OERlabs Openbook/Lessons lOERned (OER-Seminars)

University of Cologne

Sensitization and contextualization

The OERlabs seminars at the UzK are aimed at two target groups - student teachers and students with an interest in media didactics (see Field Notes). Through this composition one can assume an affinity to all topics relevant for the project: Teaching and learning with digital media, digital work processes in everyday school life, and much more. This does not mean, however, that when planning the OERlabs seminars at the UoC we could "automatically" assume that the students had mastered media handling or had already taken their first steps in the field of OER, on the contrary: the OER topic is not obvious for everyone when it comes to the context of school as well as teaching and learning. Accordingly, the OERlabs seminars faced a long process, which included both the introduction and sensitisation to open work and thinking processes as well as the contextualisation of the OER debate within the media-didactic discussion.

Students generally attend seminars with different prerequisites with regard to their knowledge and actions. The seminars are therefore similar in that the development work of the students can usually extend over an entire semester, if not over several years of study. Due to the duration of the project, we have been occupied with these challenges from the very beginning. Through the entire MSD-Process including the OpenLabs it has been shown that all efforts to change attitudes require a lengthy and intensive process.

The comparison with 'normal' seminars, which usually also focus on communication and interaction, is obvious: Especially at the beginning of the first seminars, we as a project team often asked ourselves the question to what extent another seminar deals with the aforementioned situation. How are processes of personal competence development set in motion there? And how are one's own attitudes or attitudes, e.g. towards media use, addressed? Even if the "normal" seminar does not exist at a university. The question in our case should rather be directed at how the approach of the students changes with the solution of a more or less specific problem, if a kind of project is carried out in the seminar, but this is in a social context and deals with newer developments such as OER?

Project learning with and through OER

The first and probably most important anchor for the success of the OERlabs seminars was their placement in curricular courses. The BFP-Seminars are held at a very specific point in the teacher education chain, where students learn about the interface between digital work and practical school issues. The educational-sciences focused OERlabs-seminars found their place in an equally important place, namely at the focal point between research or science and teaching and learning practice. Didactically, these differences were overcome through project learning.

It turned out early in the working process of the seminars that some OER principles are inherent in project learning. Although a basic thematic introduction was given in all seminars, the students were confronted with the necessity of an open attitude. Since in most cases students did not know each other before, the search for topics for the projects was already permeated by an open process. In order to support the students, topic overviews or proposals were first determined on their own and then discussed in groups, guided by their interests, before the students decided on group work on the basis of their interests (Step 1). This means that they could not directly select their group members (as long as they actually pursued their interests and did not override social aspects such as sympathy or personal acquaintance). After the group formation, the students and their new project partners had to agree on a common project theme. The aim was for the group members to reorient themselves within a group and a topic in order to subsequently deepen a specific sub-theme, which is still of interest to everyone, in a self-organised way (Step 2).

Both steps of group and topic finding already represented the basis of an open practice: Topics were proposed freely by the students, the group compositions were based on the theme and the choice of the project focus was discussed collaboratively. The resulting dynamics represent interesting parallels to networked work on the Internet and to cooperation in schools. Students were forced to engage with people they had never met before, to build trust and to approach each other thematically.

In project learning, experiences such as these are inscribed, in a sense pre-programmed, if one understands the inclusion and penetration of one's own project as a personal and group-related learning process with ups and downs. The proximity to everyday professional life, be it as a teacher in school or in other professional contexts, is also given by the type of cooperation and collaboration. For example, a school's staff should not be afraid to network intensively with colleagues, even if the common interests or a topic only have superficial connections. In the OERlabs seminars, students thus had the opportunity from the outset to learn about practices that they can use not only in a digitally networked classroom environment, but also in their daily work with colleagues at schools. Because of the digital world such practices seem to be "natural", e.g. through communication via social media or cooperation on e-learning platforms (e.g. ILIAS). In teaching practice, however, it is a challenge to address media-related attitudes, to break them up or to transfer them to a later (professional) everyday life (cf. article teacher education (German language)).

Project work after the basic topic identification presupposed that the students network among themselves (online and offline) and exchange openly about their individual progress. Constant reflection on the progress of the project was also a challenge, as the seminars did not follow a certain regularity (e.g. weekly), but were partly conducted as block and blended learning seminars (see Overview OER-seminars). This also showed parallels to the future work, because projects often run over one semester or school year, but do not exclusively represent the sole employment of a teacher. Students were also confronted with an open work process in which communication strategies are first negotiated.

The requirements of modern team teaching at school were reflected in the way the respective topic was dealt with and the project results were presented. In part, the distribution of tasks within the groups was organised on the basis of the main study areas (focus on media/media production, focus on educational science/general didactics/media didactics), in part, groups were composed on one side (e.g. the same combination of subjects). Whether and to what extent this could be used as a strength of the group constellation is up to the groups themselves. Here, too, the connection to the OER topic became apparent: on the one hand, forces were bundled, on the other hand, different competences were used to create new ideas and concepts. However, the creation of trust and communication about the individual work process was always of great importance.

