Are We Asking Too Much of OER?

We are proud to announce the publication of Are We Asking Too Much of OER? in the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning.

https://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/7744/6179

In a nutshell: This paper examines a pervasive discourse of disruption in OER literature by recounting a facilitated conversation with open education leaders and OER advocates at 2023 Open Education Global conference held in Edmonton, AB. Chad Flinn and I employed Bacchi’s WPR approach (What is the Problem Represented to be?) because instead of asking how policy addresses problems, the WPR approach explores how policy constructs problems (sometimes, the very problems a policy sets out to address).

The genealogy of problem representation is an important part of the exploration. In 2007 Casserly asked, “Is OER a disruptive innovation in the education marketplace?” We sought to answer that question by illuminating the various aspirations of OER advocates, highlighting the need for OER to address issues beyond cost, such as relevance, voice and representation, adaptability, and using textbooks in pedagogically meaningful ways. A philosophical shift moved OER from alignment with the principles of open access to an exclusive emphasis on affordability, which is problematic.

Movements like OER may be accepted in the educational marketplace as long as they do not fundamentally disrupt established norms and power structures. The system tolerates OER and the radical message of openness as long as it does not actually disturb the system, so long as OER proliferation leaves the status quo intact, or insofar as OER can provide the illusion that grassroots movements can arise and change a system that is not, in fact, all that malleable. The discourse of disruption, then, allows for the appearance of competition and progress at the same time it neutralizes any real disruption. Applying this to OER implies that the educational superstructure may embrace OER only as long as it does not challenge the existing business model of education, which has to be paid for, one way or another.

The first wave OER adoption did disrupt the marketplace, but practitioners find themselves again in a familiar place of playing catchup to publishers of all-inclusive textbooks, who adapted quickly to this first phase of disruption. In answer to Casserly’s (2007) question, the generation of high-quality content that is freely available is not disruptive in and of itself, but fully compatible with the existing structures of higher education, and certain institutions may even gain prestige through OER adoption. The problem, then, is not just expensive textbooks but the disruptive discourse that OER can save the world. A maturing dialogue that critically reassesses the role and goal of OER would move away from disruption and account for the full cost of investing in and sustaining OER adoption and usage.

It’s Alive!

Very excited that this book we have been working on for over a year is now available through Springer.

https://link.springer.com/book/9783031657306

This book presents the growing interconnection of two pillars from the world’s higher education institutions: academic integrity and libraries. It provides sound examples to extant questions and conversations about whose job it is to teach academic integrity, and what library work is. The role of libraries in supporting academic integrity is not always clear and has not been fully explored.

Drawing from library literature and that of academic integrity more broadly, readers are exposed to how libraries are necessary in a holistic approach to academic integrity. Education about academic integrity and the prevention of academic misconduct, for not only students but other institutional stakeholders, are demonstrated as occurring optimally in positive, supportive, and proactive ways. The book details numerous ways in which librarians can work with faculty and other stakeholders using established frameworks such as information literacy and blended librarianship as well as innovative platforms and content.

Other contributions involve the identification of potential academic misconduct and administration of academic integrity policies to complete the cycle recommended by the frameworks of global educational quality organizations (QAA, TEQSA). Initiatives presented in the book include those at the course level and institution-wide initiatives involving curriculum, policy, and supports for faculty and students. Also contained are efforts occurring at a national level within professional networks , in addition to international library curriculum. This book provides inspiration to institutions and academic libraries of any size and scope to embrace this emerging role in creating cultures of academic integrity.

Academic Library and Academic Integrity Benchmarks

One of my most prized possessions is my Professional Librarian’s Life Certificate from the State of Washington. Even though I am no longer a practicing librarian, I am a librarian for life and have the paperwork to prove it!

On Wednesday, May 15, I had a chance to present (remotely) with some colleagues at the Workshop for Instruction in Library Use at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Our presentation focused on the arguments we put forth in our upcoming book (to be published by Springer later this year), Academic Integrity and the Role of the Academic Library: Institutional Examples and Promising Practices. My small part of the panel was to present a series of benchmarks about how academic librarians can play a leading role in academic integrity, based on what many academic libraries are already doing. And this is important because we know a lot more about what librarians are doing than what is truly effective. In this regard, most academic integrity work is faith-based; we believe our efforts will create some form of good, even if we have no empirical proof.

