OEGlobal 2024

Open Educational Resources (OER) have emerged as a promising strategy for addressing several critical challenges facing higher education today—completion rates, student learning, and affordability—and this proposed presentation explores the potential of OER as a high-impact practice (HIP). While OER advocates have long touted the cost-saving and accessibility benefits of OER, empirical evidence supporting the impact on student success metrics is limited and conflicted.

Currently, some evidence suggests that underserved populations in higher education do benefit from the use of OER (Colvard et al., 2018); however, while research on OER’s impact on student success (e.g., grades, GPA, course completion) in general exists, the results have only definitively shown that OER do not adversely affect students, as they perform the same or better when OER are implemented. These limitations in existing research complicate OER advocacy efforts, as faculty and administrators are hesitant to adopt practices and fund initiatives without compelling support.

In response, a team of AAC&U researchers is engaged in a large-scale study, funded by the Hewlett Foundation, to expand the OER conversation on student success. We are investigating the impact of OER on measures of student success at 17 U.S.-based institutions representing all six primary higher education institution categories officially recognized in the United States. The participating institutions enroll an array of students reflective of a diverse nation and include HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), Tribal Colleges and Universities, and HSIs (Hispanic-Serving Institutions). A key aim of this work is to frame and disseminate a robust, data- and assessment-based argument for OER as a HIP. Through the selection of 17 diverse institutions representative of the U.S. higher-education landscape, we are framing a broad-sweeping argument that is not only representative of our students but also closely examines and deepens the conversation around OER significantly benefiting historically underserved students, as befits any practice deemed “high-impact.”

In addition to examining student success metrics, we also aim to operationalize and assess the notion of “high-quality” OER implementation within courses by delving into educator and institutional practices that lead to the most positive impact on students. We aspire to create a framework for assessing OER practices that instructors can use to evaluate and improve their own OER implementation practices. Through this work, we aim to construct a compelling case that OER are, indeed, a high-impact practice.

Included in [Session 2E]: OER in Higher Education

References
Colvard, N. B., Watson, C. E., & Park, H. (2018). The impact of open educational resources on various student success metrics. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 30(2), 262-276.

Author Keywords
Student Success, High-Impact Practices, OER Implementation

As human beings, we have always had a shared destiny with technology, yet now and then, a technology emerges that profoundly alters (and shapes) the ways we live, work, and relate with one another. GenAI is one such example. The recent surge in scale, complexity, and prevalence of this technological system is unprecedented, blurring the lines between physical, biological, and digital realms.

Amidst this dynamic landscape of human-technological encounters, the FutureFocus GenAI Program is a response to the need to slow down and think deeply about the kinds of societies and individuals we are becoming, particularly in the world of work. This presentation unpacks how Deakin University's FutureFocus GenAI Program is designed to navigate the speed and velocity of this evolving terrain, especially the demand for novel collaborations between academia and industry.

Functioning as an instantiation of Open Educational Practice, this program follows a multidisciplinary community of inquiry comprising academics and professionals. These collaborations operate in the liminal space between higher education and industry by adopting a practice-led and process-oriented approach. A deeply reflexive positioning that aims to produce recommendations and provide evidence-based insights crucial for shaping the future education and training of professionals across a variety of fields. This is a speculative project that privileges a multidimensional view of the rapid proliferation of GenAI tools, techniques, and interactions to inform the design of authentic educational experiences for the graduates of today, tomorrow and the future.



Included in [Session 2E]: OER in Higher Education

Author Keywords
• Artificial Intelligence, • Open educational practices, • Open education strategy, • Open practitioners

Access to education and educational materials is a global issue. Intellectual property (IP) law and policy govern the way educational materials can be accessed and used. The restrictions that are imposed by strong IP governance can play a ‘critical role’ in the way humans are afforded opportunities to live full lives. According to human development theory, removing barriers that impose restrictions on a person’s freedom can assist in human development and growth.

There is a clear and deep connection between a person’s freedom and the possibility of social development— an individual’s ability to progress and achieve is significantly influenced by the opportunities and access they have to certain freedoms such as financial stability, political liberty, social choice, basic education, access to medicine, and support and encouragement for their development. If individuals are provided ‘adequate social opportunities’, such as the ability to access and engage with education and educational materials, they ‘…can effectively shape their own destiny and help each other’.

By attempting to address some of the problems associated with access to educational materials, aspects of the educational experience may be improved for those in higher education. By drawing on human development theory to better understand the governance of knowledge within the context of higher education, I explore the social problems encountered within publishing, and in Open Education Resources (OER). Specifically, the social dilemmas relating to access, flow of information, collective action, and the intersection of formal IP laws and the non-formal rules and practices of the communities who create, disseminate, and consume the knowledge resources. Lastly, I consider how open publishing in higher education provides an avenue to highlight significant issues such as those contained in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The use of open publishing in education, including the publishing of open textbooks, has the potential to help us develop more equity in higher education by providing avenues for individuals to access information and knowledge without the strict IP governance that is associated with traditional educational materials. Such a holistic approach to education publishing aligns with many of the goals of human development as it supports freedom and provides greater social opportunities for individuals to flourish.

