Digital Literacies Competencies and Skills to Support UNESCO OER Goal
What digital literacy skills do educators[a][b][c][d][e][f][g][h][i][j][k][l][m][n][o][p][q] need to adopt, adapt and create OER and create meaningful learning experiences? Identify means of acquiring those skills.
Specifically, this document is meant to support the following UNESCO OER recommendation Article III-11(F)
“Member States are recommended to strategically plan and support OER capacity building, awareness raising, use, creation and sharing at the institutional and national levels, targeting all education sectors and levels. Member States are encouraged to consider the following:
(f) promoting digital literacy skills in order to master technical use of software, codes and open licenses with a view to encouraging the development and use of OER.”
While it may be unrealistic to expect individuals to have each of these skills and competencies, it is recommended that these skills and competencies be represented among teams who work with OER. These skills and competencies may be available within your institution.
Your context for approaching this may be as an individual, an OER team member or project manager, an educational department, or institution. Your roles, goals, and context will inform which of these skills are relevant.
The goal of this document is to organize the competencies needed for various levels and roles of individuals. The next step in the process will be to determine how to present this information in a more user-friendly format.
Each of the competencies should help to support these three activities common to working with OERs[r][s][t][u][v].
Who may have the skills and competencies listed below.
Open Technology
(tbd) as we try to source a good working definition of what we mean by open technology. This should include the ability to view & contribute to the code (aka open source), the ability to import and export standards based content (open standards, like open API’s), the ability to output open content formats, the ability to host the technology locally on device or locally hosted server, the ability to use for free)
“Open Pedagogy is an access-oriented commitment to learner-driven education AND as a process of designing architectures and using tools for learning that enable students to shape the public knowledge commons of which they are a part.” (DeRosa & Jhiangiani) See Open Pedagogy Notebook specifically What Is Open Pedagogy? for more info.
People who have contributed to this work.
Amanda Coolidge, BCcampus
Suzanne Wakim, California Community Colleges OER Initiative
Neil Butcher, OER Africa
Jennifer Miller, Independent Scholar and Civic Technologist
Cynthia Mari Orozco, East Los Angeles College
Christina Riehman-Murphy, Penn State University
Jonathan Poritz
John Okewole Yaba College of Technology & TeachAThon Edtech
Carolyn Stevenson, Purdue University Global
Clint Lalonde, BCcampus
Geoff Cain, Clover Park Technical College
Jennryn Wetzler, Creative Commons
Elaine Farrally-Plourde, CUNY OER Program Manager, freelance ID
Indira Koneru, Founder, KBR & HL Human Development Foundation
Paola Corti, Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and SPARC Europe
Dan McGuire, Founder and Executive Director of SABIER
Helen DeWaard, Lakehead University, Orillia, Ontario.
Nate Angell
Alan Levine
Alexandre Enkerli
Heather Ross
Keiko Tenaka
Delmar Larsen
Jeff Goumas
Joshua Halpern
Amy Minervini
Jessica Egan
Brianna Buljung
Stephen Downes
Jakub Spilka
Andreia Inamorato
Paul Stacey
Centrum Cyfrowe Projekt:Polska
Lesley Farmer
Doug Belshaw
Peter Leth
Shanna Hollich
[a]Given the advantages of bringing students into OER discovery, evaluation, stewardship and creation, would it make sense to not limit this work to educators? Would additional competencies/skills be needed to add students?
[b]slightly related, the Liberated Learners project https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/learner/
[c]And slightly related to that, Learning to be Human Together: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/onhumanlearn/
The point remains that learner-driven work is core to the Open Education movement as a whole and can have a significant impact in support of UNESCO's OER goals.
In fact, there are multiple stakeholders who can hardly be described as "educators" who need to develop their digital literacy to meaningfully contribute to the OER scene.
[d]I agree. Either this document must include what competencies learners need to engage in open educational practices, or there needs to be a companion document for learners. Actually, the student one should come first because some of the competencies that all of the other groups listed here need we'll be based on what support students will need to meet their competencies.,
[e]Excellent way to put it! Thank you so much for that.
Learners first and foremost. Student-centric is fine. Learner-driven is an improvement.
(And some learners in our scene contribute a lot to this. Including in drafting a national framework for Canada.)
[f]👍
[g]The UNESCO Recommendation on OER says nothing about open educational practices, open education, or open pedagogy.
[h]Precisely. We hear that UNESCO won't write a recommendation on Open Ped.
[i]To be fair, at the time of writing "Open pedagogy" was an emerging topic (well Ngram viewer stops at 2019). There are mentions in the opening of "using learner-centred, active and collaborative pedagogical approaches" and under Aims and Objectives "a broader range of innovative pedagogical options to engage both educators and learners to become more active participants in educational processes and creators of content"
[j]https://homonym.ca/open/translation-of-paquette-1979-article-on-open-pedagogy-first-half/
[k]Interesting take, Alan. To push this further, it might be useful to distinguish between learner-driven collaborative practices in general and the way our "pedagogical ancestors" used to describe «Pédagogie ouverte».
The key difference I find goes well with my refrain on Epistemic Justice:
Who decides what counts as knowledge worthy of being learnt?