Attitude towards OER principles

One of the advantages of such project work is that many desired actions and discussions can implicitly be taken up or forced. Through the project work the students have a concrete reference to their future workplace (especially BFP seminars) and also get a practical reference to teaching and learning from a research perspective (especially the educational-science OERlabs seminar). The form of project learning also emphasizes open communication, whether online or offline.

The systematics of the respective study processes can be a further advantage if students want to attend these seminars. This means that attending these seminars is in line with the objectives and thematic interests of the students. This does not say anything about the actual (work) commitment of the students within the respective projects, but the assumption exists that on the one hand school practice and on the other hand a research perspective on school practice is important for these students.

However, these facts require a critical reflection on our part, because they can be seen as disadvantages of such a seminar structure: Participation and cooperation in seminars alone does not indicate a profound discussion and (cognitive) processing as well as a deep understanding of the basic principles of OER. This relativization of the seminar experiences is important from our point of view, since a seminar alone will hardly change fixed and existing (media-related) attitudes of students. Instead, courses such as these sensitise students to the importance of specific topics for future, professional and not least social actions of each individual.

What do we take from it?

The basic question that concerns us after the OER seminars is easy to formulate: Should OER be identified and considered as material or are OER rather part of a didactic principle?

From this basic question, which opens the spectrum of the discussion between 0 and 1, further questions arise regarding OER practice, where OER can be installed and used:

• On the question of the use of OER by teachers

In the OERlabs seminars, openly licensed material was always used, so that everyone was given the role model function by the teachers. In some cases, OER material was remixed or used by the teachers themselves, but in all cases at least the license for the material they actually created was marked and made available to the students online.

• For the creation of learning material by students and the principle of "correct" licensing

The principle of creating one's own learning materials was also tried out in the OERlabs seminars. This means that there was no explicit discussion with the students about the meaning of licenses. On the other hand, the focus was on providing the self-made materials with the right licenses. The differences between the Creative Commons licenses were discussed comprehensively and repeatedly, as well as which licenses do not qualify as OER. However, the discussion did not focus on the moral perspective (e.g. public domain vs. no-derivatives), but on the practical level of their concrete handling. In this way, the students have dealt with the question of the "right" license, which is usually raised in the foreground in many cases. In terms of learning theory, this approach can be assumed to lead to more in-depth processing.

• On the remix potential of learning materials

An interesting perspective was the discussion and specification of remixing for new student products. By fine-tuning the seminar concept, the focus of the students was on creating their seminar projects on the basis of existing materials and contents. This drew the other discussion with itself not only to find OER material, but to integrate this into its own planning and thought process. The strongest contradiction experienced by the students was that they had a new idea and had to implement it as far as possible, but at the same time had to fall back on existing material already created by others.

• The need for an open attitude towards material sharing

We have repeatedly addressed the fact that an open attitude - on the part of students as well as teachers - towards the subject, but also towards alternative didactic forms and formats, is also important in the courses. It reflects the main task of the entire OERlabs project, since an open attitude depends on personal factors, but is influenced to a not insignificant extent by others (fellow students, colleagues, etc.) and is determined by the specific framework conditions of the organisation. The OERlabs were able to show that this process can only be set in motion over a long period of time and that it requires the networking of different stakeholders (including their opinions, perspectives and ideas) as well as the role model role of the topic providers (the OERlabs) and the presentation and experience of the actual action processes (MSD or OpenLab work). The mere thematisation of the production of OER material does not reach these (higher) school cultural and structural limits. As mentioned earlier, student participation in seminars, for example, does not necessarily mean reflecting on one's own attitude. In addition, the limits of project work within the curricular framework become visible, among other things, through grading, evaluation and other (temporal) limitations. One solution could be to confront students from the outset with the fact that their products are made available to others (e.g. through appropriate university repositories, real school cooperations).

What do we recommend?

If you want to implement a project like OERlabs yourself, you should ask yourself a fundamental question in advance: Do you discuss licenses and their pitfalls or do you discuss didactics and the correct use of material (regardless of format and medium)? A further tip is certainly not to forget the stakeholder group of the students in any project, because: Not only the work of the students in seminars is of great importance, but also the involvement of students in all development projects and events (e.g. MSD, OpenLab) is essential for the later acceptance of the measures in the student body. However, this also means that such development projects must be implemented at every level of a university. It is therefore about teachers and students as well as cultural and structural conditions in order to initiate movements and initiate them in the longer term.

