Pay it forward

Open Education: International Perspectives in Higher Education

Blessinger, P., & Bliss, T. J. (Eds.). (2016). Open Education: International Perspectives in Higher Education. Open Book Publishers.

Cover of book Open Education International Perspectives in Higher Education
CC-BY collection of research articles on many aspects of open pedagogy
“The importance of openness in education is only now beginning to be appreciated, and I hope this volume can increase the pace of its spread. This volume contains stories of people and institutions around the world acting in accordance with the value of openness, and relates the amazing results that come from those actions. I hope it will inspire you. I hope that as you read these stories you will feel an inward stirring of gratitude for what you have received from those giants who went before us, and that out of the rich soil of that gratitude will grow a commitment to share – a commitment to openness.”  —  David Wiley

A 2016 collection of articles on open pedagogical topics by leading scholars worldwide. All licensed CC-BY.

Foreword
David Wiley
Preface
Patrick Blessinger and TJ Bliss

1. Introduction to Open Education: Towards a Human Rights Theory
Patrick Blessinger and TJ Bliss

2. Emancipation through Open Education: Rhetoric or Reality?
Andy Lane

3. Technology Strategies for Open Educational Resource Dissemination
Phil Barker and Lorna M. Campbell

4. Identifying Categories of Open Educational Resource Users
Martin Weller, Beatriz de los Arcos, Rob Farrow, Rebecca Pitt and Patrick McAndrew

5. Situated Learning in Open Communities: The TED Open Translation Project
Lidia Cámara de la Fuente and Anna Comas-Quinn

6. Educational Policy and Open Educational Practice in Australian Higher Education
Adrian Stagg and Carina Bossu

7. The Identified Informal Learner: Recognizing Assessed Learning in the Open
Patrina Law

8. Transformation of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education towards Open Learning Arenas: A Question of Quality
Ebba Ossiannilsson, Zehra Altinay, and Fahriye Altinay

9. Three Approaches to Open Textbook Development
Rajiv S. Jhangiani, Arthur G. Green, and John D. Belshaw

10. What Does It Mean to Open Education? Perspectives on Using Open Educational Resources at a US Public University
Linda Vanasupa, Amy Wiley, Lizabeth Schlemer, Dana Ospina, Peter Schwartz, Deborah Wilhelm, Catherine Waitinas and Kellie Hall

11. Expanding Access to Science Field-Based Research Techniques for Students at a Distance through Open Educational Resources
Audeliz Matias, Kevin Woo, and Nathan Whitley-Grassi

12. A Practitioner’s Guide to Open Educational Resources: A Case Study
Howard Miller

13. Open Assessment Resources for Deeper Learning
David Gibson, Dirk Ifenthaler, and Davor Orlic

14. Promoting Open Science and Research in Higher Education: A Finnish Perspective
Ilkka Väänänen and Kati Peltonen

15. Credentials for Open Learning: Scalability and Validity
Mika Hoffman and Ruth Olmsted

16. Open Education Practice at the University of Southern Queensland
Ken Udas, Helen Partridge and Adrian Stagg

Editing Wikipedia : a great way to experience OER and add more knowledge to the world

Students use Wikipedia all the time. Librarians do, too. It’s a great starting place if you know nothing or very little about something — anything, just about. We’d like to know how many professors here at UConn are using this great public good as a way for students to add better information to the world as part of their class assignments. Instead of just retrieving information, students can become powerful communicators adding better knowledge and improving the quality for all people.

The L.A. Times reported on 10/3/2016 in their article College students take to Wikipedia to rewrite the wrongs of Internet science thatWikipedia Editing Guides

So far this year, 240 college science classrooms in the U.S. and Canada have improved the content of more than 2,500 articles and created 247 new ones, he said. All told, these Web pages have been viewed more than 81 million times. The foundation’s goal is to double these numbers by the end of 2016, which it has dubbed the Year of Science.

Eryk Savaggio of the Wiki Education Foundation says

“Wikipedia has great coverage of military history, for example, but it doesn’t have great coverage of women’s health. Those are the types of gaps where students can go in — they have academic resources, they have textbooks, they have access to their library, to medical journals, academic journals — and contribute something that makes a difference in these more difficult-to-write aspects on Wikipedia.”

Wikipedia has lots of online tutorials and help for editing as well as a set of standards that aims to keep the information unbiased and understandable to the public. It’s a way for students to develop their voices and take learning and pay it forward.

Let us know if you are doing anything like this with your students. And if you are interested in pursuing this track, we have help for you here at the library. Just email open@uconn.edu