Previous research in the Irish higher education context has shown that many educators believe in the value of sharing, mainly driven by convictions around collegiality and the facilitation of students’ learning, yet this often occurs privately only, between colleagues. The open educators cited in this section — as well as the many signatories of the Cape Town Open Education Declaration (CC BY) — advocate the potential of OER and OEP to empower students their learning and creating, and empower educators to benefit and learn from the ideas of their colleagues.
As described earlier, Nascimbeni and Burgos (2016) include the open sharing of learning designs as one of the key dimensions of the definition of the open educator. In this line, Laurillard’s (2012) approach to learning design is useful and can be considered an example of an open pedagogic model. Laurillard advocates a shift from the individual design of learning to the co-design of learning where teachers build ‘pedagogical patterns’ as part of an innovative, professional learning community, as follows:
- build on the designs of others
- articulate their pedagogy
- adopt, adapt, test and improve learning designs
- co-create and share learning designs
Activity:
Projects such as Sharing Open Educational Resources using Technology encourage educators to open up about their educational practices in ways that can inspire others. Explore the videos shared by this project and reflect on your own practice. Are there any of your own educational practices that you would consider sharing? Comment on Twitter if you wish (hashtag #NFopen).