Open Educational Resources and Practices (OER/OEP) are becoming increasingly significant in learning design practices and curriculum development as a means of supporting and advocating for social justice in the education system.
When practitioners champion the use of open education in their designs, it enhances student engagement, fosters authentic learning and drives impactful learning experiences. They also promote collaborative staff environments that lead to further insights, professional development and high-quality learning design outputs.
Learning design in practice
Learning designers are third-space practitioners who often link professional and academic areas in the educational institution. They gain an understanding of complex independencies across systems, departments, libraries and faculties. Collaboration is key to the effective implementation of intentional open-learning practices.
Learning designers in UTS are guided by the UTS Learning Design and Technology Quality Framework, and many are embracing or beginning to use OER/OEP in their designs. While open education design has recognised potential, there is greater need for it to become fully realised, implemented at scale and integrated into higher education institutions.
Meaningful open education practices, require open educational technology infrastructure to support its effectiveness.
Tannis Morgan (Associate Vice President, Academic Innovation, Vancouver Community College)
Open first mindset: resources and approaches
There are a few components to utilising a user-orientated mindset when exploring and implementing open education. Like starting any project, it can be worthwhile to have a series of principles and guides to create space for exploration, implementation, testing and reviewing.
As part of an event at OEWeek exploring this topic, Instructional Designer Verena Roberts communicates the importance of re-thinking open learning design through a series of principles to effectively co-design, collaborate and share individual learning experiences. Open learning depends on emphasising the learning process to build upon and share community knowledge.
Open educational practices are present in various stages of the design process:
- Building relationships
- Co-designing learning pathways
- Building and sharing knowledge
- Building personal learning networks
Danielle Dubien from MacEwan University highlights the need to approach open education with trauma-informed pedagogy when looking to use resources, practices and open-source technology as a means of having a student-centred approach.
Practitioners can use the values of safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration and empowerment when considering culture and design in open education.
Danielle Dubien
How to be more active in the OE space
There is no one-approach to using OER and OEP within learning design. Whether you’re new to the practice or looking to enhance your current strategies, figuring out where to begin can be challenging. During the event, the guest speakers suggested many ways and key takeaways to get more involved and active in this space.
UTS’s Mais Fatayer proposes 5 techniques to support active open learning practices:
- Introduce open content and resources early in project planning to address real design problems
- Replace publisher textbooks with open-access ones saves students money and promotes equal access
- Support inclusive practices through flexibility and providing content through multiple modes
- Encourage co-designers to create and use open content along with renewable and authentic assessments
- Promote transparency and trust – sharing designs openly can enhance teaching and learning experiences
Verena Roberts communicates the importance of confidence and advocating openly for open educational resources in practice and design. She promotes embracing the skills of negotiation when working on projects while keeping in mind the overarching goal to better both student and staff experiences.
Tannis Morgan suggests looking towards curriculum, policy and procedure within the educational institution to find areas that call for a positive mechanism for change. It’s also important to emphasise the need for sharing resources across institutions.
Designers can look to creating their own resources to share among the community as well. The open textbook Designing Learning Experiences for Inclusivity and Diversity: Advice for Learning Designers is a comprehensive guide for designing learning experiences that are accessible, equitable and inclusive. You can read more about the development and publishing of this textbook in this blog post.
Open learning designers have a role in advocating and building awareness for equity, diversity, accessibility and inclusion. Engaging actively in the space means open education and learning design practices can enrich the learning experience for students.