CPAD Shares

CPAD Shares Issue 4: EDUCAUSE and Open Education

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C-PAD Shares #4, December 2022

Featured Theme: EDUCAUSE and Open Education

 

classroom with books on desk

 

 

EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education through the use of information technology. EDUCAUSE is a highly regarded professional association providing programs, services, and thought leadership to the higher ed information technology community.

 

One popular and quite useful service they provide is the “7 Things You Should Know About” series of briefings, which serve as primers dealing with the most pressing challenges, significant technology developments, and key issues confronting higher education.

 

Each “7 Things” publication answers seven questions in a mere two pages:

 

  1. What is it?
  2. How does it work?
  3. Who’s doing it?
  4. Why is it significant?
  5. What are the downsides?
  6. Where is it going?
  7. What are the implications for higher education?

 

The Open Educational Consortium defines Open Education as an approach that “encompasses resources, tools and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide.”1 In 2018, EDUCAUSE published a three-part series structured around the main components of Open Education: content, practices, and policies.

 

7 Things You Should Know About Open Education: Content

 

Article reading time – approximately 6 to 7 minutes

 

EDUCAUSE defines OER (Open Educational Resources) as “teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or that have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation, and redistribution by others. OER includes textbooks, curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, video, audio, simulations, assessments, and any other content used in education.”2

 

Read on to see why OER adoption is on the rise in higher education, and what the implications may be for you and your students.

 

 

7 Things You Should Know About Open Education: Practices

 

Article reading time – approximately 6 to 7 minutes

 

While advocates of Open Education are often initially motivated by maximized access to curricular materials and the reduced cost of resources, they soon discover more significant reasons to continue the practice. They observe powerful and unexpected student learning that invites reflection regarding the potential of new teaching approaches not previously possible.

 

Students evidence learning that is more authentic, participatory, and engaged, demonstrating deeper and more complete understanding of what they are learning. Over time, faculty develop greater agency and autonomy. What begins as simply another means to teach becomes a catalyst for a very different kind of teaching.

 

7 Things You Should Know About Open Education: Policies

 

Article reading time – approximately 6 to 7 minutes

 

This article addresses the dilemma OEP practitioners face when their college or university has not articulated an institutional commitment to OER or OEP, compounded by the lack of a comprehensive open education policy statement. Key questions include:

 

  • How can interested faculty be clear regarding whether (and specifically how) they may use OER?
  • What is expressly permitted in the development, adoption, and sharing of OER and the integration of OEP into courses?
  • How does adoption of OER or incorporating OEP impact promotion and tenure?
  • Who holds copyright to work produced with university funding? Are faculty legally free to openly license work produced through Open Education processes?

 

 

If Open Education is unfamiliar to you, we hope these 21 things you should know will leave you better informed and maybe a little intrigued.

 

 

  1. About The Open Education Consortium (no date) The Open Education Consortium. Available at: https://www.oeconsortium.org/about-oec/ (Accessed: November 30, 2022).
  2. Contributions by: Green, C., Illowsky, B., Wiley, D., Ernst, D., Young, L. (2018) 7 things you should know about open education: Content, EDUCAUSE. Available at: https://library.educause.edu/resources/2018/6/7-things-you-should-know-about-open-education-content (Accessed: November 30, 2022).

CPAD Shares Issue 3: AIGA

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 Featured Resource:  AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) 

 

In this issue we look at the intersection of educational practice with the academic discipline of graphic arts. We can only highlight a small portion of what AIGA offers educators in this discipline, but these three resources stand out to us as particularly useful. 

 

Design Education Resources: Design Futures Research 

 

A series of briefing papers in seven parts provided as downloadable PDF files on the AIGA site. 

  

Typical article reading length is 8 to 12 pages long; about 12 to 18 minutes. 

 

AIGA describes the Design Futures research project as examining “seven trends shaping the context for the practice of design. This change in the nature of work calls for new skills and perspectives beyond traditional college-level design education. It is critical that the industry expands its knowledge and expertise to remain economically viable and professionally relevant as it prepares for changing client demands and new opportunities for design influence.”
 

