Post #12 Reflection: Open Educational Practices

I am a participant in a research program for a dissertation on OER and OEP. I have to respond in writing to three sets of questions and will be interviewed next Friday by the researcher. I am going to share some of my reflections in answer to the questions here.  The question had to do with 

I wanted to get a little more insight in OEP; I had a sense of its meaning but resorted to Wikipedia, and the article cites Catherine Cronin, Iain McClaren, and others from the scholarly literature:  “OEP is a broad concept which can be characterised by a range of collaborative pedagogical practices that include the use, reuse, and creation of OER and that often employ social and participatory technologies for interaction, peer-learning, knowledge creation and sharing, empowerment of learners, and open sharing of teaching practices.” That’s what I thought, but it did give me a basis.

So to answer the question, in this particular class, I would say I am empowering learners by creating and using OERs (in the sense only that I am not using a standard publisher’s textbook) but I do not have the students engaging in knowledge creation in the sense that they are not “publishing” (putting in public places) any materials for others to use or doing undergraduate research, or anything like that.  All the work they are doing is very egocentric, really, that is, only for private consumption.

Nor am I, except to the extent I have shared some materials with colleagues if they ask. My use of OEP and OER in this particular class is only for these students.

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