OERlabs Openbook/Field Notes (OER-Seminars)

University of Cologne

OERlabs seminars - broadly based detailed work

University and teaching development represent a fundamental part of the project efforts in the OERlabs. To this end, there was a structural link within the project between the sub-areas and the stakeholders involved. One of these stakeholders is the group of students, more precisely the debate about students within the teacher education chain and freely available educational materials and open practices. The implementation of the round tables (see MSD Setup) represents an overarching macro-level of sustainable university and teaching development within the framework of the project. Our OERlabs seminars play a role on the meso and micro level in the course of the project. The seminars deal on the one hand with the OER topic and on the other hand build a bridge between science and profession/practice. After all, sustainability is not ensured by institutional changes alone, but also by the actors and stakeholders who pick up a topic, accept it and put it into practice.

How do OER get to the students?

In theory, this question would be easy to answer, but when formulating an answer, appropriate institutional framework conditions must be taken into account (see Number of Students: UoC Profile). More precisely, the focus of the OER topic is not on the definition of the field (e.g.: "What are OER?"; "What are licenses?"), since these points are clearly defined both by research and the practical community (see Creative Commons). Rather, the question of attitudes towards openness, cooperation and collaboration comes to the forefront. Accordingly, OER is not so much a problem for students to use as an information resource or educational material, but rather to exploit the actual potential based on the 5R permissions of Open Educational Resources:

1. Retain
2. Reuse
3. Revise
4. Remix
5. Redistribute

Based on previous experience in teaching, the joint creation and transfer/processing of OER is more likely to emerge as a difficulty in the higher education landscape. This applies not only to students, but also to lecturers and teachers, because cooperation and collaboration are possible at all levels. Understandably, this is aggravated by the fact that participants have different levels of knowledge about media technology and media law issues. In some cases (digital) media are seen as part of a media didactic arrangement, but in others they are used purely as "add-ons" to motivate or activate learners. In order to initiate cooperation and knowledge sharing along the teacher education chain and to bring all relevant actors into cooperative action, practice-oriented solutions for OER as teaching material, as well as open and collaborative educational practice with regard to school and teaching should find their place at the UzK, namely among students, future teachers and their lecturers. In order to make all this possible, the OERlabs were involved in basic teaching in the practical phases of teacher training, as well as in suitable modules in other courses of study.

Practical training/phases during teacher training and media didactics

The OERlabs seminars were located at the interfaces to the traineeship and to teacher training. The connection to the practical phases of the teacher training course and the combination of modules within media didactics made it possible to deal with the topic more intensively than before. In order to give an overview of the basic structure of the OER seminars, it should be mentioned that the corresponding courses were held in tandem (cooperative and collaborative) by experienced teachers and university lecturers. This meant that topics were taken into the courses and dealt with in a practice-oriented manner. Furthermore, the practical phases were predestined for dealing with the practical implementation of the 5-R of the OER, since, as described in more detail below, student teachers should recognize, experience and understand important connections between theory and practice in this phase. For this reason, these courses were also coordinated by the Centre for Teacher Education (ZfL), i.e. the teaching planning was in the hands of a participating cooperation partner. In addition, an OER course was embedded in the curriculum of the junior professorship Media Didactics, since the project management as junior professor was involved in the teaching with half of the teaching load anyway.

Occupational/professional internship - digital education

The work placements are part of the teacher training program at the UzK and take place in the second practical phase of the Bachelor's program. Here the students have three different possibilities to complete the vocational field internship (BFP): By spending time at a school or in an extracurricular vocational field in connection with an accompanying seminar; recognition of an activity before studying, as well as an accompanying seminar; or as a project within the framework of a seminar. There were three topic-specific seminars to choose from:

• Coding with Raspberry Pi
• Design and production of digital learning materials
• Mobile Learning at School

These three project seminars were organised within the framework of OERlabs and followed the following principles:

• Product orientation
• Practical relevance
• Application reference
• Collaboration/cooperation in learning groups
• Diversity of digital offerings
• Self-organisation
• Close supervision by lecturers
• Starting point: Curricular requirements (core curriculum)
• Not (only) OER, but OEP

Design and production of digital teaching/learning content

In contrast to the BFP seminars mentioned above, which are only aimed at students of teaching professions, the OERlabs seminar was offered through the junior professorships in media pedagogy and media didactics to students from various fields of study, including educational science, pedagogy, music mediation and intermedia. This seminar dealt with current research and practical issues in media didactics, and students had the opportunity to design, develop and, if possible and desired, implement their own learning materials within the framework of a project. Finally, the respective projects and products were presented and evaluated by an external jury from the media, publishing, educational and university environment.

Practice-related product orientation in the project

The structure of the seminars and the integration of the OER theme led to a unique working process in the OERlabs seminars, which on the one hand influenced the attitude towards open practices and freely available material among the students, and on the other hand brought the necessity of cooperative and collaborative work to the forefront through the format. The practical relevance and the theoretical context of both seminar forms brought students in the teacher education chain close to their future working environment and sensitized them equally to the use of OER material in their own teaching.