The Design Futures briefing paper serves as the introduction to this series (six pages, about nine minutes). 

 

Each paper defines a trend, cites examples of the trend in practice, identifies the core concepts and principles involved, and lists the competencies necessary for addressing the trend at the college and professional level. Each includes a brief list of resources for further reading.  

 

 

 

Design Teaching Resource: Projects 

 

Browse the colorful cards of creative project possibilities, learn more about your peers who submitted them, connect with the Design Educators Community, or explore resources related to topics such as course planning and accessibility. 

 

This resource, which includes over 160 successful teaching projects, is as inspirational as it is practical. Populated by graphic design faculty from around the country, each project includes a project brief, learning objectives, deliverables, associated readings and resources, and reflections regarding how well and why the assignment worked. Projects are searchable by student academic level, design category (for example, typography), and by keywords (for example, “color theory”, or “photography”). 

 

 

Design Future Now! Podcast 

 

Length ranges from very short (13 minutes) to much longer (50+ minutes); typical length is 30 minutes or less. 

 

AIGA explores key questions confronting the profession with selected practitioners and leaders in this ongoing series of podcasts. With only 16 episodes thus far, this resource can be quickly scanned for interest. Past episodes have included topics such as what musical minds teach us about creativity and innovation, digital craft and the shift from “human centered design” to “humanity centered design”, along with a wide range of others. 

CPAD Shares #2 – Small Teaching

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Featured Theme: Small Teaching 

 

This month’s theme is Small Teaching, which author James Lang defines as “an approach that seeks to spark positive change in higher education through small but powerful modifications to our course design and teaching practices” (Lang, 2016, p. 5). Based upon the latest advances in cognitive research, Lang and other proponents have skillfully bridged the gap between theory and practice, resulting in techniques that are readily applied. But how much effort is required to realize the results? Lang writes that “an essential shared quality of all…forms of small teaching is that they require minimal preparation and grading.“ 

 

Small Changes in Teaching 

 

A series in six parts in The Chronicle of Higher Education (2016), by James M. Lang, Ph. D., author of Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning (2016). 

  

Typical article reading length is 5 to 6 minutes. 

 

Note: Access to The Chronicle is free, courtesy of a Penn State site license. Create an account with The Chronicle to enjoy unlimited reading. 

 

Lang starts in a place we might not expect—before class even begins. He provides a set of three simple tips for using the last minutes before class to instructional advantage and explains why they work.  

 

  • Tip #1: Create opportunities to form relationships with your students. Even brief conversations before class result in more substantive relationships (and improved learning) than the ones that arise from routine classroom interactions.
     
  • Tip #2: Display the instructional framework for the day. Give students an organizing structure they (and you) can frequently reference during the class.
     
  • Tip #3: Create wonder. Post an image on the screen at the front of the room and ask two questions about it: “What do you notice? What do you wonder?” 

 

Taking Pedagogy Seriously 

 

By David Gooblar, Ph. D., author of The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You about College Teaching, featured by The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University. 

 

A single interactive video lecture in six parts, each about 7 minutes long. 

 

Prefer to watch and listen rather than read? David Gooblar was invited to The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning in May 2022 to demonstrate some of his most powerful Small Teaching strategies. Sharing insights from recent educational research, Gooblar offers practical methods that will help you foster student engagement and motivation in any academic discipline. 

 

  • Introduction; How Did You Learn? 
  • Learning is the Work of Students 
  • The Students are the Material 
  • Student Motivation: Values, Expectancies, Environment 
  • Invite Students In 
  • Structure Your Course 
  • Cultivate Community 

 

The K. Patricia Cross Techniques Video Library 

 

Each technique video is roughly three minutes in length. 

 

A non-profit organization launched in 2019, the K. Patricia Cross Academy exists to provide higher education instructors with free, concise, and effective techniques known to produce learning results. The video library contains 50 techniques, such as Background Knowledge Probe, Active Reading Documents, and Individual Readiness Assurance Tests. The library may be searched by Teaching Environment, Activity Type, Teaching Problem Addressed, and Learning Taxonomic Dimension. These videos are professionally produced. 

 

———– 

Lang. (2016). In Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. Jossey-Bass.