Academic Library and Academic Integrity Benchmarks 

Networks: As they exist, the academic library is connected and integrated with academic integrity networks at the state/provincial, national, and/or international levels, such as International Centre for Academic Integrity, Global Academic Integrity Network, European Academic Integrity Network, or the Manitoba Academic Integrity Network.  

Professional development and scholarly activity: Library staff recently and regularly participate and present at academic integrity conferences. They are engaged in researching their academic integrity efforts.

Academic integrity campaigns: The library participates in academic integrity awareness raising campaigns, such as the International Day of Action for Academic Integrity and Academic Integrity Week. 

Institutional leadership: The library leads or is part of collaborative campus leadership efforts to support and promote academic integrity at their postsecondary institution. 

Policy development: The library plays a key role in the development of academic integrity policy, including consulting on definitions for plagiarism, collusion, and the appropriate use of generative artificial intelligence (and detection tools).   

Staffing: The responsibility for the library’s efforts in academic integrity are clearly articulated in at least one librarian or library staff member’s job description, similar to how many academic libraries have a copyright or scholarly communication librarian.  

High quality instructional programs: The library provides credit and/or non-credit academic integrity instruction that is fully integrated into the curriculum. These instructional efforts are offered in both proactive and reactive, point-of-need contexts. The content of the programs include critical digital literacy and artificial intelligence as it pertains to information use and knowledge generation. These instructional programs include real, practical situations students will likely face in their educational journeys. One example from the book includes a number of real-life simulated role plays.

Knowledge resources: The library publishes guides for faculty and students outlining how the library can support efforts to address academic integrity, including recommended language for syllabi and research papers. Close collaboration to the institutional teaching and learning centre and instructional designer is important here, especially for new course and new program development.  

International students and intercultural competence: Library staff have received professional development related to intercultural competence so they can identify Western pedagogical approaches, appreciate different cultural conceptions of textual ownership, and consider the unique tactics of international students, such as patchwriting.  

These benchmarks, built from the chapters presented in this book, offer a panoramic view of academic libraries as dynamic entities evolving within the changing landscape of academic integrity. The established value they bring to the complicating nature of information literacy and genAI collectively paint a picture of possibility for how academic libraries can help faculty, students, and their institutions navigate this critical terrain. These benchmarks can be used as a diagnostic for assessing what the library is doing well, and where it wishes to grow and develop. They can also be used to articulate new strategic actions that align with institutional goals.

The Right Relationship Between Teaching and Ed Tech

My dissertation was a mess. My committee chair said to me as gently as she could, “there are a lot of moving parts going in a bunch of different directions.” I was lost and didn’t see a way forward.

On a rainy day in 2018, my wife and I took shelter in Russel’s Books in Victoria. I stumbled upon Ursula Franklin’s The Real World of Technology and read it standing in the store. Suddenly, I could see the finish line for what I was trying to do. The shelving within my brain was reorganized according to Franklin’s multiple realities (which became the title of my dissertation), which provided the theoretical framework necessary for me to articulate what I wanted to see, and how I might be able to see the invisible. This article grew out of that immersion in Franklin’s thought, and it explores wrong relationship between technology and teaching in postsecondary contexts, and it gives some guidance for how the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning can serve as a redemptive technology.

Very glad to see this tribute to Ursula Franklin finally come to life.

Second Handbook of Academic Integrity

With 112 chapters and just about 2,000 pages written by a diverse array of global authors, this is THE definitive resource exploring the various aspects of academic integrity in the contemporary postsecondary environment. I am thrilled to be part of Dr. Sarah Elaine Eaton’s project with my chapter in Part II - Academic Integrity Through Ethical Teaching and Assessment, edited by Dr. Brenda Stoesz. My chapter is entitled Academic Integrity and the Affordances and Limitations of Authentic Assessment.

