quick Thoughts on Open Pedagogy. [Online] Iterating Toward Openness. Available at https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/4921 [23 February. 2018].
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. (2013). White Paper: Open Educational Resources. Available at https://www.hewlett.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/OER%20White%20Paper%20Nov%2022%202013%20Final_0.pdf
