Open Education Week – Digital Learning Dispatches

As part of EDEN’s series of webinars during Open Education Week (1-5 March, 2021), we are pleased to be hosting a conversation with three Editors-in-Chief of well known open access journals in the area of open, online and digital education. The panel includes:

Dr Inés Gil-Jaurena, Editor-in-Chief, Open Praxis, ICDE
Dr Wim van Petegem, Editor-in-Chief, European Journal of Open, Distance and eLearning
Dr Mairead Nic Giolla Mhichil, Co-Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education

The conversation will begin by reflecting on some of the NIDL’s “good reads” published over the past year and then discusses key trends, tensions and takeaways emerging from a rich colour pallet of openly available literature. Moderated by Mark Brown, the Editors will share some of their favourite “open nuggets” available in the literature and then discuss what makes a good journal article.

The conversation aims to help demystify from an insider’s perspective what makes a paper really standout from the crowd and how each journal goes about selecting articles for publication, with tips for budding authors.

The panel also shares their own critical reading strategies where reviewing the literature to support practitioners, scholarly professionals, and new and emerging researchers to successfully locate, critique and translate contemporary theory and research into practice, and back again. By the end of this conversation participants will be better equipped and more knowledgeable about how to locate, interpret and contribute to relevant literature in their own areas of interest and educational contexts.

You can join this lively discussion at 12 noon (CET) on Tuesday 2nd March, with the registration link available on the dedicated EDEN page for Open Education Week. The first webinar in the series kicks off at 17:00 (CET) on Monday 1st March with a panel reflecting on the role of openness and professional bodies in shaping post-pandemic education.

This week is “Open Education Week” and several members of the NIDL team have already contributed, or will be over the next few days, to a range of activities and related events. On Tuesday, for example, Professor Mark Brown moderated a webinar on “The Story of the Open University” as part of EDEN’s programme of activities for the week . You can read more about this webinar and what the four distinguished panel members had to share on a blog written by Professor Grainne Conole. A recording will also be available on EDEN’s website.

On Wednesday, Professor Grainne Conole gave a presentation on “Open Education into the Future” as part of another EDEN webinar on the broader theme of “Ongoing Initiatives for Open Education in Europe“. The slides from Grainne’s talk can be accessed below and a recording will also be available on EDEN’s website:

Open education week_webinar from Grainne Conole

And on Friday in another contribution to EDEN’s webinar series, Professor Mairéad Nic Giolla Mhichíl is participating on a panel discussion on the topic of “Researching Openness – Evidenced-based Approaches“. More specifically this webinar will explore the following questions:

How openness is approach in research? Thematic overview (levels of openness, other dimensions that are addressed through research publications, e.g. open online learning, open distance learning, OER, OEP, etc.).
What impact does openness have upon education?
What kind of openness do we (society) need?
What are the characteristics of open learning, open curriculum, open education and open learner/ teacher?

Dublin City University (DCU) has a long history of Open Education and our commitment spans all three traditional pillars of university work: research, teaching and service. For example, last year DCU was the first Irish University to launch an open access press through a strategic partnership with University College London (UCL). The Open Education Unit in the NIDL continues to play a key role in the provision of online distance education through the DCU Connected platform as part of DCU’s wider mission of opening access to higher education and transforming lives and societies. Our NIDL team also makes a significant contribution to the Open Education agenda through service activities, with many of our staff serving on the executive committees of major professional bodies working in the area. There is also a strong Open Education dimension to this year’s ICDE World Conference on Online Learning that DCU is hosting in the Convention Centre Dublin in November.