Opening Educational Practices in Scotland (OEPS) is a three-year cross-sector project in Scotland that aims to enhance open education practices. It takes an approach focused on educational practice and participation rather than just technical solutions. Through partnerships with over 60 organizations, OEPS conducts action research to identify and share best practices in developing open educational resources. One partner developed open online courses on Parkinson's disease for caregivers. The project emphasizes the importance of pedagogy over technology and expanding definitions of open educational practices to be more inclusive.

1. Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Blurring Boundaries through Opening
up Educational Practice: Exploring
Open Educational Resources in
Partnership
Pete Cannell: pete.cannell@open.ac.uk
Ronald Macintyre: ronald.macintyre@open.ac.uk

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
About OEPS
Opening Educational Practices in Scotland is a three-year cross-
sector project that facilitates best practice in Scottish open
education. We aim to enhance Scotland’s reputation and
capacity for developing publicly available and licenced online
materials, supported by high quality pedagogy and learning
technology.
Distinctive focus on social justice and widening participation.
Project ends 31st
July 2017.

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Open Practice - OEP
• The early impetus of UK OER movement provided a
necessary focus on enabling things to be more open through
the development of platforms and standards.
• Its legacy has been a tendency to treat the issue of
openness as a technical problem with technical solutions.
• OEPS has approached it as a complex adaptive problem,
concerned with educational practice and what openness
enables (Macintyre 2016a).

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Use practices, pedagogy, partners
CC0 Public Domain
https://pixabay.com/en/climate-cloud-
communications-data-2099146/
Multi-stranded action research
project – more than 60 partners
Each partner strand involved the
typical action research cycle of
planning, acting, observing and
reflecting
Identifying good practice and share
new understanding across the
strands of the project

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Tackling barriers
www.open.edu/openlearncreate/
Focus on practice and participation has
meant addressing use and users.
Influenced by participatory design
approaches, we view openness, not
simply as a matter of releasing content
“into the world”, but as a two way
process (Macintyre 2016b).
With partners we have been able to
reach and understand those distanced
from education (Cannell and Macintyre
2017) and co-design appropriate
content and practice .

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Parkinson’s UK – case study
http://www.open.edu/openlearncreate/
course/view.php?id=2161
First course designed as an
introduction for residential
care staff with no previous
HE experience
Two further courses in production – specialist material –
professional development for health professionals – source
materials for universities who wish to adopt or adapt

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
Conclusions
Value of partnership – crossing boundaries – blurring
boundaries
Primacy of pedagogy – technology as a means of exchange
Expanding definitions of OEP to include use practice and social
context
What open enables – building on tried and tested material –
combining large scale with contextualisation

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Opening Educational Practices in Scotland
References
•Cannell, P. (2016) Lifelong learning and partnerships: rethinking the boundaries of the
university in the digital age, Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning, 18, 1: 61-73
•Cannell P. Macintyre R. (2017) Revisiting Barriers to Widening Participation, Widening
Participation and Lifelong Learning, 19, 1: in press
•Lane, A., and Van Dorp, K. J. (2011) Open educational resources and widening
participation in higher education: Innovations and lessons from open universities. In:
EDULEARN11, the 3rd annual International Conference on Education and New Learning
Technologies, 4th
-5th
of July 2011, Barcelona. http://oro.open.ac.uk/29201/
•Macintyre, R. (2016a). Open Education as Disruption: Lessons for Open and Distance
Learning from Open Educational Practice. In: EDEN 25: Re-imagining Learning
Environments, 14th-17th of June, Budapest, http://oro.open.ac.uk/46658/
•Macintyre, R. (2016b). Approaching Participatory Design in "Citizen Science". In: Design
for Learning: 5th International Conference designing new learning ecologies, 18th -20th of
May, Copenhagen, http://oro.open.ac.uk/46337/

9. Email:
OEPScotland@open.ac.uk
Social media:
@OEPScotland
Courses on OpenLearn Create
www.open.edu/openlearncreate/
Blog and project progress:
www.oepscotland.org

10. Email:
OEPScotland@open.ac.uk
Social media:
@OEPScotland
Courses on OpenLearn Create
www.open.edu/openlearncreate/
Blog and project progress:
www.oepscotland.org