Available at: https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-031-54144-5

The thesis of my chapter is far from groundbreaking. More engaging and authentic assessments can neutralize (to some degree) the inclination for students to commit academic integrity violations. The sub-thesis is that better assessments can certainly help, but there are structural limitations that inhibit change. Postsecondary education is an ecosystem under stress, and this stress can inspire and crush pedagogical innovation at the same time, depending on the local institutional context.

Some have written that authenticity has not been well conceived. I believe my body of work contributes to this from two different lenses.

First, the lens of authenticity derived from Patrician Cranton and Ellen Carrusetta - who is our authentic teaching self? The best and most effective assessments have to be authentically aligned to our teaching identity and our educational values.

Second, authenticity is gauged by the degree to which real-world tasks take place in professional contexts and situations. This is an ideal that is often impossible to meet within the limitations of an educational setting, but instructors can often get closer than their current assessments afford.

I am not sure how much more I will have to say on academic integrity and/or authentic assessment. I am fascinated by both, but I’ve been writing on this for almost a decade now, and my research and writing interests are shifting in other directions. Still, based on the work I have done in both assessment and academic integrity, I think my work will remain relevant for the foreseeable future because assessment is slow to change, but the underlying principles provide a sound foundation for assessment design with technology.

Mixed feelings: A preliminary look at student reactions to using ChatGPT for academic purposes in a business course

On November 24, my friend and colleague Rick Robinson and I facilitated a conversation at Mount Royal University’s 2023 SoTL Symposium - Expeditions in SoTL.

Since its public launch in November of 2022, ChatGPT 3 has dominated postsecondary news and discussions. Faculty are split in their reaction; some describe it as a disruptive force and are afraid of how it will impact their assessments, whereas others see it as an opportunity to aid student learning. 

Because ChatGPT is freely available, produces high quality outputs, and will likely remain ahead of detection tools, the best approach may be to adopt the use of AI technology in learning and assessment strategies (Halaweh, 2023; Mollick & Mollick, 2022). In addition, Strzelecki, (2023) points out that students’ perception of adopting new technologies is crucial. In this preliminary study, faculty intentionally encouraged the use of ChatGPT in a business assignment. Part of the assignment asked students to voluntarily reflect on their experience using ChatGPT for business purposes.

This roundtable discussion shared student reactions on using ChatGPT in an academic setting, including anger, excitement, and anxiety. This small set of reflections highlights the need for more research into the student experience of using ChatGPT for academic purposes, the importance of teaching strategic thinking, and the need for specific technology-related learning outcomes in business programs.

As automation augments and transforms the nature of work, using tools like ChatGPT will be an important technical skill in some settings. In all likelihood, working with artificial intelligence will form an important part of students’ professional life, and students need to understand the increasingly technological world in which they live (Perkins et al., 2023). The roundtable discussion encouraged participants to share their assessment approaches and consider how ChatGPT can be integrated in ways that build human capacity for an emerging real-world where use of large language models will be commonplace.

Rick and I transcribed the conversation and are working on a piece for inclusion in the conference proceedings.

Problematizing OER

On October 17, Chad Flinn and I facilitated a great conversation at OE Global in Edmonton.

This session offered series of conversations on the genealogy and disruption of OER using Bacchi’s WPR approach (What is the problem represented to be?). Social intelligence arises from lived experience under conditions of unalterable changefulness (such as the progression of educational technology, the intensification of marketization, and the pandemic) to find new opportunities to exploit cracks and fissures in structurally entrenched forms of power. This conversation engaged participants in a collaborative, multi-level dialogue of the historical and philosophical origins of Open Educational Resources (OER), the disruptors and resisters within the OER movement, and the ways in which OER has (or has not) disrupted the current understanding of educational challenges and solutions.

The OER community of practitioners can, in one respect, be seen as a social-political movement. OER represent a political movement that has emerged under conditions of structural stability and social connectedness, but a common feature of social movements is its oppositional or alternative nature. But for the past two decades, OER advocates have accomplished high profile successes, achieved mainstream legitimacy, and extraordinary growth. OER are no longer a fringe or marginal phenomenon, but in an evolving and more mature phase, what is OER disrupting and opposing?

