Pivoting Open? Pandemic Pedagogy and the Search for Openness in the Viral Learning Environment
Published | 13 December 2021 |
Journal | Journal of Interactive Media in Education Volume 2021, Issue 1 |
Publisher | Open University |
ABSTRACT
This paper is based on the authors' experiences and reflections working in educational technology and design support roles in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. We retrace our lived experience from the beginning of the pandemic in the spring (from our vantage points in the UK and Canada) and the associated 'pivot online' enacted in education around the world, through to the autumn of 2020, when we appeared to be transitioning into a so-called 'new normal' of the mid-pandemic. As digital education practitioners, who are also educators, researchers, and also simply as humans and friends living through a global pandemic, we had turned to each other initially for support in terms of work, wellness, and sharing news, information and sense-making, during which we began to consider researching under-examined dimensions of the evolving situation. The experiences and issues we reference are drawn from our own work, as well as from our responses to popular narratives advanced by key voices who have encouraged certain interpretations of the pandemic and its educational effects. Using Schön's (1983) reflection-in-action lens, we examine these experiences and narratives of pandemic pedagogy through the frame of our multiple identities. In particular, from our perspective as researchers and advocates of open education, we noted calls for openness (such as the use of open educational resources) in response to the online pivot, which did not appear to be cutting through the noise of the sudden deluge of information, advice and broadly negative coverage of online teaching. However, through our reflective narrative and synthesis, we offer an alternative interpretation, which is that openness was nonetheless flourishing, but that the 'pivot open' was to practices rather than resources. Open exchange, community building and support amongst educators were apparent in multiple contexts. While pandemic profiteering has highlighted the need for open resources and infrastructures, and we anticipate this case continuing to be made more strongly as we emerge from the emergency, it is the turn to open practices which has met the immediate needs of educators and learners through community, interactions, sharing and care.Keywords | open educational practices · pandemic pedagogy · pivot online · learning design · COVID-19 |
Published at | UK |
Language | English |
ISSN | 1365-893X |
Refereed | Yes |
Rights | CC BY |
DOI | 10.5334/JIME.676 |
URL | http://jime.open.ac.uk/articles/10.5334/jime.676/ |
Export options | BibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar |
AVAILABLE FILES
Viewed by 473 distinct readers
CLOUD COMMUNITY REVIEWS
The evaluations below represent the judgements of our readers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cloud editors.










Click a star to be the first to rate this document
▶ POST A COMMENT
SIMILAR RECORDS
Openness in Education as a Praxis: From Individual Testimonials to Collective Voices
Bozkurt, Aras; Gjelsvik, Torunn; Adam, Taskeen; Asino, Tutaleni I.; et al.
Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this ...
Match: havemann, leo; roberts, verena; openness
Fostering openness in education: Considerations for sustainable policy-making
Atenas, Javiera; Havemann, Leo; Nascimbeni, Fabio; Villar-Onrubia, Daniel; Orlic, Davor
This paper reviews a framework to support the co-creation of policies to sustainably foster Open Education. The framework has been derived from a comprehensive review of public and Open Education policy documents and ...
Match: havemann, leo; openness
Becoming an Open Educator: Towards an Open Threshold Framework
Tur, Gemma; Havemann, Leo; Marsh, J. Dawn; Keefer, Jeffrey M.; Nascimbeni, Fabio
In this article, we propose a cross-pollination of two prominent lines of educational thought: open education (OE) and threshold concepts (TCs). Open education has gained an increased profile through the growing ...
Match: havemann, leo; open educational practices
Opening teaching landscapes: The importance of quality assurance in the delivery of open educational resources
Atenas, Javiera; Havemann, Leo; Priego, Ernesto; Gil-Jaurena, Inés
Scholars are increasingly being asked to share teaching materials, publish in open access journals, network in social media, and reuse open educational resources (OER). The theoretical benefits of Open Educational ...
Match: havemann, leo; open educational practices
Quality assurance in the open: An evaluation of OER repositories
Atenas, Javiera; Havemann, Leo
The World OER Declaration 2012 recommends that States join efforts to facilitate finding, retrieving and sharing OER. The OER movement has thus far spurred the creation of numerous repository initiatives worldwide with ...
Match: havemann, leo; open educational practices
Degrees of Openness: The emergence of Open Educational Resources at the University of Cape Town
Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Gray, Eve
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) provide a range of opportunities to share educational materials and processes in ways that are not yet fully understood. In an extraordinary development, increasing ...
Match: openness
On the role of openness in education: A historical reconstruction
Peter, Sandra; Deimann, Markus
In the context of education, “open(ness)” has become the watermark for a fast growing number of learning materials and associated platforms and practices from a variety of institutions and individuals. Open ...
Match: openness
Educating undergraduate students for openness
Hofhues, Sandra; Pensel, Sabrina; Ubachs, George; Konings, Lizzie
Overview of papers on enhancement of European Higher Education as presented during the Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference in Rome, October 2016
Current challenges in the formal education system are ...
Match: openness
Widening access through openness in higher education in the developing world: A Bourdieusian field analysis of experiences from the National Open University of Nigeria
Olakulehin, Felix Kayode; Singh, Gurmit
Bourdieu has argued that higher education is a field that reproduces social inequality, thus complicating how openness widens access to higher education in the developing world. Drawing on the experiences of the ...
Match: openness
Open educational practices and attitudes to openness across India: Reporting the findings of the Open Education Research Hub Pan-India Survey
Perryman, Leigh-Anne; Seal, Tim
In recent years India has shown a growing appetite for open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP). Despite this, there is a paucity of research on OER use and impact, the extensiveness of OEP, ...
Match: openness; open educational practices