Technical University Kaiserslautern

Inspiring students for unknown topics

We started well prepared between school and university and had to put up with an immediate setback: Too few Master's students had decided on a course with a media focus, which was to establish the first OERlabs. Was it the amount of work? Or was it the seminar time on a Friday when TUK students tend to go home? Or maybe it was because the topic of OER was too unknown or because OER itself had to be created, shared and remixed? Has the unusual requirement to produce something yourself discouraged students? It is an already uncovered fallacy that motivation problems of students could be solved by the mere use and thematisation of digital media (cf. Schiefner-Rohs & Hofhues 2015). On the contrary, it is more important than ever to offer students occasions, support and advice in dealing with and producing digital media if (media) practices are to be sustainably changed. For it is often courage and the desire to experiment that students lack and which can thus be promoted. But first you have to get involved with them.

The OERlabs seminars of the TUK then took a second try and integrated the course into the bachelor courses. Registration was better here. One may take a critical view of the fact that the Lab idea is thus pressed into a seminar structure with an elective character. However, this has many advantages at the start: Not only the firmest of the student body, who already have a high affinity to the topic, are concerned with the change of school under digitalization. In addition, with the relocation of the OERlab seminars to the introductory phase, there is a justified hope that interested parties will be able to work on the project and create OER far beyond the seminar phase. And last but not least, students benefit as long as possible from the resulting collaboration structures with and within the participating institutions.

OER seminar content as process and product

The OERlabs were integrated into the seminars, which had an affinity for digital media in schools. This is where they could best be implemented in accordance with the module manual. However, such an approach also had disadvantages: There was a quasi automatic focus on the topic of digital media, even if in the first seminar the students were to develop an OER material on the topic of media pedagogy (https://www.unispectrum.de/lehr-und-lernmaterialien-im-digitalen-wandel).

A particular challenge for the students was on the one hand the open work orders, but on the other hand also the potential public action. In order to address OER not only as a product (as material), but also to clarify the development process and the associated cooperative action practice, the seminar documents were made public on the one hand, but on the other hand the student results were made publicly visible. This led to repeated discussions (not only in the seminar) about whether student results should be published. Because the 'big shock' happened when - thanks to the review case of our cooperation partner from the university library - it turned out that a film did not comply with copyright law - but was already published on the net by the students. This example made the whole problem of OER in teaching clear: If you don't want to reduce OER only to product creation, you have to map the entire process, with all its highs and lows. And here at least the option of failure (cf. Schiefner-Rohs, in print) is inherent in the seminar concept and provides students with inspiration to reflect on their own practice.

Connecting/networking between schools and university

Students had the task of preparing their own lab unit on a topic of their choice and creating their own material together with those present. They were supported by university staff as well as by media-related teachers. This cooperation was implemented in different ways: once as a classic team teaching with two teachers in other semesters(Gast, Schildkamp& van der Veen, 2017), the media-affine teacher was responsible for commenting and advising on the OER materials created. Throughout the semester, the students were thus always given a view of science and school with this type of event, so that the seminar also contributed to putting action and science knowledge in relation to each other (Wildt, 2000). In both cases, the view of school practice was appreciated by the students, even though it was not always free of conflict at one point or another.

The Open Labs were also linked to the seminars and offered to students as an additional contact point. In the summer semester of 2018, the students then had to design a session in the OpenLabs as part of the OERSeminar. It became interesting when two teachers from local schools came to the seminar and the audience mixed between OERlabs Seminar and Open Lab.

Product- and problemorientation during the seminar

However, it is not only the production of materials that pays off for us in terms of action and problem orientation, but also the design of further training courses on the subject of OER. Thus, the students not only had the task of creating materials in the OERlab seminars, but they also had to assume responsibility for slipping into the role of the teachers. Thus, the task was to design input within the framework of iMedia or to take over the content design of an OpenLab. According to the motto 'Learning by Teaching' (Renkl, 1997) we hoped here that the students would not only perceive the topic of OER from the perspective of media production, but that they would quickly reach self-efficacy by explaining each other and taking on an expert role (Shin, Jonassen & McGee, 2003; Jerusalem & Hopf, 2002).

Teacher participation

Two of the OpenLab dates designed by the students of the OER-seminars were attended by one teacher each. The teachers were involved in the material preparation and the discussions. As a result, all participants were able to benefit from contributions from teaching practice and the two teachers were able to take suggestions with them for their lessons. This constellation of event format, students and teachers resulted in a success story. One group of students remixed the wOERking memory which was created by the participants. The participants were to retain the underlying game principle, but create meaningful questions on concrete topics of school teaching. This resulted in playing fields and questionnaires for the subjects Biology, Physik and Latin. The present Latin teacher uses the Latin version of the game since then in repetition lessons outside regular lessons. More information can be found in the corresponding podcast sequence are recorded for listening. In this podcast it is addressed that pupils ask further questions, which are also available.