Open Data is the name given to datasets which have been generated by international organisations, governments, NGOs and academic researchers, and made freely available online and openly-licensed. These datasets can be used by educators as Open Educational Resources (OER) to support different teaching and learning activities, allowing students to gain experience working with the same raw data researchers and policy-makers generate and use. In this way, educators can facilitate students to understand how information is generated, processed, analysed and interpreted.This paper offers an initial exploration of ways in which the use of Open Data can be key in the development of transversal skills (including digital and data literacies, alongside skills for critical thinking, research, teamwork, and global citizenship), enhancing students' abilities to understand and select information sources, to work with, curate, analyse and interpret data, and to conduct and evaluate research. This paper also presents results of an exploratory survey that can guide further research into Open Data-led learning activities. Our goal is to support educators in empowering students to engage, critically and collaboratively, as 21st century global citizens.
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials which are freely available and openly licensed. Repositories of OER (ROER) are platforms that host and facilitate access to these resources. ROER should not just be designed to store this content – in keeping with the aims of the OER movement, they should support educators in embracing open educational practices (OEP) such as searching for and retrieving content that they will reuse, adapt or modify as needed, without economic barriers or copyright restrictions. This paper reviews key literature on OER and ROER, in order to understand the roles ROER are said or supposed to fulfil in relation to furthering the aims of the OER movement. Four themes which should shape repository design are identified, and the following 10 quality indicators (QI) for ROER effectiveness are discussed: featured resources; user evaluation tools; peer review; authorship of the resources; keywords of the resources; use of standardised metadata; multilingualism of the repositories; inclusion of social media tools; specification of the creative commons license; availability of the source code or original files. These QI form the basis of a method for the evaluation of ROER initiatives which, in concert with considerations of achievability and long-term sustainability, should assist in enhancement and development.Keywords: open educational resources; open access; open educational practice; repositories; quality assurance(Published: 24 July 2014)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2014, 22: 20889 -http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v22.20889
Scholars are increasingly being asked to share teaching materials, publish in open access journals, network in social media, and reuse open educational resources (OER). The theoretical benefits of Open Educational Practices (OEP) have become understood in the academic community but thus far, the use of OER has not been rapidly adopted. We aim to understand the challenges academics face with in attempting to adopt OEP, and identify whether these are related to or stem from the functionalities afforded by current repositories of OER (ROER). By understanding what academics and experts consider good practices, we can develop guidelines for quality in the development of ROER. In this article we present the findings from a study surveying academics using OER and experts who develop and/or work with ROER. We conclude by suggesting a framework to enhance the development and quality of ROER.
Participation in democracy, in today's digital and datafied society, requires the development of a series of transversal skills, which should be fostered in higher education (HE) through critically oriented pedagogies that interweave technical data skills and practices together with information and media literacies. If students are to navigate the turbulent waters of data and algorithms, then data literacies must be featured in academic development programmes, thereby enabling HE to lead in the development of approaches to understanding and analysing data, in order to foster reflection on how data are constructed and operationalised across societies, and provide opportunities to learn from the analysis of data from a range of sources. The key strategy proposed is to adopt the use of open data as open educational resources in the context of problem-and research-based learning activities. This paper introduces a conceptual analysis including an integrative overview of relevant literature, to provide a landscape perspective to support the development of academic training and curriculum design programmes in HE to contribute to civic participation and to the promotion of social justice.
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