Abstract:

This study makes a case for the design of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the classroom as a model to implement new participary processes and enhance inclusion through co-created learning in higher education. It underlines the potential of a whole-class approach to systematically integrate these practices across the entire curriculum and to reach a larger number of students, thus ensuring maximum accessibility.

UNESCO defines Open Educational Resources (OER) as “teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions.”

The study includes a detailed examination of an ongoing project conducted at the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of North Florida, which aims at developing Open Educational Resources in both lower and upper-level courses of the Spanish Program (SPN2201, SPN3300, SPW3242, SPW3030, SPW4600, FOT3500, and SPW3100). It specifically involves the design of bilingual digital adaptations of Spanish classic works for people with reading difficulties, data visualization for literary analysis, and VR educational materials. The model also focuses on community-based learning and undergraduate research.

The design and development of Open Educational Resources in the classroom offers many opportunities to implement co-creation of learning across the curriculum and to reach the highest possible number of students; very few titles in pedagogical literature focus in co-creation of learning from a whole-class approach (Bovill 2019), so this study hopes to contribute to a topic that has enjoyed very little attention.

Keywords:

Co-created learning, Open Educational Resources.