How inclusive is the openness of Open Education?

Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B

deakin.edu.au/cradle

How inclusive is the “Openness” of Open Education courses?

Sarah Lambert – ODLAA – 6/2/17

[email protected] @SarahLambertOz

mailto:[email protected]


Part of PhD Research program

RQ: How can Australian Higher education providers make use of Open Education programs

for Student Equity and Social Inclusion?


PhD Research Question

How can Australian Higher education providers make use of Open Education programs


Access, progress and success in HE

Lifelong learning, health info, empowerment, personal goals, community development


PhD Research Question

an educational program offered freely to the community with a mixture of resources, activities or assessment, and instructional materials to guide learning and mastery of a particular topic

How can Australian Higher education providers make use of Open Education programs



Free stuff. So what?• Selwyn(2011): advantaged people take-up and take

advantage of the new techs • Rohs & Ganz (2015): MOOCs increasing the digital

divide • Tinto (2008): access to education without support

does not lead to equal opportunity of education


Free is not enough• Warshauer’s seminal work “Technology for Social

Inclusion” (2003)– providing technology for free does nothing to

improve the lot of disadvantaged learners– Required: physical, digital, human and social forms

of support for learning and making meaning of the new techs

– Irish “Information Town Competition” winner ($22M free stuff, failed) vs 1.5M runner up (plan, partner, embed/engage, success)


Practice: Inclusion & technology• 4 OE4SI MOOCs in early lit review• FiF Forum Nov 2016: revealed more interest in

online technologies (as compared to journals)– Syncronous techs: keep F2F flavour– Virtual techs: keep sense of place or campus– Digital storytelling: privilege FiF/LSES/Indigenous

student experience in their own words


Rough theory – mapping variations in contexts, programs, outcomes


Method: Systematic ReviewWho is putting OE to use for inclusion?What contexts? What interventions? What supports and resources?


Title/abstract screening• 91 citations imported

– 49 from Google Scholar, 44 from Scopus– 59 judged as suitable, useful, in scope

• Observations– MOOCs + study groups– MOOCs about inclusion, MOOCs for inclusion programs– Piloting techs for remediating knowledge gaps (new supports)– Different types of inclusion partnerships (new contexts)


Sample set of data: 17 of 59• Papers from diverse global authors and settings:

– America (6), England (4), Spain (3)– Switzerland, China, Scotland, Australia, Ecuador, El Salvador,

Chile, Italy and the Netherlands.• Half conference papers, 35% journals, the rest reports


4 staff accounts• Staff accounts of designing OE: 4 papers

– technical accounts, innovations in auto-generating support for students (Miranda, Mangione, Orciuoli, Gaeta, & Loia, 2013; Muñoz-Merino, Rodríguez, & Kloos, 2014);

– MOOCs and embedded support in classrooms (de Waard, Anckaert, Vandewaetere, & Demeulenaere, 2016);

– assessment design perspectives (Hills & Hughes, 2016).


1 national policy paper• synthesised a broad range of national data

and successful interventions to improve the skills of low-skilled Americans

• explicitly referencing multiple types of OERs and open technologies (Strawn, 2015).


11 student evaluated OE projects• majority (11) completed OE4SI projects, run

and evaluated by students

Outcomes exceeded

Outcomes met or largely met

Mixed outcomes

Unclear/Other Totals

Universal interventions

1 3 3 1 8

Targetted interventions

1 1 1 3


Partners and supports No

partners+ technology partner

+ community partner

+ community and technology partner

Totals

Single Higher Education Institution

6 3 1 1 11

Multiple Higher Education Institutions

3 1 0 1 6

Total 9 4 1 2 16

Cases with a community partner provided a set of physical spaces and technologies, and human/personalised one on one and group support (de Waard et al., 2016).

Project sponsored by Samsung had both education, technology and community organisation partner support (McDougall et al., 2016.)


ExamplesIdentifier Study setting/institution Types of open technologies, author/s reference

U (#71) 8 week introductory computer science MOOC on edX platform

The "Recommender” tool helps students who get stuck prior to doing a quiz, was deployed as an "XBlock" into the edX MOOC platform, uses staff and student crowdsourced resources (Li & Mitros, 2015)

S (#34) Design of auto-generated multiple choice quiz questions for MOOCs and a process of academic quality checking at the University of Salerno

"Adaptive Remedial Work Environment (ARWE) based on adaptation and personalization features provided by the IWT platform. The resulting MOOC platform is released in beta version as MOMAMOOC." (Miranda et al., 2013)

U (#24) MOOC used as flipped classroom resource for a campus cohort of engineering foundation students at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland

Students had the option of a voluntary peer study group, were provided with technology and spaces to learn together - by watching MOOC videos and solve quizzes collaboratively each week, for a 5 week period (N. Li et al., 2014)

U (#45) Coursera Human Trafficking (HT) MOOC aiming for attitudinal change

Coursera MOOC The MOOC was designed for both attitudinal (cognitive) and behavioural change in mind. Students were not only exposed to powerful "undercover" videos and first hand accounts of trafficking, but were encouraged to develop their own form of activism by developing a Public Service Announcement (PSA) as an assignment." (Watson et al., 2016)


ExamplesT (#12) "The Hands-On ICT (HANDSON) MOOC included seven teams of facilitators

to manage forums in 7 different languages: English, French, Greek, Slovenian, Bulgarian, Catalan and Spanish."

The MOOC was developed and delivered in the Canvas platform, combined with weekly Google hangouts (Colas, Sloep, & Garreta-Domingo, 2016)

S (#15) Belgian upper secondary students follow an English or French MOOC of their own choosing. Prep for university, language and digital skills.

Multiple MOOCs were used as classroom learning resources, firstly in groups, then individually. (de Waard et al., 2016)

T (#61)

Spanish speaking learners, including a cohort from the University of El Salvador, learning in the edX MOOC "MIT 6.002x Circuits and Electronics"

On campus informal study groups. Guidelines developed which cover use of "three platform components: a learning management system (LMS), a content management system (CMS), and an adaptive content engine (ACE)." (Sanchez-Gordon & Luján-Mora, 2016)

S (#37) Design of MOOCs and organisational change at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Khan Academy technologies for Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs) plus Moodle for communications tools (Muñoz-Merino et al., 2014)


OpenEd programs: how inclusive? • So far, not bad for STEM, NNS/ESL, college prep

equity cohorts• Not yet seeing focus on other equity groups (but there

are 32 left to look at)• A number of technical and pedagogical designs that

could be put to more targeted use for equity needs


Next• More analysis

– conception of equity group and what needs remediating; – design elements, support elements– success factors, cautionary tales (unintended consequences)

• Data extraction of the remaining 32 papers


My wish• More interdisciplinary conversations and collaborations

• some common aspirations yet different strengths, skills and knowledges

social inclusion/widening participation

Ed tech/IT/analytics


Comments and questions• Email [email protected]• Twitter @SarahLambertOz

With thanks to supervisors Prof. David Boud, Assoc. Prof Phillip Dawson, and Dr Nadine Zacharias

mailto:[email protected]