Pedagogical models -- What does open pedagogy for OERu look like

Pedagogical models -- What does open pedagogy for OERu look like

by Wayne Mackintosh -
Number of replies: 11
The purpose of this thread is to start describing what "open pedagogy" in the OERu logic model means. That is, to start sharing ideas for designing the teaching model for OERu.

During the webinar today, I alluded to the idea that open pedagogies and the open web are the enablers for the OERu. Potentially open pedagogies and a "pedagogy of discovery" could be more scalable and arguably more effective that "conventional" teaching.
  • What pedagogical approaches do you envisage for OERu?
  • What are the digital literacies and enablers?
  • What might these "new digital" pedagogies look like?
  • How do they scale for large numbers of learners?
  • How do the prospective costs of these pedagogies compare to traditional models?
  • What aspects of the traditional teaching approaches are appropriate for the OERu model?
  • Additional ideas and thoughts?
In reply to Wayne Mackintosh

Re: Pedagogical models -- What does open pedagogy for OERu look like

by Jim Taylor -

The content of each of the OERu courses will be based solely on the use of OERs. It is increasingly clear that there is a critical mass of OERs that can support scholarly activities at the foundation level across a wide range of disciplines. Now that online access to such open educational resources for individual study is virtually unlimited, and the scope for social interactivity online is huge, there are many opportunities for pedagogical innovation. Further, if we are not to render a disservice to students, we need to ensure that their “learning journey” embraces digital literacies that will enable them to participate fully in technology-rich work environments.

The pedagogy of discovery has been inspired by a 2009 study managed by the Director of the Caledonian Academy, Professor Allison Littlejohn and her colleagues who developed a comprehensive framework for investigating “Learning Literacies for a Digital Age” (LLiDA) http://www.academy.gcal.ac.uk/llida/LLiDAReportJune2009.pdf . This seminal study delineates an expanded set of literacies, including academic practices (what competent learners do) and related digital practices (what competent digitally enabled learners do). As well as focusing on the significant contribution digital technologies can make to the development by students of such learning literacies as academic practice, metacognition, information literacy, ICT literacy, media literacy, the LLiDA team also included a detailed analysis of digital practices engendering citizenship, employability, communication and collaboration skills. The project highlights the value to students of developing expertise in selecting, critically evaluating and deploying a wide range of digital resources and digital tools to support scholarship in the context of particular disciplines. Students need to learn how to use digital technologies to participate in networks thereby contributing to knowledge acquisition and creation, to present information and evidence digitally in a range of media, to manage digital rights and responsibilities, and to use digital technologies to manage their own continuing professional development. If such learning and digital literacies were systematically embedded into the curriculum and pedagogy of higher education, students would develop the necessary expertise to act as self-directed learners capable of assessing and managing their lifelong learning needs.

The pedagogy of discovery aims to facilitate the development of learning literacies for a digital age by placing the student at the centre of an active learning process based on the widely acknowledged work of Professor Gilly Salmon on e-moderating and the associated five stage model for designing and managing e-tivities. The term ‘e-tivity’ was coined by Professor Salmon. It is a structured, student-centred online task that provides a framework for an e-learning activity. The e-moderator plays an important tutorial role, mentoring, encouraging and guiding student engagement. Because of the international scope and potentially huge scale of participation by large numbers of students, the pedagogy not only needs to be scalable and sustainable, but the content of courses needs to be adaptable to meet the local needs of students covering a range of diverse cultural settings. The pedagogy of discovery has therefore been designed to enable students to select and evaluate relevant OER content of personal interest appropriate to their needs within the intellectual framework provided by the course structure. Further, the recruitment of academic volunteers who can act as local e-moderators and who are able to contribute with cultural sensitivity to meet the needs of individual students is seen as critical to the effectiveness of the pedagogy.

In summary, the pedagogy of discovery provides students with direction, scaffolding and modeling, followed by practice and feedback. Learning activities then move to less structured tasks with opportunities for students to devise strategies, select content from available online resources, and use a variety of digital tools appropriate to the task and context. The pedagogy of discovery is based on well-designed learning activities challenging students to undertake meaningful investigations entailing the discovery, evaluation and discussion of OERs in collaborative networks with staff and students, thereby engendering the digital learning literacies necessary to support self-directed lifelong learning.

In reply to Jim Taylor

Re: Pedagogical models -- What does open pedagogy for OERu look like

by Wayne Mackintosh -

Jim Taylor wrote,

The pedagogy of discovery has therefore been designed to enable students to select and evaluate relevant OER content of personal interest appropriate to their needs within the intellectual framework provided by the course structure.

Hi Jim -- thanks for taking the time to post relevant bits from your thinking on appropriate pedagogies for the OERu model. Its good to know that our thinking is based on the work of prominent elearning scholars like Gilly Salmon and the research at the Australian Digital Futures Institute. The institute is one of the leading knowledge incubators working in the technology mediated learning space.

From a purely business perspective-- is worth noting that the pedagogy of discover is scalable for large numbers of learners and paradoxically relatively cheap to implement from a capital course production point of view.

Another point which strikes me is the integration of digital literates into the curriculum. Would it be possible to incorporate a course credit for digital literacies into the Bachelor of General Studies idea?

Looking forward to learning more about e-moderating, especially how we might be able to bring the training of e-moderators into the Academic Volunteers International concept.

Can't wait to start designing, refining these ideas in the real world context of the OERu.