In the absence of change to the IP framework, open publishing provides an alternative which has the tools and capacities to support the goals of human development. A more grounded, holistic approach to publishing for education offers a framework to better support and consider social justice issues relating to access and the use of IP such as diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as avenues to highlight issues related to sustainable development.



Included in [Session 2E]: OER in Higher Education

References
Julia Janewa OseiTutu, ‘Human Development as a Core Objective of Global Intellectual Property’ (2016) 105(1) Kentucky Law Journal 1, 1;

Madhavi Sunder, From Goods to a Good Life: Intellectual Property and Global Justice (Yale University Press, 2012);

Madhavi Sunder, ‘IP3’ (2006) 59(2) Stanford Law Review 257;

Ruth L Okediji, ‘Reframing International Copyright Limitations and Exceptions as Development Policy’ in Ruth L Okediji (ed), Copyright Law in an Age of Limitations and Exceptions (Cambridge University Press, 2017) 429;

Martha C Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities The Human Development Approach (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011);

Margaret Chon, ‘Intellectual Property and the Development Divide’ (2006) 27(6) Cardonzo Law Review 2821;

Amartya Sen, ‘Capability and Well-Being’ in Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (eds), The Quality of Life (Oxford University Press, 1993) 30, 33.

Author Keywords
Open Education, Open Publishing, Sustainable Development Goals, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion

The rise of generative AI has called into question many cornerstones of teaching, including the need for textbooks. Students increasingly use AI tools to efficiently find and collate information in lieu of both traditional and open textbooks. One argument for responding to this has been to embed AI within open educational resources (OER) or train AI using OER (Bozkurt, 2023).

Our presentation, by contrast, presents evidence of major advantages that OER have over both traditional textbooks and AI-centric retrieval and collation of information. This is based on our experiences of generating Third Spaces (Whitchurch, 2012) to co-create open textbooks through collaborative projects between STEM academics, the La Trobe eBureau (open education program), and more recently students themselves.

Our open pedagogy journey led us from OER development towards open educational practices (OEP) that cultivate authentic assessment, peer-assisted learning, and enhanced teacher presence. We started by developing two open textbooks targeted at early undergraduate students of biology and/or biomedical science:
• Foundations of Biomedical Science: Quantitative Literacy
• Threshold Concepts in Biochemistry

The initial aim of these resources was to improve quantitative literacy and focus on key threshold concepts in biochemistry to support La Trobe students. A key challenge was navigating the tension between a resource useful for a broad audience but also serving specific cohort needs. However, in doing so we have surpassed our initial focus by enabling new practices that are uniquely possible through OER and have implications for the future design of OEP and open pedagogy.

It is widely understood that engagement in the learning experience requires more than just acquisition of new knowledge, full engagement is facilitated by connection with both peers and instructors (Stone and Springer, 2019). This teacher presence supports student engagement, increased retention, and learning outcomes using content developed by their face-to-face instructors and in which the instructor themselves is present (Mandernach et al., 2018). The modular nature of our texts coupled with permissive open licensing allows local personalisation and reuse to expand this teacher presence.

We will demonstrate how OER include both educators and learners as active agents, making open everyone’s business. A large body of work emphasises the importance of peer assisted learning in higher education, particularly for learning key skills (Stigmar et al. 2016). Embedding student created content in our open educational text has improved engagement and the quality of work while decoupling accreditation from being the sole motivating factor and also allowing us to showcase students as role models.

Finally, we have extended the content and increased its relevance to students by building in aspects of professional identity and representation which is known to influence retention and influences career trajectories (Huffmyer et al., 2022). To this end we have embedded videos of professionals representing a range of career aspirations of students demonstrating how the content is relevant to their work and offering authentic advice to study. We were also able to specifically showcase Australian and New Zealand contributions as well as the contribution of women to modern biology.

Included in [Session 2E]: OER in Higher Education

References
Bozkurt, A. (2023) ‘Generative AI, Synthetic Contents, Open Educational Resources (OER), and Open Educational Practices (OEP): A New Front in the Openness Landscape’, Open Praxis, 15(3), p. 178–184. Available at: https://doi.org/10.55982/openpraxis.15.3.579.

Huffmyer, A. S., O'Neill, T., & Lemus, J. D. (2022). Evidence for Professional Conceptualization in Science as an Important Component of Science Identity. CBE life sciences education, 21(4), ar76. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.20-12-0280

Mandernach, B. J., Robertson, S. N., & Steele, J. P. (2018). Beyond Content: The Value of Instructor-Student Connections in the Online Classroom. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 18(4). https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v18i4.23430

Stigmar, M. (2016). Peer-to-peer Teaching in Higher Education: A Critical Literature Review. Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 24(2), 124–136. https://doi.org/10.1080/13611267.2016.1178963

Stone, C., & Springer, M. (2019). Interactivity, connectedness and 'teacher-presence': Engaging and retaining students online. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 59(2), 146–169.

Whitchurch, C. (2012). Reconstructing Identities in Higher Education: The rise of 'Third Space' professionals (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203098301

Author Keywords
open textbooks, open educational practices, open practitioner development, open pedagogy, STEM, sciences, biochemistry, biology, teacher presence, students as authors, authentic assessment