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The aim of this report is to explore how stronger relationships between higher education and business can address barriers to mainstream adoption and development of innovative and sustainable models and policies for Open Educational Practices (OEP). In this report, we explore how educational institutions and business interests can work together to better leverage the potential of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the service of OEPs. The report provides an overview of existing literature and research in the field of OER and presents a series of business models and approaches to supporting the development of OER, as well as their policies and practices. The issue of sustainability and longevity of OER materials, content and communities is discussed and three case studies are presented to illustrate different business models for supporting capability development, knowledge exchange and Communities of Practice.

This case study describes the experiences of the #Openteach project team in developing a flexible and evidence-based approach to support professional learning for those who teach online. The project targeted online educators in particular. The rationale for this was Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is recognised as crucial to the upskilling of educators to enhance the student learning experience. However, teaching online requires different pedagogical approaches and staff require specific CPD opportunities relating to online learning in order to teach effectively in that context. The #Openteach project sought to address this gap by creating a flexible, online, open access course about teaching online that was grounded in evidence-based practice. The project had a number of phases, which included a needs analysis of online students and educators about effective online teaching, the publication of a literature review entitled Teaching Online is Different, and a pilot evaluation report. The #Openteach open course ran in March 2020 and focused on five key aspects of teaching online: social presence; facilitating discussion; collaboration online; live online teaching; and supporting online students. Following the first run, an evaluation study was conducted to explore and understand participants' learning experiences of the course. Our findings indicate that professional learning about online teaching should be situated online, and the experience of being an online student is invaluable for online educators as it facilitates empathy with students learning in online contexts. Time management and workload are major challenges for educators, therefore professional learning should allow for flexible engagement. Building confidence and reducing the fear of online teaching is an important aspect of professional learning related to online education. Developing understanding and knowledge of online pedagogy is an important element of professional learning about teaching online. Finally, confidence and competence with the tools and technologies for teaching online are important threshold digital competencies for online educators. The #Openteach project has had a significant impact on the professional learning of educators at a number of levels: at a local university level, at a national level; and at an international level.

Scholarly work in the area of learning technology has a somewhat dubious reputation. The immature sibling of educational research, the field has been critiqued for lack of criticality (Selwyn, 2015). Pockets of stand-alone research embedded within specific contexts (Selwyn, 2012) can result in findings that are neither transferable nor generalisable (Ashwin, 2009). Research in this area often retains a pragmatic focus: the application of technology to solve a ‘problem’, but the underpinning positivistic paradigms are more often assumed, than made explicit and technological determinism can creep into the language (Bayne, 2015).This problem is compounded by the natural multi-disciplinary backgrounds of researchers and authors.\ud \ud As the education sector turns its scholarly eye upon learning technology and the vast knowledge gained during the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a need for a plurality of voices and experiences to be explored through research and publication. However, there are pitfalls in ignoring the preceding decades of knowledge already created in this area, and newer researchers in the field may stumble unaware through submission and review processes without understanding why they are not meeting the requirements of a journal for publication.\ud \ud This workshop is designed for anyone interested in learning about scholarship and publishing in the area of learning technology, whether you are new to research, publication and/or learning technology. We aim to demystify the process of publication in this field and give you advice on what we, as editors and reviewers, are looking for in submissions to the peer reviewed, open access journal Research in Learning Technology. We will examine this field of research and what makes it distinct from other areas, and give you guidance on the practical first steps to take and how to develop your voice as an author. Participants will work collaboratively to co-create the ‘bones’ of a paper, gaining experience in working in a cross-disciplinary group to build an understanding through dialogue of what a successful submission to a publication could look like.\ud \ud ASHWIN, P., 2009. Relations between theory and data in research in higher education Relations between theory and data in research in higher education [presentation]. Education Research Seminar, 7.\ud \ud BAYNE, S., 2015. What’s the matter with ‘technology-enhanced learning’? Learning, Media and Technology, 40(1), pp. 5–20 DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2014.915851.\ud \ud SELWYN, N., 2012. Ten suggestions for improving academic research in education and technology. Learning, Media and Technology, 37(3), pp. 213–219 DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2012.680213.\ud \ud SELWYN, N., 2015. Minding our language: why education and technology is full of bullshit…and what might be done about it. ‘Digital Innovation, Creativity & Knowledge’ Qatar, Melbourne.

In summary, this paper challenges the sector to go beyond altruism and endorses the view that “...policy will be the lever by which open practice can become sustainable and mainstream” (Weller, 2014, p.201). The ENCORE+ project seeks to give “voice” to more stakeholders to support the development of OER institutional strategies in both academia and business contexts in order to promote their mainstreaming and a strong European OER ecosystem.

his paper reports on the activities of a team in Dublin City University (DCU), composed of academic staff and library staff, who engaged in a collaborative project, Go Open, in 2020 and 2021 that encourages members of the DCU community to engage in open educational practices. The academic staff team members, from DCU’s Open Education Unit, have experience in providing online, flexible, open education/access programmes that include many examples of open educational practice, while the library staff have experience in advocating for engagement in open educational practice and open scholarship/science. The project goals were: to produce user-friendly resources that would give an introduction to open education generally and more specifically key types of open educational practice; to provide concrete examples of open educational practice to contextualise the educational problems for which such practices can provide a solution; and provide links to other sources of information on open education such as key websites and thought leaders so that those whose interest in open education is sparked by the resources are facilitated in taking their next step. These project goals align with the first action area of the UNESCO OER recommendation, that of building capacity of stakeholders to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OER. The Go Open project developed both a guide, ‘Go Open: A beginners guide to open education’, and a LibGuide (https://dcu.libguides.com/GoOpen), both of which were launched at an event in April 2021 as part of the team’s ongoing project output dissemination and advocacy for open education practice. In the two weeks after the launch event the guide had 387 views and 178 downloads, while the libguide had 781 views. The Go Open Project was funded by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and DCU’s Teaching Enhancement Unit through the SATLE 19 fund.

In this book we aim to share the knowledge, resources and research generated by the #Openteach project. The aim of the project was to create an evidence-based and open professional learning approach to support educators to teach online. Teaching online is different, in this book we explore this difference with the aim of supporting educators to develop their online teaching practice and knowledge of online pedagogy. The Covid-19 Pandemic has been a game changer for online education, impacting 1.5 billion students worldwide and thrusting the majority of schooling and higher education online (Bozkurt and et al. 2020). Additionally, the pandemic has thrust most higher education staff into teaching online, the majority without previous experience of this mode of education (Bozkart et. al., 2020; Farrell, 2020) However, teaching online requires different pedagogical approaches to traditional lecturing, therefore institutions need to support educators transitioning into online teaching to ensure quality (Gurley, 2019). Effective online teaching supports student engagement and success, this is key as online students are more vulnerable to attrition (Coker, 2018; Woodley & Simpson 2014). This book aims to address this need for professional learning opportunities for educators to upskill in the area of online teaching practice and pedagogy. The intended audience for the book is any educator interested in learning more about effective practice for teaching online and online pedagogy.

In this short guide, we aim to give you a beginners guide to the area of open education, so that you can engage with open education practices in your teaching, research and support activities and to Go Open!

The course on open education proposed here comprises 8 modules based on 8 competences. For each competence we have defined learning outcomes. The modules are built around the practices identified and described in IO1. In each module 3 practices are used to engage the trainees. The practices themselves are transformed into learning activities, allowing the trainees to actively interact with the learning activities.

The aim of this evaluation report is to evaluate the pilot run of the #Openteach course in order to explore, understand and evaluate its impact on the professional learning experiences of the participants and to inform the iterative design process.

A unique characteristic of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it has swept over the entire globe more or less at the same time. Millions of students and teachers have experienced a push to online learning in an attempt to slow down the spreading of the virus. Education technology providers seem to have benefitted from this sudden turn of events: the Internet is suddenly filled with providers offering their services and products as a solution to the situation (Teräs, Suoranta, Teräs & Curcher, forthcoming). The global trends of digitalization and datafication of education seem to have taken a leap forward, as the critical voices are being smothered by the necessity of the situation. Education technology now looks like a saviour of the entire education sector. However, the situation is far more complex, and the impact of the push to online is vastly different in different contexts. In this reflective piece, academics from five countries; Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Ireland, and Finland share their experience with the “pivot online” as the situation is still ongoing. The reflections reveal a complex set of challenges, consisting on one hand of questions of access, digital divide and equity, and on the other hand on pedagogy, academic practice and policy. In all five countries, the situation is likely to have a lasting impact on higher education. While we welcome this unique opportunity to develop educational policy and practice, we worry that the urgency of the situation may lead to hasty, techno-deterministic “panic mode” solutions (see also Teräs, Suoranta, Teräs & Curcher, forthcoming). This article is an attempt to look at the “pivot online” and the digitalization of education from a more critical and contextual perspective than the grand narrative of the prevailing “ed-tech speak” that has taken a boost from the COVID-19 situation.

How the ABC Learning Design Framework was used to design the #OpenTeach Professional Development course for Open Online Educators

This mixed-methods study reports on a continuing professional development intervention (CPD), called #OpenTeach, designed to upskill part-team online teachers. CPD is recognised as crucial to the upskilling of educators to enhance the student learning experience. However, an important gap exists in the provision of CPD for part-time and online teachers who rarely have the opportunity to avail of campus-based resources (Beaton & Gilbert, 2013). To address this gap we need to better harness the potential of more flexible models of online education. Geographically dispersed online teachers require opportunities to engage with new learning designs, new digital competencies and new ways of embedding digital technology in teaching, learning and assessment. Accordingly, the #OpenTeach intervention addresses this challenge through a highly targeted CPD programme for part-time online teachers. The core of the initiative involves the development a short open online course on online teaching best practice. This course will develop the digital and pedagogical competencies of the 90 DCU Connected online teachers locally and will be open to online educators globally. The #OpenTeach: Professional Development for Open Online Educators project is funded by the Irish National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

This literature report is a phase one output from the #Openteach: Professional Development for Open Online Educators project, which is funded by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. The #Openteach project aims to generate new knowledge about effective online teaching practice. It aims to harness this knowledge to support the professional learning of online teachers and to more effectively support online student learning experiences. This report was developed to help lay a foundation for the project through a critical analysis of relevant literature.

This work arises from the #Openteach: Professional Development for Open Online Educators project, which is funded by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. The #Openteach project team are based in the Open Education Unit (OEU) at Dublin City University (DCU). Formally known as the National Distance Education Centre and subsequently Oscail, the OEU is a provider of online, off-campus programmes through the DCU Connected platform. Throughout the years the mode of delivery moved gradually from that of a traditional distance education provider to incorporate more elements of online learning. A significant step in this process came in 2011, with the introduction of synchronous live online tutorials and the electronic delivery of modules in a virtual learning environment (Delaney & Farren, 2016; Farrell & Seery, 2019). Following an open and online learning philosophy, the OEU aims to afford educational opportunities to students who have not managed to access more traditional entry routes into higher education. The main aim of the #Openteach project is to produce, and evaluate, evidence-based open professional development for part-time online educators. In an earlier phase of the project a synthesis of the relevant literature was completed in order to identify online educator roles and the associated competencies for effective online teaching. Concurrently, we conducted a needs analysis of the target population, online students and their online educators based in the OEU. This report contains the outcomes of this needs analysis and will be used, along with the literature synthesis, to guide the development of the professional development resources and course to be implemented in later stages of the project.

This paper reports on a qualitative study of the transition experiences of refugees studying through open and online higher education. Online, open education programmes have considerable potential to provide flexible access to education for refugees, who are not well represented within higher education. As part of a wider University of Sanctuary initiative, interview data from six Ireland-based refugees was analysed using a data-led, qualitative methodological framework grounded in discursive psychology. Findings indicate that participants’ transition narratives are typical in many ways as they form student identities while managing their existing identities and begin to feel, or not, that they belong. Participants constructed a stark divide between two duelling identities, between their identity as a refugee and their new identity as an online learner. Identification with the university was emphasised in contrast to disidentification with the ‘asylum world’. These findings indicate that a strategically connected approach to supporting refugees transition into higher education can impact positively on these students.

This qualitative study reports on an on-entry induction and socialisation intervention designed to support and retain students transitioning to higher education at an Irish private higher education institution. Following the intervention, a qualitative study was conducted with the aim of exploring new undergraduate student experiences of transitioning to higher education and their experiences of participating in the induction by design. Six themes emerged during the analytical process: academic experiences, expectations of higher education, the impact of college on life, induction by design, socialisation and the transition from school to college. Findings indicate that designed induction interventions which focus on the on-entry phase of the study lifecycle can have a positive impact on new higher education students.

Dublin City University (DCU) was granted the status of “University of Sanctuary” in December 2016. Fifteen scholarships were granted to refugees and asylum seekers; one provided by each of the five DCU faculties and the remaining ten provided by DCU’s online education platform, DCU Connected. This paper will report on the journey undertaken by a team within DCU’s National Institute for Digital Learning as they put in place the framework needed to support these scholars and the related research study which explores the nature of the transition experiences of University of Sanctuary Scholars to online distance learning. A longitudinal qualitative study is designed to seek a greater understanding of these learners’ experiences in the early stages of the study lifecycle, and of how their transition into higher education can be facilitated to enhance student success. The data collection technique is semi-structured online interviews conducted annually, and the first round of interviews has recently been conducted. The data-led analytical approach for this study is Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six phases of thematic analysis. The next phase of the research project involves the analysis of the first phase of interview data and the generation of preliminary findings.

This practice report discusses the development of the Head Start Online MOOC. This initiative targeted flexible learners, defined as adults engaged in part-time or online distance learning, during the initial stages of the study life-cycle. Drawing on the literature, the experiences of major international Online and Distance Learning (ODL) providers, and a set of overarching design principles, the MOOC (Massive open online course) was developed with a suite of digital readiness tools at its heart. These tools were combined with other supporting materials in order to deliver a comprehensive pre-entry socialisation course. A small pilot of Head Start Online ran over five weeks with 150 people enrolled and 50 going on to receive a certificate of completion. The feedback received, albeit limited by the numbers of respondents, indicates that a course that strategically uses digital readiness tools can have a positive impact on new and prospective flexible learners.