The answer, then, was that this decision could be made, carefully, in the classroom, as opposed to a free-for-all (Pédagogie libre) or a top-down approach (associated with institutional programs).
So, if UNESCO were to have a recommendation on Open Education in general (which includes diverse models of Open Pedagogy from OER-based programs and Open Educational Practices, all the way to different forms of community learning), it'd have to include suggestions on the decision-making process. Which might be fraught, in an age of technosolutionist EdTech.
[l](Paquette and others published a number of books before the trend shifted to "direct instruction". Some of the people involved were in Switzerland, Canada, and the US. It can be hard to trace their work because of a form of "collective amnesia". With people like bell hooks, Ivan Illich, and Paulo Freire, we at least benefit from their name recognition. With people like Michael Huberman in Geneva, not that easy.)
[m]Oh, and as @Dan probably knows, a lot of the Open Pedagogy work done over decades was from pre-elementary to secondary education (called "K-12" in the US).
[n]Actually, trying to find the proper link to Paquette 2005 (cited by Tannis), I end up on this page, which makes the point: https://arc-en-ciel.cssdm.gouv.qc.ca/programmes/pedagogie/
In this public elementary+secondary alternative school, decisions are made through a democratic structure involving learners and their parents. I don't know this specific school and I have no idea if it works well in their case. What's clear is that the "Open" in OE does include such cases, especially when it has to do with pedagogy.
Barbara Class has shared some of her own experiences in involving university learners in decisions about their learning experiences.
[o]Yes, Alex, I do know. I wrote a blog post about it, Open Education is a Problem for OER in K-12 too. https://developingprofessionalstaff-mpls.blogspot.com/2022/01/open-education-is-problem-for-oer.html
[p]I'm reasonable certain that if you asked the founders of the Open School where I taught from 1996-2011 (it was founded in the early 1970s) if they had considered using the term Open Pedagogy they would say that Open Pedagogy was too narrow of a concept. They were well versed in many types of pedagogy. I think they also may have thought that pedagogy was too pretentious. It didn't look good with tie-dye T-shirts and bell bottom jeans.
I'm now motivated to get the paper copy of a very good book about the founding of Marcy Open School and have it digitized. There are only one or two copies in existence. It's very well written and an important document not only for this discussion, but for discussions of the history of education in Minneapolis, in the U.S., and in the world.
[q]Thanks for sharing, Dan! (No, I'm not surprised you would. Just grateful.)
Excellent idea on digitizing that book. Had the same thought about one of Paquette's books which laid things down in a very useful way. Basically, Open Pedagogy was one of four modes. He did use the term because «pédagogie» sounded pretty good for our own bell-bottom-wearing teachers. (My father was one of those, having studied with Piaget in Geneva and coming to Quebec during the "Quiet Revolution".)
Similar things have happened in different parts of the world. Some are happening now. Including with Indigenous Learning.
In the end, part of this is about recognition of where we all come from.
[r]Why is curation missing? It generally is in the lists, which is unfortunate.
[s]+1
[t]And speaking of curation... https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/read/five-faculty-and-library-curation-personas-to-aid-oer-discovery-solutions/section/b148ac3d-ee65-4165-b1a3-2ccc606d8937
[u]+1
[v]Perhaps we need to add disseminate/distribute
[w]Are OER necessary components of open pedagogy? If so, say how. If not, delete Open Pedagogy
[x]I'm having a hard time finding an UNESCO document that says anything about open pedagogy
[y]Is this a good place for curation?
[z]This comment pertains to expanding ideas in (f) and (j), perhaps considering 3 additional competencies that underscore DEI: 1) Interview folks from underrepresented communities (if those works are not in open or yet unpublished or only exist in the oral tradition/via storytelling) to ensure diversity of perspectives . . . 2) (diverging from 'interested parties' because a party may be interested only because they know about or have access to produce information so....) Seek out sources of information for whom --when accessibility for them is realized-- may share or produce information about a topic. 3) Identify where there are gaps in information that may need to be filled. Also question why those gaps are there. Can those gaps be filled with information from sources that were not seen as mainstream or the majority perspective (by highlighting underrepresented voices/folks living on the margins)?
[aa]Diversity is only mentioned once in this document; that's concerning
[ab]With what has been presented about indigenous, traditional knowledge, and OER, wouldn't we want to have "care" that is more than just ethical and legal?
[ac]maybe add something to digital citizenship and advocacy (added, but do we need more)
[ad](DEIJ)
[ae]Cultural Relevance needs to be in this section
[af]Lead or facilitate one-on-one or group workshops on OER creation as a colleague, as part of an institution, or as part of an organization.
[ag]The term 'effective' can be problematic as it may be tied to quality assurance measures which are not written for OER or quasi-emotional biases not grounded in the learning sciences.
Suggest rewording to a do or don't e.g. Integrate OER into the design of learning experiences (A, B)
Followed by - Apply OER to the co-design of learning experiences with students (A, B, C)
[ah]this one needs some wordsmithing. Are we mapping to see where the gaps are in content? In my view there are two parts, map out all the outcomes, map content to outcomes, identify gaps, fill gaps.