A competence framework for educators to boost open educational practices in higher education

ABSTRACT

Despite the recognition of the benefits that can be achieved through the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) and, more broadly, Open Educational Practices (OEP), there has been little research on the competences that are needed to enable educators to utilise such practices. To contribute to closing this gap, this paper presents a framework of the competences that educators in higher education should develop in order to effectively engage in OEP. The framework development was based on an in-depth analysis of a set of existing successful open teaching practices, which allowed to identify the underlying competences needed to engage in each one of them. The competence framework consists of one transversal attitude (that of being open to constructively engaging in OEP) and two competence categories (those relating to OER and those relating to open pedagogies). These two categories include a total of eight competences, described in detail through the corresponding knowledge and skills. The paper closes with a reflection on how to facilitate the attainment of these competences, that could become a key part of existing capacity building actions for educators at all levels, and suggests some directions for possible future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Open education
• OER
• open educational resources
• educators’ competences
• higher education

Acknowledgments

This research has been carried out in the context of the OpenGame project (Promoting Open Education through Gamification; Grant number: 2019-1-ES01-KA203-065815, https://opengame-project.eu), with financial support from the European Commission and the Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED, http://ited.unir.net) at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR), which led the project. Consortium members were: The University of Salamanca (USAL), University of Nantes, Universidade Aberta (UAb), Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg Karlsruhe (DHBW) and Dublin City University (DCU).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Erasmus+ [2019-1-ES01-KA203-065815].

Notes on contributors

Fabio Nascimbeni

Fabio Nascimbeni has a degree in Economics with an international management specialisation and a PhD on Networking for Development. Since 1998 he has been active in international research, policy advice and strategic consultancy in the field of innovation in education, as well as in other areas such as ICT for development, science and technology international cooperation, ICT research and knowledge society developments. Fabio works as Human Capital Development Expert at the European Training Foundation (ETF), an EU agency providing support to EU neighbouring countries for the reform of education, training and employment systems, where he mainly focuses on digitalisation and learning innovation. He has been collaborating with organisations such as the European Commission, the ILO and UNICEF, and has designed and coordinated more than 50 research and innovation projects across Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Mediterranean and South East Asia. His main research interests are open education, digital literacy, digital inclusion. He is a Senior Fellow of the European Distance and eLearning Network (EDEN) and a Fellow of the CEST centre of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and of the Nexa Centre of the Politecnico di Torino in Italy.

Daniel Burgos

Daniel Burgos works as a Full Professor of Technologies for Education & Communication and Vice-Rector for International Research, at Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR). He holds a UNESCO Chair on eLearning and was an ICDE Chair in Open Educational Resources for six years. He also works as Director of the Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED, http://ited.unir.net). Previously, he worked as Director of the Education Sector and Head of the User Experience Lab at the Research & Innovation Department of Atos, Spain from 2007; and as Assistant Professor at the Open University of The Netherlands, from 2004 onwards. His interests are mainly focused on Adaptive and Informal eLearning, Learning Analytics, Open Science, eGames, and eLearning Specifications. He has published over 250 scientific papers, 11 European patents, 18 authored books and 35 edited books and special issues on indexed journals. He is or has been involved in more than 75 European and worldwide publicly funded R&D projects. In addition, he is a Professor at An-Najah National University (Palestine), an Extraordinary Professor at North-West University (South-Africa), an Adjunct Professor at Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL, Colombia), and a Visiting Professor at Coventry University (United Kingdom), INTI International University (Malaysia), and the Digital Learning and AI, China National Engineering Research Center for Cyberlearning Intelligent Technology (CIT Research Center), China. He works as a consultant to the United Nations (UNECE), ICESCO, the European Commission and Parliament, and the Russian Academy of Science. He holds 12 PhD degrees, including Computer Science and Education.

James Brunton

James Brunton is Assistant Professor and Programme Chair of the DCU Connected Psychology Major programme at Dublin City University, which is an online, open education programme accredited by the Psychological Society of Ireland (PSI). James is a Chartered Psychologist (C. Psychol., Ps.S.I.; C. Work & Org. Psychol. Ps.S.I.; CPsychol BPS) and an EDEN (European Distance Education Network) Fellow. Working within DCU’s School of Psychology, in the Faculty of Science and Health, James’ research interests include the psychology of identity, identity formation and identity management processes, socialisation/orientation processes for ‘off-campus’ higher education students, online learning design, open pedagogy, and digital assessment. James is available to supervise doctoral students in any of these areas of research interest. James is currently the principal investigator/DCU principal investigator on a number of locally and EU funded projects, including the Opengame (Promoting Open Education through Gamification) project and BUKA (Advancing Equity and Access to Higher Education through Open and Distance Learning) project. James’ research has been published in journals such as Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, Open Praxis, Educational Media International, Frontiers in Psychology, and Studies in Higher Education, and he is a member of the editorial team for the open access journal, Research in Learning Technology

Ulf-Daniel Ehlers

Ulf-Daniel Ehlers is a learning innovation expert, founder of mindful-leaders.net, serial entrepreneur, and he has been Professor for Educational Management and Lifelong Learning at the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University in Karlsruhe since 2011. He has initiated the future skills research lab at the university and is currently its scientific director. From 2011-2017 he held the position of Vice president at the same university and has been responsible for Quality and Academic Affairs. He has held positions as Associate Professor of the University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany), Professor for Technology Enhanced Learning of the University of Augsburg (Germany) and Associate Professor of the Graduate School for Management and Technology of the University of Maryland University College (USA). Ulf has delivered keynotes and other speeches to audiences in more than 45 countries. He is the author/editor of more than 15 books and 250 scholarly articles with over 6000 academic citations. Ulf is a trained leadership coach, facilitator and expert for mindful communication, and holds degrees in English Language, Social Sciences and Education Sciences from the University of Bielefeld, where he finished his Ph.D. with honours in the field of Technology Enhanced Learning in 2003. He was awarded his habilitation in 2008 from the University of Duisburg-Essen. His writings on quality in education have received international awards.