Facilitating Open Access to Information: A Community Approach to Open Education and Open Textbooks

Abstract

Access to information as a necessary precondition for human flourishing is recognized explicitly in the UNESCO Strategic Development Goals, and mirrored by the work of universities globally to reduce barriers to information, especially research outputs. Growing international attention has turned to learning and teaching resources, particularly textbooks as a key barrier to fully engaging with, and participating in, higher education. The affordances of open texts provide an alternative to commercially published and often exclusionary access practices; and empower educators and students in co‐creation and open sharing of information and knowledge. This paper examines the design of an ongoing institutional grants program predicated on a facilitated community learning approach for academic staff seeking to adopt, or adapt open textbooks into the curriculum as one mechanism to increase access to information. The participants' experiences and personal learning were captured through a series of semi‐structured interviews that inform the iterative design of the ongoing grants program that could be transferred to other institutions seeking to support educational change.

How social are open-access debates: a follow-up study of tweeters' sentiments

“…It would also help achieve the United Nations' sustainable development goals (UNESCO, 2016). Open education textbooks may contribute to education by providing students and lecturers with flexibility conceptualized as the “5 R's”, namely the ability to retain, reuse, repurpose, remix, and revise the resources (Cobb, 2018; Stagg and Partridge, 2019).…”

Education, Knowledge and Data in the Context of the Sharing Economy

“…Open Educational Practices (OEP) are also evolving, supporting the opening and sharing of educational processes, and new collaborations between students and lecturers emerge, with the goal of improving access and empowering learners (Cronin and MacLaren 2018). New formats, such as open, connected courses (enabling students to connect with students and educators in other institutions and countries) and co-creation of open textbooks with students (Stagg and Partridge 2019), are also evolving. The learning theory promoted by George Siemens (2005) and Stephen Downes (2010) titled 'connectivism' looks at learning that takes place online across peer networks.…”

What’s in it for me? A mixed-methods study on teachers’ value creation in an inter-institutional community on open educational resources in higher education

“…These challenges are explored by previous studies that have examined enablers of community engagement. For example, Wang and Wang (2017) and Stagg and Partridge (2019) examined a community-based approach to foster the adoption of open textbooks into the curriculum. Their findings indicated that a deliberate strategy is needed with a dual focus on a supportive learning space for teachers to have discussions, generate ideas and to experiment with open textbooks, and on the role of facilitators to organize structured meetings and to connect teachers' needs with information and expertise within the institute.…”