Category: portfolio

I have made several changes to the previous post:https://junhaolin.opened.ca/individual-post-4/

Firstly, I changed the long direct quotation into short paraphrase. Next, I included the in-text citation as well as the reference list. Then, I included the discussion about how an “open” platform such as Twitter can help with the learning of students. Finally, I searched for another peer-reviewed article  related to the OER-enabled pedagogy in higher education to demonstrate the benefits of this kind of pedagogy in education and discuss its potential as a new kind of pedagogy.

Here is the revised one:

In the final week, I learned about OER-enabled Pedagogy. According to Wiley, OER-enabled pedagogy is the set of teaching and learning practices only possible or practical when you have permission to engage in the 5R activities. 5R refer to retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute. In order to be engaged in the 5R activities, the students have to engaged in either building upon previous works done by students or construct a new entity that offers other students permission to transform and adapt it. (Wiley & Hilton 2018) This idea is the opposite of the one I mentioned in post 3- “disposable assignments”. In order to combine constructionism and openness into OER-enabled pedagogy, Wiley put forward a new notion of “renewable assignments”. In this notion, the works and the assignments of students will become the open environment resources which not only can be used by the students who create them, but also benefit the students coming after.

The authors of the article show us several examples of OER-enabled Pedagogy.  In one of the examples,  the students are given extra credit to create tutorials resources such as tutorials videos, chapter summaries and review games for a particular topic. These tutorials then will be evaluated by the teacher, and some of them will be selected to be integrated into the course. Besides, the students who perform well in the course have the chance to be a teaching assistant in the course. The students also create other materials such as guided notes which are proved to be very useful for learning the course. The practice was very successful, the average grades on students assignments rose significantly as more student-created OER were introduced to the course. (Wiley & Hilton  2018) To me, the success of the practice is quite meaningful. It means that a new form of pedagogy was proved to be feasible. This kind of pedagogy greatly improves the engagement of students in designing the course. When I read the previous materials, I remembered a saying that the students should not just learn the knowledge, but they should create the knowledge at the same time. The idea of renewable assignments has made it come true. The students in the course also participated in the creation of the knowledge. Also, research has found that OER-learning benefits both academic staff and students. For academic staff, they regarded OER as useful for improving teaching quality in areas such as providing illustrations, teaching difficult subjects, and supporting student progression. As for students, they thought that OER improved the engagement, provided them with a diversity of materials, and helped them prepare better for the examination. What is more, OER makes it possible for mobile learning. (Nikoi et al 2012) The potential of OER-enabled Pedagogy in the future is great because of the rapid development of the internet. Some online platform such as Twitter gives strong support for this kind of pedagogy.

The “open” platform Twitter is a good example of OER-enabled Pedagogy. The term “open” means that all the people, whether they are in the course or not, can be engaged into the interactions. Last Thursday evening, we participated in a conversation related to open pedagogy in Twitter. The professors put forward several thoughtful questions related to open learning, and many people responded. During the process, people from all over the world can join the conversation and share their ideas, which is impossible for a distributed environment or classroom teaching. The ideas and conversations of the people will be recorded in the platform and are accessible openly for everyone. Those resources can be reused and adapted by other people coming after. Therefore, everyone is not only a learner, but also a producer of the knowledge. This kind of “open” platform can promote the communication and exchange of knowledge and thus help learners and educators.

Reference:

Wiley, D. & Hilton, J. (2018). Defining OER-enabled Pedagogy. International Review of Research in Open                     and Distance Learning, 19(4).

Nikoi, Samuel, and Alejandro Armellini. “The OER Mix in Higher Education: Purpose, Process, Product, and                Policy.” Distance Education, vol. 33, no. 2, Aug. 2012, pp. 165–184. EBSCOhost,                                                              doi:10.1080/01587919.2012.697439.

During the 3 weeks period of learning. I learned about the concept of open pedagogy and its advantages. Besides, I learned about the differences between distributed and open environments.

In the first week of learning, I was firstly introduced to the concept of open learning. At that time, I thought open learning is the same as digital learning. I was confused about some phrases such as “blended environments”.  http://junhaolin.opened.ca/individual-post-1/

In the second week, I finished the readings and worked together with my pod members on our pod project. It was when I had a deeper understanding of distributed and open environments. That was also the first time I applied what I had learned in the course to design a set of teaching method for a specific individual. Although we made a lot of mistakes at the beginning as it was the first time we worked for a project like this, we made a lot of changes according to professor’s advice and turned it into a much better version.

http://junhaolin.opened.ca/individual-post-2/

In the third week, the readings gave me a clearer concept about open pedagogy. I started to realize that open pedagogy is not just about a flexible schedule; it is a learner-centered kind of pedagogy where students can even be engaged in designing the rules of the courses.

http://junhaolin.opened.ca/individual-post-3/

In the final week of the course, I learned about OER-enabled learning and reviewed what I had learned throughout the course. I had some new perspective about open pedagogy and I was impressed by the serval examples of OER-based learning. Rather than using the materials that are all developed by the teachers, OER-based learning makes full use of the works of students and turns the works into new course materials. In this circumstances, students are not only absorbing the knowledge, but also producing the knowledge. I found that idea very cool and maybe I can apply it to my career in the future. Recently, one of my friends who is majored in education invite me to cooperate with her to start a small business. She intended to open some tutorials classes which will apply a whole new way of education. I think I can borrow the ideas from the course to design a new kind of education style.

http://junhaolin.opened.ca/individual-post4-revised/

The Twitter chat held in Thursday evening mainly discussed about several questions about open learning. It is happy to see that many people engage in this activity, and some of them are not the students in the course. I think the most significant difference between distributed environments and open environments is that open environments allow us to communicate with a larger scale of people. Those people may not learn the same course with you, but they can still discuss the specific topic with you and put forward some useful ideas.
From the questions discussed, I review the knowledge about open pedagogy. Firstly, the term “open” is related to sharing, which means that you can access the learning resources of others and your ideas can also be viewed by others. The platforms such as WordPress and Twitter are good example of open environments. In open environments, you are not only learning knowledge, but also creating knowledge as your works are published and can be accessed by others. However, one of the questions is talking about the people who are excluded when learning is open, which reveals the drawbacks of open learning. Because some of the students may have difficulty accessing the open website. For example, some of the students may not have a computer. Those students will be excluded from open learning.
All in all, open pedagogy as a new form of pedagogy has shown its strength and potential. In this digital age, open pedagogy gradually becomes a trend of learning in the fut

Here is the link to our pod project: https://myblog.opened.ca/ 

This project is completed by Junhao Lin, Xinxin WU and Crystal Jiang.