Category: My Learning

Posted on

OPEN 9600: Open Ed Policy and Leadership

6.4 BLOG & GRAPHIC | Challenges for social justice approaches

In this final assignment for OPEN 9600: Open Ed Policy and Leadership, we are asked to contribute a blog post with an accompanying graphic, image or media that express our views on the policy and leadership challenges to launching a social justice approach in complex educational contexts. We are to draw on examples from experience and support our writing with examples from course content, readings, videos, and forum discussion (forum discussion examples are noted as personal communications)

OPEN 9600 was developed by Dr. Glenda Cox and facilitated by Josie Gray. I am fortunate to learn from both leaders in the Open movement and a cohort of learners who lead open initiatives in their contexts.

My Experiences in Open Ed Policy and Leadership

My experiences in Open Education Policy and Leadership have mainly been grassroots, and awareness of them facilitated through professional development opportunities such as eCampus Ontario’s Ontario Extend program, webinars, TESS annual conferences, OTESSA, OE Global and grant support such as VLS funding by the Ontario government. I look forward to learning more about the National Advocacy Framework for Open Educational Resources in Canada at an upcoming Cross-Canada Coffee Chat (#OECCCC).

In my context, we have successfully advocated for and received support for an Open initiative to fund open educational resources (OER) development, development time, wrap-around supports, and membership in the Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER). While not an explicit policy, many implicit signals that Open is supported. Open meets many components of the institutional strategic plan, such as student success, student focus, collaboration, inclusiveness, innovation, supporting the development of employees, and digital transformation.

Open aligns with the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), of which the School of Business is a PRME champion and signatory. Atenas (2021) suggests that embedding open education in various initiatives as a component is important for the sustainability of Open because different initiatives may need a different component of what Open offers. For example, suppose we centre an open policy only on Open Educational Resources (OER) development, and people think we are only digitizing paper textbooks. In that case, we miss a whole audience who may not see the benefit of open policy for digital transformation in learning policies such as IT and education (Atenas, 2021). I suspect many will agree that with the onslaught and rapidly expanding selection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools now, more than ever, we need critical digital and socially just lenses (lenses that open scholars offer) involved in conversations of AI tool practices and policies.

An image of the video Interview with Javiera Atenas. The link is directly below the video and the transcript under that.

https://media.kpu.ca/media/OER+Policy+Interview+with+Javiera+Atenas/0_mbxsapjm

Transcript Atenas, J. (2021) Interview with Javiera Atenas [Kaltura]File]

Challenges to Launching a Socially Just Approach in Complex Contexts

If you have been following my posts previously, I spoke to the equity benefits OER provides by ensuring all learners have access to free and accessible learning resources on the first day of class and that the licensing allows for perpetual use after the course ends and for sharing with others. I have met few people who didn’t think this was a good idea. There are questions about OER quality and the level of peer review. However, the main pushback aside from lack of time is the lack of ancillary resources and whole packages that publisher resources have. The “whole” package usually includes slide decks, instructor resources, homework sites and test banks.

Could structural issues such as the precarious work of adjunct faculty taking on more teaching assignments at multiple institutions led to this lack of time to create resources? (personal communication) Even if sufficient time and support are available, has it become so normative that somehow we lost our way and now rely on these pre-packed resources that are considered superior? Williams & Werth (2021) suggest that companies have been increasingly offering what in the past would have been part of the faculty role to design, develop, and select – curriculum, course content, class activities, and assessment. For example, they reference a study by (Rawn and Fox 2018) that indicated that 60% of Canadian University Faculty acknowledged that they develop presentation materials, curricula, and ancillaries for the courses that they deliver. (Williams & Werth, 2021). So, this begs the question, is it ethical to ask learners to pay for access fees to ancillary materials developed by some faculty and not others when this development is supposed to be included in their tuition?

Do Resources Shape Pedagogy?

Consider this study by (Vinden, Flinn & Carson 2021), which suggests that pedagogy is being shaped by resources in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET); in this context, courses are being built through the material provided by the Industry Training Authority (ITA) or pre-packaged publisher resources, and neither is considered as a good fit for meeting the needs of students.