The first movement in the session problematized the concept of OER by discussing the educational challenges OER is designed to address. Participants were asked to consider and discuss:

How do you perceive the problems OER aims to address in your educational context?

Are there any aspects of the current educational landscape you believe OER overlooks?

The second dialogue explored the genealogy of OER by considering the historical development and philosophical underpinnings of OER. Dialogue questions included:

How have OER's historical and philosophical origins shaped the current understanding?

Are there any critical milestones or thinkers significantly impacting the OER movement?

The third movement considered disruptors within the OER movement. Participants discussed the roles and motivations of disruptors, such as challenging traditional educational models and practices, promoting open access and democratization of knowledge, and encouraging innovation in teaching and learning.

The fourth and final move of the conversation pivoted to examine resistors and forms of resistance, including the protection of intellectual property rights, Traditional Knowledge Labels, copyright concerns, preserving the status quo in educational institutions and systems, and addressing concerns about the quality and sustainability of OER.

Chad and I have drafted an article submitted to IRRODL for review, and we are hopeful the conversation and our reflections will be published soon.

Authentic Assessment for Online Learning - 2nd offering

I am excited to work with the Commonwealth of Learning to offer this MOOC for the second time. The course has reached over 4,500 learners from around the globe who are interested in initiating educational reform through improved assessment practice.

One of the ways I have worked to establish and maintain an instructional presence in this MOOC with over 2,000 learners is through daily announcements derived from discussions in the forums. This question was foundational.

Today’s question of the day is: How different is online assessment from traditional assessment?

There are 2 ways to answer this question – the long way or the short way. Here is the short way.

The answer depends on how we interpret “traditional assessment?” Traditional has become, for some, a bad word – meaning old and outdated. I interpret traditional in this question to mean at the same time (synchronous) and in the same place (location). Proctored exams and in-person presentations are two examples of “traditional” assessments where the students and instructor are in the same place at the same time. Internet-based communications technologies enable teaching and learning to transcend time and space limitations; people don’t need to lug their guts from one place to another for learning to occur.

But, you might rightly ask, what about research papers? Research papers are popular traditional assessments completed asynchronously and at a distance, when the instructor and the student were not in the same place at the same time. This is where it gets messy.  

Here is the long answer:  

Bates (2005) notes, “distance learning can exist without online learning and online learning is not necessarily distance learning (pp. 14-15).” Some distance learning formats still exist that do not employ the use of internet-based communications technologies. Bates (2017) captures the endemic definitional quagmire of online education by saying, “We are trying to describe a very dynamic and fast-changing phenomenon, and the terminology often struggles to keep up with the reality of what’s happening.” This observation took on new poignancy during the COVID-19 pandemic with the rise of phrases such as emergency remote instruction, bichronous, polysynchronous, and hyflex learning models.

Online education may include synchronous “face-to-face” technologies such as Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, Zoom, or Google Meet, asynchronous or multi-synchronous platforms such as the learning management system (LMS) and Google Docs, and/or participatory flow technologies such as Twitter, Facebook, and Padlet. The use of online education in this course denotes learning experiences where students and faculty use “a personal computer or other mobile device connected to the Worldwide Web using either a cable or wireless protocol,” and where faculty and students possess “the ability to make use of text-based, audio, and audio-visual communications that afford instructors the opportunity to create multifaceted and multidimensional instructional delivery systems” (Conrad & Openo, 2018, p. 8).

Because of these sophisticated instructional models, online assessments have an additional burden to be:

  • Intentional – Assessment is a major teaching and learning activity. How do online assessments provide evidence of learning outcomes?

  • Relevant – Online learners need to remain motivated and focused, and online assessments need to focus students' attention on the learning.

  • Creative – There are a plethora of tools available, and encouraging students to use these various tools can increase engagement.

