At the centre of open education is the belief that education is strengthened when shared openly.
Open educational practice is collaborative pedagogy, and includes the use, reuse, and creation of OER. These employ social and participatory technologies for interaction, peer-learning, knowledge creation and sharing, and empowerment of learners.
To be fully realised, the promise of open education requires whole-of-institution practices.
Open Education goes beyond OER and open research outputs to embrace strategic decisions, teaching methods, collaboration between individuals and institutions, recognition of non-formal learning and different ways of making content available. Openness in education brings potential for co-creation and learning through active participation in how knowledge is produced.
Cronin, C. & MacLaren, I. (2018). Conceptualising OEP: A review of theoretical and empirical literature in Open Educational Practices. Open Praxis, 10(2), 127–143. https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.10.2.825, CC BY 4.0
European Commission (n.d.). EU Science Hub: What is open education? https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/what-open-education_en, CC BY 4.0
Three principles inform the key features and benefits of open education: social justice, learner driven aims and connected learning.
A social justice approach to open education manifests in higher education through:
The aim of open education is to facilitate an "access-oriented commitment to learner-driven education AND a process of designing architectures and using tools for learning that enable learners to shape the public knowledge commons of which they are a part" (DeRosa & Ravi, 2017, para 14).
Open education connects educators and learners through the use of resources capable of the 5R’s (Wiley, n.d.).
This is achieved through using, reusing, and creating open education resources and adopting collaborative pedagogical practices that employ social and participatory technologies for interaction, peer-learning, knowledge creation and sharing, and empowerment of learners (Cronin, 2018).
This approach provides opportunities for students to connect with each other and share experiences, information, and activities.
Cronin, C. & MacLaren, I. (2018). Conceptualising OEP: A review of theoretical and empirical literature in Open Educational Practices. Open Praxis, 10(2), 127–143. https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.10.2.825, CC BY 4.0
Deakin University. (2023). Australian open textbooks as social justice. https://australianopentextbooks.edu.au/social-justice/
DeRosa, R. & Ravi, J. (2017). Open pedagogy. In A guide to making open textbooks with students. Rebus Community. https://press.rebus.community/makingopentextbookswithstudents/chapter/open-pedagogy/ CC-BY 4.0
Wiley, D. (n.d.). Defining the "open" in open content and open educational resources. http://opencontent.org/definition/. CC-BY 4.0
Open education is a fast-moving field with new issues always arising. Take a look at the YouTube playlist linked below.
Issues in open education YouTube playlist
"Education Key" by Got Credit is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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