In this post-pandemic digital landscape, with faculty burnout reported as high as 75%, how often is the curriculum built or delivered with pre-packaged commercial course materials because it saves time?  Arguably, the tech used to build these ancillary resources appears more professional than a faculty-generated explainer video. What pedagogical value is a tech-generated activity over faculty-designed instruction? I prefer to watch the certified plumber on YouTube demonstrate how to change the washer in my tap, before I try it, even if it is simple in quality. Wachter (2019) suggests that this is the time to extend beyond open licensing and place open values into the wider context of new technological development to work collaboratively with stakeholders and advise policies that include technical platforms. Fawns (2021) advocates for a collaborative approach where pedagogy and technology are entangled and collaboration between stakeholders, including students, contextualizes and unpacks the complexities.

Conclusion

Systemic problems and layers of complexity need to be mitigated if higher-ed is to benefit from Open Educational Practices (OEP), of which Open Educational Resources (OER) are just one. Relying on short-term funding will not sustain OPEN long-term. I agree with Atenas (2021) embedding OPEN principles into existing policies is more sustainable than a stand-alone policy that no one takes ownership of. A plan must be in place to clarify the layers of complexity and chances for misinterpretation. This means advocacy for open values at many levels of many organizations, critical examination of current practices, and support and facilitation of Open Educational Practices (OEP) and the pedagogies that underpin them. National frameworks may be helpful but are likely only one part of a strategic and necessary multi-prong approach. In my view, Open Educational Practices are necessary to ensure that we have a socially just digital transformation.

References:

Atenas, J. (2021) OER Policy Interview with Javiera Atenas. KPU Open Education [YouTube Video]

Fawns, T., (2022) An Entangled Pedagogy: Looking Beyond the Pedagogy – Technology Dichotomy. Retrieved from Post digital Science and Education. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42438-022-00302-7

Vinden, S., Flinn, C., Carson, T.S. (2021), Strengthening Digital Teaching and Learning for Trades, Vocational, Education and Training Practitioners. https://bccampus.ca/2021/05/12/strengthening-digital-teaching-learning-for-trades-vocational-education-and-training-practitioners/

Watcher, N. (2019, May 1). When Open Educational Resources and platform capitalism meet. Discover Society. https://archive.discoversociety.org/2019/05/01/when-open-educational-resources-and-platform-capitalism-meet/

Williams, K., & Werth, E. (2021). A Case Study in Mitigating COVID-19 Inequities through Free Textbook Implementation in the U.S. (1). https://doi.org/10.5334/jime.650

This post is licensed CC-BY-NC-SA unless otherwise indicated

Posted on

OPEN 9600: Open ED Policy and Leadership, Assignment 4.4.

Assignment Instructions:

In this assignment, we are asked to blog about our views on the role of collaboration in sustaining open education. By drawing on examples from our own experiences and supporting the writing through examples from course content, readings, videos, and forum discussion (forum discussion examples are noted as personal communications)

The Role of Collaboration in Sustaining Open Education

There are many examples of collaboration in open education, ranging from grassroots, such as open calls to write open educational resources (OER) collaboratively, to top-down examples, such as open policy made explicit in strategic plans (Czerniewicz, 2021. Carson, 2020). Collaboration requires support in the form of funding, such as virtual learning strategy (VLS) funding via eCampus Ontario, institutional support through funded OER creation, adaptation, and adoption and integration into courses that includes release time, short-term contracts, and wrap-around support for editing and publishing. Tlili et.al (2020) noted that participants viewed a positive and transformational outcome when there was an institutional commitment to support collaboration. Collaboration has the potential to sustain open education, but only if that collaboration is supported financially.