With regard to the implementation of the student projects, the OERlabs seminars made substantial reference to many aspects of the Frey project method (2010) due to their subject matter, as well as the actors and objectives. The OER was strongly based on the 5-R, which brought action-oriented learning to the forefront. In many cases the instruction was given to fall back on already existing material and to adapt this material according to one's own ideas in order to be able to continue working with it. The practical examination of material was always on the agenda, but it was pointed out and produced by the teachers themselves (see Seminar Information/Tasks for Students and Analysis sheet for digital tools) that freely available materials should be found, used and adapted.

The project groups were also instructed accordingly to reflect together on project steps, especially in the first steps of the concept, the focus was on joint reflection. Although the objective had been set, the project groups first had to formulate appropriate topics in order to be able to carry out the project. The groups always had to keep in mind that the projects or the product should not loose its practical value for learning, teaching or school and teaching. Based on the semester logic - seminars integrated into the curriculum follow the regular course of the semester, whereas BFP seminars follow a block seminar procedure (e.g. some units take place as a block seminar on a weekend and are supplemented by blind learning self-learning phases) - the project work usually lasted an entire semester. Thus, the project groups were faced with the challenge of communicating as openly as possible about the individual work process and the status of their own work, as well as learning to deal independently with situations and dynamics within the group.

Finally, the students were able to look back on a project-based work process, which not only brought with it a corresponding OER product, but could also show them much more the open practices and their potentials. In the OERlabs seminars the students were to be given the opportunity and the perspective to take with them and apply both (self-made) materials and open practices in their future working environment.

Technical University Kaiserslautern

The OER seminars at the TU Kaiserslautern are integrated into the courses of the educational science part of the teacher training course. Since there are curricular standards of teacher training in Rheinland-Pfalz, a module is sought in which the contents can be well embedded. From the structure of teacher training, three seminars were shortlisted: First, the seminar "Introduction to Media Education", which is offered in Module 2 for Bachelor students of the 2nd/3rd semester (cf. Field Note TUK). Contents are according to the module manual "Reflective, self-determined and creative handling of media under technical, practical, aesthetic-forming and emancipatory aspects: education and media competence, media concept, media development and concepts of media pedagogy, communication and media also in connection with individual impairments [...]". Students "can reflect on their own use of media and select and design media according to teaching goals and individual learning requirements". In addition, there is a seminar "Approaches and current trends in school development" in module 6 in the Master's program, in which OER could also find a home, the topic of cooperative development of teaching-learning material and open education is a focal point, which raises close intersections on school development issues. A third seminar, which would be fitting, deals with the content "Didactics of E-Learning". Students "know the most important media-specific design possibilities and can assess their application" are the learning objectives of this seminar.

The conception of the seminars should take two conditions into account: firstly, the problem of cooperation in teacher education (A) and secondly, the problem of incentive structures for something new (B).

A) Cooperation issues in teacher training

It is the declared aim of the project measures to establish and develop a cooperative culture. Such a culture benefits from the mutual exchange of intellectual resources and knowledge between the participants and in turn makes this knowledge available, which in turn can lead to the emergence of collective knowledge. Cooperation is a central construct for school quality and school effectiveness (Fend 1998; Dalin & Rolff 1990; Dalin 1999; Ditton 2000, Rolff 1998), but it is mainly investigated in the context of organisational development (e.g. Bauer 2002; Dalin & Rolff 1990), rarely in the context of professionalisation issues. Questions of cooperative media action along the teachers' education chain therefore remain largely unanswered from a media pedagogical point of view. In this context, cooperative media action means joint development and exchange; the mere exchange of materials among one another is less relevant. Almost two thirds of teachers already regularly exchange teaching materials with each other (Richter & Pant, 2016). These materials, however, always remain in the same evaluation circle, where little of their development and individualization potential can unfold. The professional achievements of teachers are thus excluded from the possibilities of being known, shared and further developed in growing networks, whereby specialist knowledge is lost and cooperation in larger networks becomes virtually impossible (cf. Manila 2013). Richter & Pant (2016) state: "The results have shown that most teachers in Germany regularly exchange information and materials related to teaching within the teaching staff, but time-consuming and complex forms of cooperation are rare and can only be observed with a small group of teachers". (Richter & Pant, 2016, p. 34)). In addition, findings from other empirical studies show that even teaching and learning materials are hardly developed jointly (Ihme et al., 2009). The aim of the OERlabs is therefore to establish a culture of joint "creation" and sharing that creates occasions for collaboration in all stages of OER use, production and dissemination. We wanted to illustrate this in the seminars as well. So it was important to us that we sensitize students of teaching professions to OER in a cooperative way and that we integrate school practice from the beginning. To a large extent, teaching is still individual action, cooperation hardly takes place. At the same time, the OERlabs seminars are also an opportunity not only to make cooperation visible through the topic of the seminar, but also to live it in its design. Teamteaching is a possibility to make cooperative teaching visible (Krick & Reich, 2016). Therefore we were looking for teachers from practice who could support us in the organization of the seminars. The OERlabs will be accompanied by an external lecturer who will ensure the right balance between advising and supporting students and their peer-to-peer learning processes in line with the lab concept. As Director of Studies, Head of Department at the State Study Seminar of the Saarland and OER Coach, she brings along an alternative (open) practice and has already initiated the advisory circle, in which the students deal with specialist knowledge, exchange their own generated knowledge and thus approach open educational practices. A student assistant supported the development of these OERlabs seminars and founded the Tutor model by developing into an OER coach. It acts as an additional communicator between experts, consultants and students.

