Student Engagement

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Student Engagement

Creating, adapting and ultimately integrating OER into courses are ways to improve student engagement and academic success. For instance, an OER can be adapted to be more representative of learners and their contexts, for example, with more relevant examples. In fact, co-creation with students contributes to their representation in learning materials and active participation in knowledge creation.As the following videos explain, OER and the active participation of learners and their own learning are examples of open educational practices.

Video: Open Teaching

The following video discusses how open education is about more than OER and encompasses open educational practices.

Open Teaching (3:55) [CC BY-NC-SA]

Video Transcript

Open educational practices while having multiple definitions revolve around the use or inclusion of open educational resources. These resources are free to use adaptable and licensed under the Creative Commons. Open education also encompasses more than just materials. There is a whole ecosystem of open which enable a shift toward open practices. What are the benefits of including more openness into the classroom? Imagine this your students are submitting an assignment, project or essay. Once the project is completed, graded and returned, then what? What is the next step for that project? While there is definitely value in this work to achieve learning, the ultimate end for most of them is akin to putting up drawings on a refrigerator. They are displayed and enjoyed by a few people along the way, but that’s pretty much it. But what if there is a shift, a shift to include more openness? This will aid not only in making education more accessible, but shine the spotlight on open education and its practices. Using openly accessible platforms is a connected way to bring students to the foreground of education. It’s a beginning to draw on our students learned experiences and connect the class material to today’s reality. For example, Hypothesis is an open source online site that lets you annotate the Internet. It is a way to make digital annotations in the margins of online texts. Students will share, update and discuss the assigned online text in real time. It differs from a discussion thread or a Google doc because the annotations are right there in black and white on the website. Other open source websites such as Pressbooks can give students the ability to create their own collection of their works essays or even create an open source textbook.

If this textbook is made open, then it can contribute to others learning around the globe who then in turn can adapt it, remix it, and share it with their students or colleagues. There is a never ending cycle of knowledge sharing. The simplest of all is opening up a class or public networking, whether that be a live stream or using a social media hashtag to get other insights and to create a dialogue. Gaining perspectives and insight from people out in the world who have lived or different experiences than in a controlled conversation in the classroom is a true form of openness and inclusivity. Creating a class textbook that will be published and sold differs from the open textbook because the open textbook is almost a living, breathing, evolving entity. While the publisher created content is static until the next planned update. It doesn’t have the immediate opportunity to evolve. What inclusive and open practices can you begin to incorporate? There are wonderful resources to launch from online. There is a link below in the description. You can also contact the library. They have resources available and can also assist in searching for open access textbooks for your area of teaching. Remember, implementing openness is not an all or nothing approach, nor is it as simple as flicking on a light switch. It is a journey and not a destination. The more people who begin on this journey, the more there will be to talk and share experiences and the more enjoyable and informative it will be for those to come. To find out how you can add more openness to your teaching. Visit us at Vertica or send an email to at Vertica.

This second video elaborates on what happens when students are engaged in their own learning, which is a core principle of open education.

Seven Things That Happen When Students Own Their Learning (1:41)

Video Transcript

We know that it’s important to move from compliance to student engagement. But what happens when you take it another step and empower your students to own their learning? Here are seven ideas: #1: They fall in love with learning by finding joy in pursuing their passions and geeky interests. In the process, they learn how to research and curate and communicate. #2: They embrace a maker mindset as they work through a design process and launch their work to the world. #3: They develop iterative thinking, viewing mistakes as a chance to learn. This leads to a shift from a fixed to a growth mindset. #4: They become self-starters, exploring new frontiers, asking hard questions, and trying new things. #5: They become problem-solvers and systems thinkers #6: They also challenge the system as hackers who think divergently and rewrite the rules. #7: They become architects of their own learning, engaging in project management and collaboration. A.J. Juliani puts it this way: Our job is not to prepare students for something. Our job is to help students prepare themselves for anything. In other words, when we empower our students, they are able to own their learning forever.

Renewable, Not Disposable Assignments

Renewable assignments, unlike assignments that are only reviewed by the teacher and then discarded, encourage learners to become more engaged in the knowledge that future students will not only benefit but also contribute to it.

Many assignments given in post-secondary institutions are what David Wiley calls “disposable.” Renewable assignments, on the other hand, add value beyond earning a mark — they provide resources that are useful and usable by others, whether other students in the course or the public. Examples include students creating notes or demonstrations for other students in the same course (and possibly also posted publicly for others), students editing articles on Wikipedia or an institutional wiki site like the UBC Wiki, and students producing research that can be used by a community group. Even those assignments that might otherwise be “disposable” can be made renewable by sharing them with other students in a course and, if the student agrees, publicly.

For such work to be truly “renewable” though, it should be openly licensed to allow others to not only view it, but to revise and reuse it for their own purposes.

Open Teaching (Teacher-Student Lens)

Open teaching implies that teachers will implement teaching methodologies that allow learners to actively contribute to the co-creation of knowledge and be self-regulated. Teachers can approach open teaching through connectivist learning practice — which is grounded in connectivism, a student-centred teaching and learning approach where learners share and co-create knowledge by making connections that can extend beyond the duration of the course.

Open Collaboration (Student-OER Lens)

Open collaboration implies that teachers will work with their students to build open communities to foster teamwork and social interaction (i.e., editing a blog, creating a Wikipedia page). Students work together through the co-creation or adaptation of OER and digital artifacts — and are encouraged to share openly with others. This can happen through social media platforms, Pressbooks, websites, ePortfolios, etc.

Open Assessment (Teacher-OER Lens)

Open assessment implies that teachers will redesign learning tasks to support both teacher — and peer — assessment and a strategy like this emphasizes reflective practice and improved learning outcomes. Indeed, adjusting and redesigning assessments to support OEP is essential. There are several technologies that can be used to support open assessment like OER authoring tools, OER repositories, social networks and collaborative editing tools. In these cases, students are assessed on collaborative, renewable assignments that are the result of the creation of supplemental learning resources that all students can benefit from (and that future students can build upon). Take for example open-class discussion forums that are established to create a space for students to discuss the feedback and answers to assessments and, by extension, to learn from each other.

Here are two examples of OER co-created with students: