Search

This paper builds on student-instructor partnerships by describing how an instructor, students, program coordinator, and members of a research team were involved in the co-design of an open educational resource in a graduate program in education. A four-part open learning design framework was used to guide the course design: (a) clarifying the co-design process; (b) buildingand sharing knowledge, and making thinkingvisible; (c) building relationships; and (d) sustaininglearning beyond the course. The framework, alongwith the collaborative team effort that was part of alarger research project, enabled the developmentof an openly licensed and accessible digital book.The project brought together a collaborative teamwho were passionate about learning more aboutopen education and a small grant supported theadditional expense of professional copyediting torefine the book.

This design-based research aims to improve the quality of graduate supervision using a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The Quality Graduate Supervision MOOC brings interdisciplinary faculty, postdoctoral scholars, and expert supervisors together in an online learning community to discuss and consider effective supervision practice, strategies for relationship building, supports for academic writing, mentoring for diverse careers, and how to combine excellence and wellness. The survey, interview, and system data were analyzed to inform and assess the design and development of the QGS MOOC, to gain insights into learner experience and engagement, and to assess the impact of the online learning community on graduate supervision practices. Through ongoing design and evaluation of this online learning course for graduate supervisors, the research team found the learning community influenced faculty members’ awareness, collective knowledge building, goal setting, and actions for graduate supervision practice. We present results from our evaluation of the design components in the QGS MOOC, the learning benefits for supervisors, impacts on graduate supervision practice, and make several recommendations for research and practice.

This paper is based on the authors’ experiences and reflections working in educational technology and design support roles in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. We retrace our lived experience from the beginning of the pandemic in the spring (from our vantage points in the UK and Canada) and the associated ‘pivot online’ enacted in education around the world, through to the autumn of 2020, when we appeared to be transitioning into a so-called ‘new normal’ of the mid-pandemic. As digital education practitioners, who are also educators, researchers, and also simply as humans and friends living through a global pandemic, we had turned to each other initially for support in terms of work, wellness, and sharing news, information and sense-making, during which we began to consider researching under-examined dimensions of the evolving situation. The experiences and issues we reference are drawn from our own work, as well as from our responses to popular narratives advanced by key voices who have encouraged certain interpretations of the pandemic and its educational effects. Using Schön’s (1983) reflection-in-action lens, we examine these experiences and narratives of pandemic pedagogy through the frame of our multiple identities. In particular, from our perspective as researchers and advocates of open education, we noted calls for openness (such as the use of open educational resources) in response to the online pivot, which did not appear to be cutting through the noise of the sudden deluge of information, advice and broadly negative coverage of online teaching. However, through our reflective narrative and synthesis, we offer an alternative interpretation, which is that openness was nonetheless flourishing, but that the ‘pivot open’ was to practices rather than resources. Open exchange, community building and support amongst educators were apparent in multiple contexts. While pandemic profiteering has highlighted the need for open resources and infrastructures, and we anticipate this case continuing to be made more strongly as we emerge from the emergency, it is the turn to open practices which has met the immediate needs of educators and learners through community, interactions, sharing and care.

The aim of this study was to examine a professional learning intervention designed to support new teachers with implementing professional practice competencies. Partners from a school authority joined researcher-practitioners from a university to engage in designing a professional learning series for new teachers. A design-based research approach using quantitative (pre- and post-surveys) and qualitative data (artifacts of learning, field notes, classroom observations) were analyzed over one year. There were over 450 participants involved in the professional learning series. The findings indicated the professional learning intervention positioned new teachers as designers of learning engaging in continuous cycles of design&ndash, enactment&ndash, reflection and strengthened their pedagogical capacity to interconnect professional practice competencies with support from a community of learners. The findings from this study have implications for supporting new teachers during a period of induction and demonstrate one way to provide new teachers with the foundation for continual growth throughout their career.

Methodology can be one of the most challenging aspects for doctoral researchers. When we conduct research into education and/or technology, we can be confronted with a potentially confusing array of options. This is true even for those using a well-established approach, but can be especially acute if combining approaches in a mixed-methods study or trying to develop a completely new way of doing research. Choosing the right method for what we are interested in is a key part of high quality research, and this requires us to think about the scientific and philosophical foundations of what we do. In this guide we explore some of these issues with a focus on open research, drawing on insights from researchers within the Global OER Graduate Network (GO-GN). Open practices in research can challenge assumptions about how to create and share new knowledge. In the handbook, we draw on insights from experienced open researchers to build understanding of research in the open. The advice given applies to all research, but is of particular relevance to those interested in open approaches.