Now, shouldn’t all assessments be intentional, relevant, and invite creativity? Yes. Because of the learning management system, aren’t all instructors teaching online to some extent now? Yes. So how different is online? Beyond the use of internet-based communications technologies, it's hard to say what’s unique about online assessment and what is just good teaching practice. But when online, instructors must pay closer attention to the affordances of technology and its limitations.   

Labour Market Skills Gap SE Alberta

Some years ago, I read Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel & Dimed: On Not Getting By in America. One of Ehrenreich’s major arguments is that there is no such thing as unskilled labour. Whether it is digging a trench or memorizing hundreds of produce codes, every job requires technical skill. My dissertation is ultimately about how increasing expenditures on educational technology over the last 30 years have transformed the professoriate. Displacing full-time faculty and replacing them with part-time faculty has been a cost containment strategy where technology has pushed out human labour. Whether part-time or full-time, however, all faculty must now possess an even more sophisticated skillset to teach with a proliferation of technological tools and teaching processes.

This report, which sought to understand technical skills, is a Herculean endeavor. It was great to lead a wonderfully talented group of individuals to explore the unique (and not-so-unique) challenges we face as a community.

Global Trends

Over the past 50 years, the share of jobs requiring at least some college education has increased dramatically, and the fastest-growing sectors of the economy are projected to be those jobs requiring new skills driven by advances in technology (Carnevale, 2016). Shifts in technology render some jobs obsolete at the same time these advances create new jobs (Latchem, 2017). This transformation in work includes a shift from high-risk, low-mobility occupations to career pathways in rapid-growth occupations in the clean economy (Sonmez, et al., 2022). Even though technology will eliminate some jobs and create entirely new occupations, the need for talented human beings with truly human skills remains.

Frey and Osborne (2017) identified three sets of tasks that cannot be easily automated, including:

  • Unstructured and complex tasks;

  • Tasks requiring creative intelligence;

  • Tasks related to social intelligence, such as understanding people’s reactions in social contexts or assisting and caring for others.

Strategy, creativity, and compassion will remain important skills no matter how technology advances and transforms the nature of work. Still, the impact of technology on existing and emerging occupations, coupled with the enduring need for human skills, suggests that the region needs a new model of skills and skills acquisition that enables learners to understand the highly technological world around them while nurturing the uniquely human capacities for creativity and flexibility (Aoun, 2017).

National Trends

In Canada, 42% of existing jobs, primarily in manufacturing, agriculture, and the service sector, are either highly automatable or will face substantial change in the coming years (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2018). In addition to advances in technology, significant shifts in energy markets will also give rise to new careers and make others obsolete (Sonmez, et al., 2022). It is expected that 40 percent of all new jobs will be in the skilled trades and technology (Little, 2017), indicating a pressing need to develop a better understanding of the new technical skills demanded by a more sophisticated job market.

Academic Integrity and the Affordances and Limitations of Authentic Assessment

https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-981-287-079-7_90-1

I am very proud of the following publication.

Openo, J. (2023). Academic Integrity and the Affordances and Limitations of Authentic Assessment. In: Eaton, S.E. (eds) Handbook of Academic Integrity. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-079-7_90-1

ABSTRACT

Academic integrity presents a perennial and long-standing challenge to postsecondary education. Outsourcing academic activity through contract cheating undermines academic credentials and potentially puts people at risk through extended professional incompetence. Postsecondary institutions must take the threat of academic dishonesty seriously, but to do so, faculty are often presented with the stark choice of playing a game of cops and robbers by increasing surveillance in the form of online proctoring. The rise of contract cheating, outsourcing of student work, and dissatisfaction with online proctoring have heightened focus on the teaching and learning environment and how changing the nature of student assessments can change student behavior. This chapter explores the concept of authentic assessments and argues that authentic assessments can play an important role in creating an academic culture of integrity. It provides guidance for thinking about why authentic assessments are needed now more than ever, along with providing practical steps for developing more authentic assessments. The chapter concludes by discussing some of the limitations that must also be considered when developing more complex, and potentially more time-consuming, alternative assessments, including the quest for scale and the increased use of part-time faculty.