My Experiences in Collaboration

I have led, supported, and participated in many multi-institutional Open Educational Resources (OER) creation projects, which led to long-term collaborations. For example, members from the original collaboration team for Building a Medical Terminology Foundation OER came back to collaborate and develop Therapeutic Communication for Health Care Administrators’ digital text and companion game simulations. A collaboration for the second edition of the first OER is now underway, based on a remixed version of the original OER. When funding is unavailable, we use components of a community model used by FemTechNet and share workload and costs across institutions (deLanghen, 2018). For example, the creators who developed Global Value Supply Chain used this approach, with the two creators supported by their institutions, working together and with facilitated integration into one OER. I recommend this approach to faculty considering adapting or developing new creations. Taking on a large project in isolation can be daunting, and working with others produces higher-quality resources. Czerniewicz (2021) suggests that when you write collaboratively, you build a community, have accountability to others, and the project remains high on the priority list. There are many positive reasons to work collaboratively on supported OPEN projects.

Challenges to Collaboration

Anyone involved in collaborative project work knows the challenges of keeping a project within scope and on time. Collaboration on open projects is no different. I wonder if they are more challenging since many open projects rely on funding, often with short timelines. Utilizing a community model means there must be time allocated to consensus building, and often the funding due dates do not allow for the time it takes to build consensus well. deLanghen (2018) found that community building was an essential part of keeping open education sustainable because it connected the values of open with the needs of stakeholders.

In this course, we discussed how open collaboration means viewing collaboration from a social justice lens, asking us to examine our practices critically and determine who has been excluded from our open projects and how we can be inclusive moving forward (personal communications, 2023). Open collaboration as defined in our course material, means more people and diverse people are included in the project (de Langen, 2018). The feminist ideology used by community groups such as FemTechNet works toward making the invisible visible and ensuring equity in workload (deLanghen, 2018). Open collaboration requires funds to ensure people are fairly compensated for their work, form partnerships with other institutions, and allow time for consensus building and recruitment of diverse perspectives.

Open collaboration does not guarantee adoption. It is essential that before writing starts, learning outcomes are agreed upon, matched to the course outlines from participating institutions, and that the people who make the decisions on adopting course materials are included in the project decisions (personal communication, 2023). Measuring the impact of OER development through adoption for the funders of OER projects is a challenge. Wepukhulu, 2021 noted in her interview that the platform used for the African Storybook project could not measure downloads. Since the storybooks are free, it is challenging to track how many children read them (Wepukhulu, 2021). Much like Wepukhulu (2021) noted, we do not have effective ways to report and measure OER adoptions because they are free for students, usage stats are not calculated through sales, and much of that work is done manually.

Conclusion

Supported collaboration has the potential to sustain open education but it is not without its challenges. Sustainable funding models that go beyond one-time lump sum support, include impact measurement tools and compensate people fairly from conception to adoption including integration into courses, will lead to the greatest chance for long-term sustainability. From my humble view, It will be important for open community groups to work collaboratively when advocating for funding models in the same way that they collaboratively generate content.

References:

Ahmed Tlili, Fabio Nascimbeni, Daniel Burgos, Xiangling Zhang, Ronghuai Huang, Ting-Wen Chang. (2020) The evolution of sustainability models for Open Educational Resources: insights from the literature and experts. Interactive Learning Environments 0:0 pages 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2020.1733045

Carson, B.T., (2020). Breaking barriers: understanding and removing barriers to OER use. Royal Roads University https://viurrspace.ca/handle/10613/23447

de Langen, F. (2018). Sustainability of Open Education Through Collaboration. The International Review of Research in Open and DistributedLearning,19(5).  https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i5.3548

Wepukhulu, D. (2021) African Storybook: Interview with Dorcas Wepukhulu. [Video]. OPEN ED 9600: Open Ed Policy in Leadership. Activity 3.2, Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Stranger-Johannessen, E., Doherty, L., & Norton, B. (2018). The African Storybook and Storybooks Canada: Digital Stories for Linguistically Diverse Children. Language and Literacy, 20(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.20360/langandlit29413

This post is licenced CC-BY-NC-SA unless otherwise noted.

