1. Open Educational Practices
#OEP
Catherine Cronin
#OpenMed webinar  5th December 2017
Image: Joshua Tree National Park (Flickr, public domain)

2. Catherine Cronin
@catherinecronin  catherinecronin.net
CELT, National University of Ireland, Galway

3. Le spectre de la rose Jerome Robbins Dance Division
from the New York Public Library (public domain)
To hope is to give
yourself to the future,
and that commitment
to the future
makes the present
inhabitable.
Rebecca Solnit (2004)
Hope in the Dark
“

4. networked
educators
networked
students
Physical
Spaces
Bounded
Online
Spaces
Open
Online
Spaces
Image: CC BY-SA 2.0 Catherine Cronin, built on Networked Teacher image CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Alec Couros
higher education

5. I began with a question:
In academic settings in which the use of OEP is
not required, requested, expected, or
specifically supported, why do some educators,
and not others, choose to use OEP?
(...and then what happens?)

6. Openness and praxis:
Exploring the use of
open educational practices (OEP)
in higher education
4 years later,
completing my PhD research

7. • Open educational practices (OEP)
(Beetham et al., 2012; Ehlers, 2011; Geser, 2007; Hodgkinson-Williams, 2014 )
• Open teaching
(Couros, 2010; Couros & Hildebrandt, 2016)
• Open pedagogy
(DeRosa & Robison, 2017; Hegarty, 2015; Weller, 2014)
• Critical (digital) pedagogy
(Farrow, 2016; Rosen & Smale, 2015; Stommel, 2014)
• Open scholarship
(Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2012b; Weller, 2011)
• Networked participatory scholarship
(Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2012a; Stewart, 2015)
literature: OEP and related concepts

8. Open Educational Practices (OEP)
Using/reusing/
creating
OER
Collaborative, learner-
centred practices employing
social & participatory
technologies for interaction,
peer-learning, knowledge
creation & sharing, and
empowerment of learners
and also: open learning, open publishing, use of open tools
(Beetham et al., 2012; Czerniewicz et al., 2016; Ehlers, 2011; Geser, 2007; Hodgkinson-Williams, 2014)
OER
open pedagogy

9. An important question becomes not simply whether
education is more or less open, but what forms of
openness are worthwhile and for whom;
openness alone is not an educational virtue.
Richard Edwards (2015)
“
critical approaches to openness
A roaming autodidact is a self-motivated, able learner that is
simultaneously embedded in technocratic futures and
disembedded from place, cultural, history, and markets...
As a result of designing for the roaming autodidact, we end up
with a platform that understands learners as white and male,
measuring learners’ task efficiencies against an unarticulated
norm of western male whiteness.
“
Tressie McMillan Cottom (2015)

10. RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
1. In what ways do academic staff use OEP for teaching?
2. Why do/don’t academic staff use OEP for teaching?
3. What practices, values and/or strategies are shared by open
educators, if any?
RESEARCH SETTING:
One higher education institution in Ireland, without OER/OEP policy.
RESEARCH APPROACH:
Interpretivist, critical, empirical
METHODOLOGY/METHODS:
Constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014); semi-structured
interviews with 19 members of academic staff across multiple
disciplines & all ranges of practice – plus a broader survey.
research study

11. Image: CC0 photo by Saksham Gangwar

12. Institutional, role-based identity DIGITAL IDENTITY Open, networked, ‘Resident’
identity
Not using social media, or
personal use only
DIGITAL NETWORKING Using social media personally
& professionally
Using VLE & email only DIGITAL TOOLS FOR
TEACHING
Using VLE & email
as well as open tools & social
media
Not intentionally using OER OER Intentionally using OER
less open more open
i) digital practices

13. Institutional, role-based identity DIGITAL IDENTITY Open, networked, ‘Resident’
identity
Not using social media, or
personal use only
DIGITAL NETWORKING Using social media personally
& professionally
Using VLE & email only DIGITAL TOOLS FOR
TEACHING
Using VLE & email
as well as open tools & social
media
Not intentionally using OER OER Intentionally using OER
less open more open
i) digital practices
Using OEP

14. ii) categories related to OEP
Strong attachment to privacy,
focus on risks
PRIVACY Balancing privacy & openness,
valuing both
Using ‘digital natives’ discourse DIGITAL LITERACIES Developing digital literacies
(self & students)
Valuing knowledge/information
transfer
PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING
& LEARNING
Valuing social learning
Accepting traditional teaching
role expectations
CONCEPTION OF
SELF AS TEACHER
Challenging traditional
teaching role expectations
less open more open

15. ii) categories related to OEP
Strong attachment to privacy,
focus on risks
PRIVACY Balancing privacy & openness,
valuing both
Using ‘digital natives’ discourse DIGITAL LITERACIES Developing digital literacies
(self & students)
Valuing knowledge/information
transfer
PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING
& LEARNING
Valuing social learning
Accepting traditional teaching
role expectations
CONCEPTION OF
SELF AS TEACHER
Challenging traditional
teaching role expectations
less open more open
Dimensions shared
by open educators
(i.e. those using OEP)

16. Balancing
privacy and openness
Developing
digital literacies
Valuing
social learning
Challenging traditional
teaching role expectations
inner circle
(2 dimensions)
Networked
Individuals
both circles
(4 dimensions)
Networked
Educators
4 dimensions shared by open educators

17. Balancing privacy & openness
Image: CC BY 2.0 woodleywonderworks

18. Balancing privacy and openness
will I share openly?
whom will I share with? (context collapse)
who will I share as? (digital identity)
will I share this?
MACRO
MESO
MICRO
NANO

19. Practicing openness is:
 complex
 personal
 contextual
 continually negotiated

20. Open Educational Practices (OEP)
Using/reusing/
creating
OER
Collaborative, learner-
centred practices employing
social & participatory
technologies for interaction,
peer-learning, knowledge
creation & sharing, and
empowerment of learners
OER
open pedagogywell-established link

21. Open Educational Practices (OEP)
Using/reusing/
creating
OER
Collaborative, learner-
centred practices employing
social & participatory
technologies for interaction,
peer-learning, knowledge
creation & sharing, and
empowerment of learners
OER
open pedagogy
emerging in situated
studies of OER/OEP
well-established link
this study: Cronin, 2017
see also Beetham et al., 2012;
Czerniewicz et al., 2016, 2017

22. We must rebuild institutions that value humans’
minds and lives and integrity and safety.
Audrey Watters (2017)
“
Image: CC BY-NC 2.0 carnagenyc

23. Thank You!
Catherine Cronin
@catherinecronin
catherinecronin.net
Le spectre de la rose Jerome Robbins Dance Division
from the New York Public Library (public domain)

24. All of the references cites in this presentation,
and a fuller discussion of the research findings
can be found in the following paper:
Cronin, C. (2017). Openness and praxis:
Exploring the use of open educational practices in higher education.
The International Review of Research in Open & Distributed Learning, 18(5).