Advocating innovation in open education: UK and Canadian successes and failures. [1511] Members : #OER17

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Thu, Apr 6 2017, 1:45pm – 2:45pm

Authors: Vivien Rolfe, and Rajiv Jhangiani

Room: Conf. Hall

Theme: Policy & Practice

Type: Presentations

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Description

In Havelock’s delineation of models for innovation in education, four patterns were identified as means of being persuasive and effecting change: 1) through the need to solve problems; 2) via a research process from enquiry to implementation; 3) strategic manipulation and response to crises, and 4) innovation that is mediated through social interaction through “finding shared values as a basis for working” (Havelock 1974). The final factor was termed “open advocacy and humane dialectic” and the idea of the change agent or champion has played a critical role through the decades in leading new practices including open education as evident in the UK 2009 – 2012 Open Educational Resource Programme. Here stakeholders were influenced through combinations of presenting the need to solve problems – e.g. access to education, flexible study, and the use of institutional champions to find common ground and to be united through shared values (McGill 2013). In Canada and the US, open has taken on a different dimension recently with a strong focus on the adoption of open textbooks in a response to student debt and strategic activity as invested by Government and charitable foundations such as the Hewlett Foundation (e.g. Jhangiani & Biswas-Diener, in press; Wiley 2016).

So how do these theoretical interpretations of advocacy become interpreted on a day-to-day basis? And how do different national, cultural, and institutional contexts influence the success of this advocacy? This research describes the experiences of two open educators from the UK and Canada who have a aggregated experience of 16 years at 6 universities in championing open (Rolfe 2016). Both also have considerable experience in advocating open approaches beyond their institutions. The authors have compiled reflective case studies to capture the means by which they have influenced – or not – colleagues within their institutions, as well as senior executive or contacts beyond their institutional walls. Their approaches will be mapped to the four theoretical patterns identified by Havelock, as these have been broadly used as the basis for advocating open.

This research will conclude by drawing together the successes and failures, and making concrete recommendations to the community on how to create persuasive arguments for the establishment of innovative open approaches. The proposed presentation at the OER17 conference will include an interactive element through harnessing feedback via Twitter and disseminating results via a blog article, to build a broader base of perspectives from the audience. This work will be shared under an open license.

References

Havelock R.G 1974. Models of the Innovation Process in US School Districts. Available:

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED094479.pdf

Jhangiani R.S & Biswas-Diener R in press. Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science. Ubiquity Press.

McGill L 2013. Jisc OER Infokit. Available: https://openeducationalresources.pbworks.com/w/page/24838012/Stakeholders%20and%20benefits

Rolfe V 2016. Web strategies for the curation and discovery of open educational resources. Open Praxis, 8(4), 297-312. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.8.4.305

Wiley D 2016. Underselling Open: The Problem with Cost Framing. Available: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/4774

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