Posted on

Share-Back Reflections on Cheggification and Open Pedagogy

I have always thought that students that cut corners and “cheat” do so out of desperation. I thought that if I can just support student’s learning then they won’t feel the need to cut corners. My recent awareness that there are hundreds of homework sites that essentially provide students with answers to assignments and tests was disappointing. I think that it was disappointing because is seemed to perpetuate the antagonistic relationship of teacher and student which seems counterintuitive to the supportive teacher that I aim to be. When I saw Dave Cormier’s invitation on Twitter to hear his CoOp students talk about their experiences with homework sites and how Open pedagogy could provide part of a solution…. well, I was in. The following reflection is my contribution to Conestoga College’s share-back session for #OEWeek 2021.

Themes from the Presentation

Student Perceptions

Student’s perceive that the faculty response to “homework sites” like Chegg has been to create assignments and tests that are more difficult, intensive, and time restricted. The thought being there will be no time to search out answers. This has resulted in a greater number of students going direct to Chegg for the answer than before. On the surface homework sites appear to provide help with homework by allowing students to verify their answers once they have completed their work. As one student presenter commented “co-students have completed their work but they want to make sure they got the answer correct so that their grades do not suffer”.

Chegg is expensive with multiple layers ranging from some limited free options to an expensive subscription. Subsequently, disadvantaging students without the means to pay for subscriptions. That being said there is nothing stopping someone with a subscription from sharing the answers with others and I learned today that there are hundreds of companies that do just that with varying fee structures.

I was surprised to learn that many publishers sold homework answers to Chegg. Read more about that in this article by Michael Feldstein.

Is Cheating a Faculty Construct?

Since information is readily available on the internet no longer does the faculty or the textbook hold all the answers exclusively. So, faculty respond by making the assessments harder and/or restricted by time. Dave Cormier posed the notion that cheating may be a faculty construct because cheating only happens when faculty withhold the answer. Faculty may construct the notion of cheating by telling students that they can’t see the answer that they must memorize the answer to be regurgitated on a test and then be judged competent or not. By the time a student reaches Higher Ed they believe that this is how “school” works.

In this current way of responding to homework sites faculty are punishing all students even those students who do not want to rely on these types of sites, students who want to engage in their own learning and complete their own work. The term used in today’s presentation was The Assessment Stick. Meaning using the assessment as an extrinsic motivator or worse as a type of punishment.

How Do We Stop Cheating Behaviours?

So the question turned to how than can we stop cheating? The response was faculty need to treat students like the professionals that they are training to be. Faculty need to show students the how and why we choose to layout the course the way that we do. So, that we can prepare students for the occupation that they are training and educating for. We need to inspire intrinsic motivation for completing course work.

Deconstruct our goals for the course, consider why we give students assignments and for what purpose? This requires a degree of self-reflection to really unpack the why and what for in how we prepare courses and assessments. Prepare assignments that introduce students to the work field, habits expected in the work field, and practical context for learning. .

Deconstruct with students their motivations and expectations and re-establish the social contract with students at the beginning of the course. Talk with the student about goals for learning and expectations, agree to those goals and then hold for accountability.

Provide iterative assignments with formative feedback check-ins. Avoid well structured problems and instead provide ill-structured problems. Ill-structured problems are those that are not directly measurable, do not have a solution or clear definition and/or only work on part of the problem. The pushback is that this is difficult in classes with large numbers and will be difficult to manage. The question posed back was do you think what we do know works? Isn’t it always difficult in classes with large numbers?

How Can OPEN Pedagogy Help?

Open Authored Textbooks introduce students to someone doing the work in the field. The Open texts are often networked so opportunities exist for students to make connections in the field of knowledge with a variety of perspectives. Cormier (2021) suggested that we allow students the space to “go down the rabbit holes” with their curiosity subsequently building intrinsic motivation . Click here to learn how to use Wikipedia games for intrinsic motivation.

Open Pedagogy allows for student choice in assignments, be open to how students choose to learn and pick what they want to explore. This doesn’t mean they can just study whatever they want. It requires a collaborative discussion between faculty and student to ensure alignment with the outcomes and goals for the course.

