Open Educational Resources (OER) have taken higher education by storm because they provide students greater access to course materials and instructors greater instructional flexibility. Yet, OER creation and use have been quite limited in prekindergarten through high school (PreK-12) educational contexts. A study of K-12 educators in the United States found that only 5% of those surveyed utilized OER, with only 31% indicating they had an awareness of OER (Seaman & Seaman, 2020). Yet, K-12 educators overwhelmingly rated OER curriculum as high quality and effective at encouraging deeper learning. It is clear that more work is needed to increase awareness of OER in PreK-12 education and increase the breadth of materials available.
Teacher education programs provide a unique opportunity to not only increase awareness of OER, but also develop open materials as part of the learning process. This session will share the results of a study in which nine graduate-level teacher education candidates participated in a renewable assignment as part of a course. Based on an open pedagogy approach, a renewable assignment is one in which the artifact produced has value to others beyond the course, leverages the permissions of OER, and is made available publicly. In this study, the candidates produced an open resource for teaching and learning by creating, adapting, or remixing existing OER and were invited to submit their finished artifact to OER Commons (
http://oercommons.org). Utilizing a convergent mixed methods research design (Creswell & Creswell, 2018), we collected quantitative and qualitative data through a survey, interviews, and artifacts to explore the decisions and perspectives of the teacher education candidates as they engaged in OER development. Results showed that the majority of candidates (67%) created a new resource; yet, only a few (33%) decided to share their resources openly. The teacher education candidates largely viewed the renewable assignment design as a valuable learning experience. While candidates’ reported increased awareness and understanding of OER and demonstrated positive beliefs about the value and effectiveness of OER, their self-efficacy stymied their willingness to share their work openly.
We aim to share valuable insights, challenges, and implications from our research for engaging teacher education candidates in PreK-12 OER development by reimagining coursework and assignments.
Learning Outcomes:
- Participants will consider key findings and insights about how to prepare primary and secondary educators to use and design OER through teacher education coursework.
- Participants will learn about a model for integrating renewable assignments within teacher education coursework.
- Participants will discuss implications for and challenges of developing PreK-12 OER in teacher education coursework and assignments.