B) Organization of work processes and knowledge management

Even in schools that use digital media and employ motivated teachers, media are usually seen in a narrow context of the educational technology approach, which leads teachers to use technologies only for learning (cf. Schiefner-Rohs & Hofhues 2015) and thus to remain with their concepts, materials and experiences either within themselves or within their colleagues. Media to support everyday work processes - also in class preparation and follow-up - are usually rarely discussed. Thus, in addition to the cooperation problem, a narrower concept of media and the blind spot of the work process organisation become the topic of OERlabs. In addition, there are individual reservations about working with OER. These concern, for example, the potential "gifting" of intellectual property from which others could gain an unfair advantage (cf. Malina & Bonarius 2013). These reservations can prevent productive knowledge management among teachers. The OERlabs have taken these as their starting points in order to create new incentive structures for teachers to approach collaborative media work with the help of OER.

The OERlabs seminars also focus on the following aspects:

• Overall societal developments in digitization, migration and inclusion that lead to increasingly heterogeneous learning (and teaching) groups and therefore make adaptable, individualisable teaching and corresponding materials and methods indispensable. This teaching guidance is made possible by OER practices.
• OER become interesting for reasons of independence: the material can be constantly updated without having to wait for new books or materials. In addition, teachers benefit from the experience of others on a specific subject, and there may not yet be any publications.
• In the seminar evaluations of the teacher training offers, it is usually criticised that only the use of media and media pedagogical competence training can be discussed and discussed in theory, but that there is no concrete practical relevance. This changes due to the concrete work assignments associated with the creation of OER and the exchange of information on it. At the TU KL, various cooperation partners will also offer concrete occasions and support in the labs for the production of media.
• With regard to copyright protection, OER licensing is a very secure way to protect intellectual property. Today, digital content is so easily distributed and shared in so many ways that the license can at least ensure the attribution of the material to the original author, thus reducing the incentive for others not to cite the source.

The OER seminars are oriented towards action-oriented media education (Schorb, 2008), in which "it is not the media, but the appropriating individuals in their social context, in which media play an essential role, who are at the centre of media education efforts (...)" (ibid., p. 77), but also project learning according to Frey (2002) such as student orientation (students focus on their own questions), reality orientation (complex phenomena of current social discourse are addressed) and product orientation (e.g. by designing a continuing education course or producing teaching and learning material). Both aspects serve the professional development of students with regard to the acquisition of competences relevant to the work process, especially in the teaching profession.

In the summer semester 2017 there will be a total of five four-hour classroom sessions for bachelor students at TU KL's Media Pedagogy Seminar between May and July, which will provide a framework for the first OERlabs. The sessions deal with finding, creating and sharing OER and later also with their further development, quality assurance and possible uses for and by OER. The seminar also takes up media pedagogical theories and concepts and relates them to OER practices. As "highlight" and quasi "product" of the first OERlabs seminar the students prepare a Workshop on iMedia in Mainz on 30 May at the Open Educational Resources Forum for the participants to prepare, design, implement and reflect on their own responsibility (documented in the blog and wiki!). (see Projektwiki/OERlab). By making the OER practices accessible to others (teachers), the security in one's own dealings with OER is strengthened and new impulses and conceptual thoughts from the workshops are collected for the progress of the OERlabs. In the seminar "Didactics of E-Learning" (Master level), a seminar unit was used for the topic of copyright with OER insertion. Students of the bachelor's seminar in media pedagogy developed a lecture on this subject and had a copyright/license memory created in the group work phase. This not only made a networking with school practice visible, but also a vertical networking between students of the Bachelor and Master phases.

In the winter semester 2017/2018, this concept was implemented in a similar way, only at one point or another refined or adapted to the semester structure. Once again, the focus was on designing a continuing education event at iMedia as a product, but this time with a focus on school development. The teacher was integrated by Skype for support, the documentation took place in an OLAT course. Students designed OpenLabs events in this seminar. In the 2018 summer semester, the seminar was to be expanded to include school development issues, but did not take place as planned due to a lack of registrations.