Open Education: Changing Educational Practices

The presence of open education has spread to hundreds of educational institutions across the globe, in particular centres for higher education and adult learning. Starting with important initiatives demanding access to information and spreading quickly into the making available of educational resources, it has became clear that open access is not only an issue of accessibility or availability but also of institutional change and innovation in teaching, studying and learning.

Open educational resources (OER) fall high on the agenda of educational institutions and policy makers, and they are supported by many stakeholders of the educational sphere. However, their use has not yet reached the critical threshold. This poses an obstacle for developing a seamless provision of quality learning resources and practices for citizens’ lifelong learning biography, due to the fact that the current focus in OER is mainly put on building more access to digital content in the form of repositories and infrastructures. There is little consideration of whether this will support educational practices, open education, and promote quality and innovation in teaching and learning.

The purpose of the 23rd issue of eLearning Papers on Open Education is to further our understanding of the way in which open access and open educational resources impact educational practices in organizations, and for learners and other stakeholders, both today and in the future.

We are calling for contributions on open education with a focus that goes beyond issues relating to OER access, addressing innovative open educational practices (OEP) that transform educational experiences. OEP can be initially understood as practices which support the (re)use and production of quality OER through institutional policies, promote innovative pedagogical models, and respect and empower learners as co-producers on their lifelong learning path. Furthermore, we recognize that our understanding of the impact of openness on educational scenarios, and especially on educational institutions, is still in early stages. For this reason we welcome design papers as well as empirical papers that simulate critical debate and collect data, as well as contribute to the theoretical foundation of this still-young field. We specifically invite contributions which address one or several of the following issues:

* Open education
* Open educational practices
* Quality and innovation through openness
* From open content to open courses to open institutions
* Impact of openness to bridging the educational and digital divide
* Peer-to-peer learning, validation and reviewing in open learning scenarios
* Assessment in open educational scenarios
* Culture Change through open education
* Stimulating and creating incentive for change towards openness in education
* Digital literacy and practice enhancing openness in education

The article submission closes on 22 January 2011. The provisional date of publication is February 2011.For further information and to submit your article, please contact: jimena.marquez@elearningpapers.eu