Build Trust with students by deconstructing the power relationships between faculty and student and change from a combative and antagonistic relationship to a trust relationship. Expect pushback, remember students have been doing “school” for many years and have been conditioned to expect “school” experiences in a particular way.

Final Thoughts….

A concern I heard today and one I hear often within my own teaching environment. What do we do about students who are not motivated by a desire to work in this field. A student presenter responded with but many students do care and are invested in their learning what about us? Cormier, suggested that a core value is to design courses and assessments for the student who does care. This is a core value that I share and another reason that I believe open educational practices is the way forward.

“A Core Value to Design Assessments for the Students Who Do Care” (Cormier, 2021).

Posted on

Another Path: Program for Open Scholarship and Education – Winter 2021

Open Access

This semester I am continuing my OPEN journey by participating in The University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Program for Open Scholarship and Education (POSE). Through this program I plan to expand my knowledge of OPEN scholarship.

On Wednesday 100+ participants came to the kick-off and we even enjoyed a break-out room activity. The participants in my break-out room activity are from varying backgrounds such as library services, research, and public health. It was interesting to learn the reasons that brought us all to this course.

According to the website the program should take about 3 – 5 hours each month. Yesterday, I started my course readings and due to exploration of many deeper learning readings, I may have already already spent close to three hours. As I excitedly shared what I was reading with my partner (he nodded appropriately but not enthusiastically) about the structure and history of publishing I have more questions than answers.

Down the path I go.

Photo by Aswathy N on Unsplash
Posted on

Tech@Conestoga Panel Interview 2020

Photo by Sam McGhee on Unsplash

The following blog post is a summary of the questions and my answers for the Tech@Conestoga Panel Interview May 26, 2020

Q 1) Please share a bit about yourself in your role at Conestoga and about how you’ve embraced tech in your teaching

A: Hello my name is Kim Carter and I am a Professor in the Business School. I have been teaching at Conestoga for over 10 years

  • I noticed worrisome trends in the past few years.
    • Student were not purchasing textbooks
    • Students did not seem to have the digital competencies/computer skills that I was expecting
    • Ed tech options were multiplying so quickly that I didn’t have the time to keep up with them all

So, I went on a quest to update my own digital literacy skills and I discovered Open Educational Pedagogy (OEP) which is sometimes described as critical digital pedagogy (Rosen & Smale, 2015). OEP is a large topic to unpack in a few minutes but what it means to me is to view course construction through an inclusive lens, co-construct learning with students, build digital literacy skills, and consider when tech is problematic.

What I would like to share with you today is the Medical Terminology Open Educational Resources (MT OER) collaboration project.

  • I am co-creating with a collaborative team (from 8 Ontario Institutions) of SMEs, students, library, ed tech and many others on Open Educational Resources (OER) for Medical Terminology (MT) in context with Introductory Anatomy and Physiology.
    • These customized MT OER are targeted for health office administration (HOA) students and the plan is to replace two paid textbooks with these MT OER
    • Variations of the HOA program is offered at 18 colleges in Ontario and Medical Terminology and Introductory A&P are included in all of them
    • We will publish in the eCampus Ontario Open Library in August for adoption in the Fall semester.
    • To learn more about OER and why it is important to me, visit my blog post here
  • This Means:
    • Students will have resources that are customized to their program of study on the first day of class and at no cost to the student
    • The resources are interactive using PressbooksEDU platform with many formative H5P activities built into each chapter
    • Chapters can be linked individually to weeks in the LMS
    • The H5P activities can be embedded in the LMS for ease of use even before publishing
  • Students are Co-constructing the MT OER:
    • Students started participating in Fall 2019 by making (as low-stakes formative assessment) H5P activities
    • Students (Fall 2019/Winter 2020) edited and gave suggestions for the H5P activities as they were being built
      • Seeking out errors and putting forth corrections
      • Making suggestions such as the audio addition to the dialog cards
    • Students (Conestoga College and Georgian College) continue to collaborate by providing the student perspective on the MT OER, creating formative activities, and reinforcement activities
      • They have put in many hours (part of placement and co-curricular record) and still wish to contribute in the process
    • Future students will continue to co-construct because this is a living textbook to which we can pull back, add to, or publish future modified editions.

