Rafael Angel Espinoza Pizarro presented at Open Ed 2021 on “Virtual Communities of Practice (CoP): Experiences for the Development of Open Educational Resources.” Espinoza is from Costa Rica and defined community of practice (CoP) as a “strategy for articulation and exchange between institutions and/or teachers, who decide to voluntarily associate and join efforts, experiences, and knowledge to achieve common academic goals such as to produce OER.” They worked with 23 countries! Their view was that knowledge is socially constructed, and they had scholars from numerous countries with the goal of producing research that impacts the stakeholders in their countries. Twenty-three institutions worked together as a learning community across cultures. There was mentoring time and they used Google Drive. They created and published an article describing survey results from parental engagement during the pandemic. Espinoza suggested starting by identifying a project and international programs available through your own institution. The software and technology tools are valuable to promote the human contact and mentoring process. Espinoza welcomed collaborations and encouraged viewers of the recording to reach out to create their communities.
Next, Melissa Ashman from Kwantlen Polytechnic University recorded a ten-minute session on “Faculty and Student Perceptions of Open Pedagogy: A Case Study from British Columbia, Canada.” This work was completed as an Open Education Fellow and spoke about instructors being guides for students to be creators of knowledge. Ashman identified the gap in studies on open pedagogy. The research questions Ashman had were:
- Q1. What are the perceptions of faculty towards open pedagogy?
- Q2. What are the perceptions of students towards open pedagogy?
Ashman talked about how KPU is a great place to conduct this research because of the institutional commitment to open pedagogy. Ashman reached out to sixty-seven faculty to complete a survey and distribute the survey to students. Eleven faculty decided to participate. Ashman provided examples of open pedagogy through a quote and examples. The survey questions were adapted from Hilton et al. 2019 and Hilton and Wiley 2018 for students and Bliss et al. 2019, Paskevicius and Irvine 2019, and Hilton et al. 2019 for faculty. Eight faculty completed the survey, and the top benefits were improved student engagement and positive dynamics/relationship between students and instructor because of open pedagogy. Fifty-five students responded to the survey. Most found open pedagogy beneficial and seemed to have a more motivating and engaging experience compared to a more traditional learning experience. Students found the timing, teamwork/collaboration challenging. Ashman acknowledged some of the limitations with the study including sample size and how transferrable the findings are currently. Ashman mentioned that institutions could provide more support for faculty choosing to engage in open pedagogy work.
