Open, network, and digital literacy for

educators: reflecting on the results of the

Open Educators Factory project.

OER17, London 5 April 2017

Fabio Nascimbeni

UNIR iTED

Rationale: why the OEF research

The victory of Open Education (Weller 2014)

• Policy: EC, ICDE, UNESCO all agree that OE is the way to go

• Institutions: open initiatives in more and more universities

• >350 institutions offering MOOCs

vs

The power of the Status Quo

• Frontal teaching is often still the norm

• OER are in an eternal “experimentation phase”

• The MOOCs hype is settling down

Why change is so slow? What do we need?

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We need a peaceful army of Open Educators.

Educators (professors, tutors, lecturers) are the ones who should drive

the change towards openness, they must must transform from agents

of resistance into agents of change.

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The OEF research

1. Explore concept of “Open Educator” along all its

components

2. Design, build and test a tool that can contribute to

transform HE teachers into Open Educators

First, what is an Open Educator?

An Open Educator choses to use open approaches, when possible

and appropriate, with the aim to remove all unnecessary barriers to

learning.

He/she works through an open online identity and relies on online

social networking to enrich and implement her work, understanding

that collaboration bears a responsibility towards the work of others.

Open design Open content

Open teaching Open assessment

4 components

Second, how to frame openness for educators?

Design Content Teaching Assessment

Individual

designer

New to OER Traditional

teacher

Traditional

evaluator

Collaborative

designer

OER user Engaging

teacher

Innovative

evaluator

Open

designer

OER

specialist

Open

teacher

Open

evaluator

OP

EN

NE

SS

By filling a short questionnaire…

Third, how to build openness capacity among

educators?

…the teacher is “positioned” in the different columns…

…receives tailored guidelines…

…and can go back to check his/her progresses.

A picture of openness capacity in Politecnico di Torino

Design Content Teaching Assessment

Individual designer

59

New to OER

60

Traditional teacher

94

Traditional evaluator

162

Collaborative designer

116

OER user

100

Engaging Teacher

80

Innovative evaluator

7

Open designer

7

OER specialist

22

Open teacher

8

Open evaluator

13

182 replies in total, data available through the OEF platform

Two main findings

Openness has many “entry points”

The relation between

Openness and Collaboration

is clear

JR

C, 2016

We also learnt that:

1. Each teacher is different

2. Institutional context matters

3. Terminology is important

4. Teachers might tend to “over-rate” their openness

Future of the project

1. Foster the use the OEF platform: the more data we get, the more

useful the tool will be for the community

2. Translate the platform into other languages (RU, CH)

3. Next research phase on relation between Openness and

Collaboration, investigating the impact of Open Culture (sharing) on

teaching practices: “If you cannot convince teachers to be open,

teach them how to network!”

A reflection on openness within Digital Literacy

http://seorank.info/viewgallery/26337.htm

JRC, in press

JISC, 2012

Mozilla, 2014

This is an open research project

http://wikieducator.org/Research/open_educators_factory

www.unir.net

http://rd.unir.net/pub/oef

fabio.nascimbeni@unir.net