Q 2) How did the switch to remote learning impact you? In what ways were you ready to tackle this challenge?

A) Remote learning during a world-wide pandemic is stressful. Decisions need to be made quickly combined with heightened anxiety and stress, this wasn’t, and probably won’t be easy for a while.

  • Feeling somewhat prepared:
    • During the bus strike and prior to remote delivery, I had introduced students to virtual conferencing software, MS TEAMS was already set up in my sections, and students knew how to use it.
    • Students were familiar to experimenting and co-constructing with me.
      • For example, students knew that we were going to use FlipGrid for a scaffold assessment in therapeutic communications. They had to make the adjustment from videotaping their group skit together to using virtual conference software (physically distanced)
      • They exceeded my expectations with their ability to problem solve, find creative and kind solutions to the varying levels of computer access, internet access and schedules among their peers.
    • I have a large personal learning network (PLN) through my involvement with eCampusOntario and OEP both within Conestoga and outside Conestoga.
      • I was able to draw from and sort through the large amounts of information on remote delivery because I was able to leverage trusted contacts in my PLN.
      • I was able to anticipate problems because they were already being discussed in my network. For example, students not having access to internet.
    • The MT OER collaboration team proved invaluable. Since, we teach in the same programs we were able to share problems and solutions specific to our programs. We already had a good working relationship and a MS Team set up so that expedited those conversations.

Interested in being part of my PLN? Follow me on Twitter @Kcarte02

Q3) How has remote teaching led you to re-think your pedagogy and practices? How does this impact the learners in your courses/programs?

A) Remote teaching has reinforced the core values of OPEN and critical digital pedagogy for me. The sudden shift required me to think through the accessibility and inclusivity of my delivery and assessments. Consider which tools I use and which tools (if any) did I need to adjust. I also needed to consider low-tech options for students with limited internet accessibility.

  • Moving forward one of my biggest considerations is the amount of assessments in a course and how efficient and equitable they are they at measuring course outcomes.
  • My re-think will benefit students through:
    • Increased flexibility and choice for how students participate in lessons and complete assessments.
      • offering multiple ways to participate: synchronous and asynchronous lessons including low-tech options for students to participate in courses.
      • Morris & Stommel (n.d) posit that we must have multiple entry points for students to participate in our courses.
    • Using a critical lens to view tech options particularly around assessments
      • heightened awareness regarding privacy concerns
      • building and keeping trust with students through assessment choice
        • A helpful tool for assessing tech is the SECTIONS model (Bates, 2019)

Q4) What advice would you give to others who want to pursue new learning to enhance their use of technology

  1. Model curiosity, experimentation, and innovation and be prepared to make mistakes in front of students.
  2. Be honest with students, that this is something you haven’t tried before and that you will be learning together. Most students are happy to help.
  3. Build time into your lesson plan to work through the tech without grade penalty.
  4. Digital literacy skills might just be the most important skills that you teach your students so build them yourself (JISC, 2018).

References

Bates, T. (2019). Teaching In A Digital Age (2nd ed.). Retrieved May 2020, from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/9-pedagogical-differences-between-media/

JISC. (2018, 09). Developing Digital Literacies. Retrieved from JISC Guides: https://www.jisc.ac.uk/full-guide/developing-digital-literacies

Morris, S. M., & Stommel, J. (n.d.). An Urgency of Teachers. Pressbooks. Retrieved from https://criticaldigitalpedagogy.pressbooks.com

Rosen, J. R., & Smale, M. A. (2015, Jan 1). Open Digital Pedagogy = Critical Pedagogy. Retrieved from Hybrid Pedagogy: https://hybridpedagogy.org/open-digital-pedagogy-critical-pedagogy/

css.php