In reply to Wayne Mackintosh

Re: Pedagogical models -- What does open pedagogy for OERu look like

by Jim Taylor -

Hi Wayne

Here at USQ we are developing a course entitled "e-Literacy for Contemporary Society" which will use the pedagogy of discovery.  The course will effectively embed learning literacies for a digital age in the "substantive content" of the curriculum of the Diploma of Arts, which also acts as a pathway to the Bachelor of General Studies. 

Similarly, we are also developing courses that embed these learning literacies into the pedagogy of the following foundation courses:  "Academic and Professional English" (Faculty of Arts) and "Organisational Behaviour" (Faculty of Business & Law) respectively. 

These three courses will be based solely on the use of OERs and all could provide opportunities for students to gain credit towards a Bachelor of General Studies. 

 

In reply to Jim Taylor

Re: Pedagogical models -- What does open pedagogy for OERu look like

by Wayne Mackintosh -

Jim Taylor wrote,

Here at USQ we are developing a course entitled "e-Literacy for Contemporary Society" which will use the pedagogy of discovery. The course will effectively embed learning literacies for a digital age in the "substantive content" of the curriculum of the Diploma of Arts, which also acts as a pathway to the Bachelor of General Studies.

Hi Jim, I'm very interested in the course "e-Literacy for Contemporary Society"

The fact that the course will be based solely on OERs plus released as OER makes it an ideal vehicle for OERu anchor partners to collaborate, including any volunteers outside the OERu network who has an interest in developing an exemplar learning experience in this area.

I think we're onto a winning model here :-)

Wayne


In reply to Wayne Mackintosh

Re: Pedagogical models -- What does open pedagogy for OERu look like

by Dick Heller -
Although less exciting and less innovative than Jim's e-literacy course, Peoples-uni would like to work towards offering a fully OER based unit on Global Health if this was felt to be relevant. No need to reply, just add it to the list if it might fit. Dick
In reply to Wayne Mackintosh

Re: Pedagogical models -- What does open pedagogy for OERu look like

by Jim Taylor -

Hi Wayne

Here at USQ we are developing a course entitled "e-Literacy for Contemporary Society" which will use the pedagogy of discovery.  The course will effectively embed learning literacies for a digital age in the "substantive content" of the curriculum of the Diploma of Arts, which also acts as a pathway to the Bachelor of General Studies. 

Similarly, we are also developing courses that embed these learning literacies into the pedagogy of the following foundation courses:  "Academic and Professional English" (Faculty of Arts) and "Organisational Behaviour" (Faculty of Business & Law) respectively. 

These three courses will be based solely on the use of OERs and all could provide opportunities for students to gain credit towards a Bachelor of General Studies. 

 

In reply to Wayne Mackintosh

Re: Pedagogical models -- What does open pedagogy for OERu look like

by Maria Droujkova -
Where is the webinar's recording, Wayne?

To answer the questions, two pedagogy design principles that first come to mind:
  • Peer-to-peer learning, including co-production of learning materials
  • Flat and modular curriculum design
In reply to Maria Droujkova

Re: Pedagogical models -- What does open pedagogy for OERu look like

by Wayne Mackintosh -

Maria Droujkova wrote,

Flat and modular curriculum design

Hi Maria - -yes the pedagogy must definitely incorporate peer-to-peer learning.

It scales very well (especially with social media) but more importantly, student to student interactions is proven to contribute more to learning outcomes than lecturer-student interactions based on the outcomes of meta-analysis studies. Student-content interactions being the most significant contributor to increased learning outcomes / performance.

Could you expand a little more on what you mean by flat and modular curriculum design? I'm interested to learn more ....

In reply to Wayne Mackintosh

Re: Pedagogical models -- What does open pedagogy for OERu look like

by Maria Droujkova -
Let us think about curriculum as a network of entities, for example, activities and topics.

The easiest network architecture is the sequential list, where topics must follow a particular order. It counts on everybody doing Topic 24 before going on to Topic 25. This architecture describes the vast majority of existing curricula, but does not match the reality of academic fields or professions. It also does not match how most people learn.

If you looked at topic maps for Khan Academy or Aleks, they are more like branching bushes than narrow towers. There are multiple lists of topics students can choose to follow. Some topics may have prerequisites from several lists. Gamers will recognize this design as "quest chains." Such architectures are more flat, and more modular than plain old lists.

Modularity means that separate parts are somewhat self-contained. It does NOT means lack of connections. Think of a good wiki. Each page is somewhat self-contained and makes sense to someone who arrives at it directly. However, it is also well connected to many other pages. Very few curricula have such architectures, yet.
In reply to Maria Droujkova

Re: Pedagogical models -- What does open pedagogy for OERu look like

by Betty Hurley-Dasgupta -
This discussion is very exciting.

I find discovery learning quite powerful. we offer a general education math course at Empire State called, "Math for the Inquiring Mind." In the course, students are provided tools for quantitative analysis, such as tutorials on using Excel, a problem-solving methodology and journaling techniques. They begin with assigned open-ended problems and move toward identifying and working toward solutions of problems they generate.

We are experimenting with a variety of peer-to-peer models and plan to do more in this area.

And, I totally agree with Maria's proposed model for curriculum. Her example reminds me of what Pearltrees helps one do- much less linear and much more learner centered. Over teh coming eyar, I'd love to find some math faculty to develop such a model for introductory-level mathematics.