CAS Digital Learning in Emergencies (2022-23)/module4-Bashour

Introduction

This page is part of CAS Digital Learning in Emergencies (module 4) and is prepared by Fida Bashour

I developed this page as part of CAS Digital Learning in Emergencies. Certified Advanced Studies (DLiE) is a studying program launched by the University of Geneva to build the necessary knowledge and skills to understand the strength and complexity of digital learning in emergencies. Digital learning is a valuable tool in emergency situations. It can help maintain the educational link despite a context of adversity.

Objective of CAS DLE

• Develop knowledge about emergency contexts and the educational issues related to them

• Develop knowledge of different pedagogical tools that allow for the distancing of teaching

• Develop skills in program design

• Develop skills in digital literacy

• Critically analyze distance learning projects

• Develop skills in Open Education training design

• Develop cross-disciplinary digital skills

The Programme consists of 4 modules:

• Distance education in Higher education in emergencies contexts: experiences and lessons learned

• Course Design and Development in Distance Education

• Foundations in Digital Literacy

• Open Education in emergencies contexts: comparative and international perspective.
I completed a Master degree in Business Administration and a Bachelor degree in Economics from Damascus University and I am planning to complete the international master with university of Geneva. This program is part of it.

I work as Associate Program and Research Officer at UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education in the Arab States since 2016.

I am actively working in the field of Education and digital learning. I perform tasks related to the production of SDG4 Regional Policy briefs and country profiles. Conduct research and reference searches on issues related to Education, compile and analyze data on Education.

I contribute to program conceptualization, implementation, Monitoring and evaluation related to Syria National Education System strengthening namely EMIS, Educational Management information system with a focus on the integration of digital pedagogy in the programs that are adapted to humanitarian contexts and on innovative learning pathways for learners living in challenging circumstances. https://www.linkedin.com/in/fida-bashour-056413a4/ My future goal is to establish a training center in Syria, this course is very much useful to me to better perform my work projects and duties.

Module Learning outcomes

1. Identify concepts such as Open Educational Practices, open content and open pedagogy.

2. Become familiar with Open Educational Resources and the 5R Activities

3. Be aware of UNESCO Recommendation on OER

4. Be able to make initial readings in open education literatures

5. Apply Open Licenses to the content.

Time necessary:40 hours

Detailed description

The project is composed of five steps:

1. Describe the resources; set objectives; specify the target audience; design learning activities; choose learning environment; specify assessment.

2. Find relevant OER for the project.

3. Script activities with Open Educational Practices.

4. Reflect and design evaluation criteria to create an Open Badge.

5. Publish and share the project on an Open platform.

learning schedule
Activity	Duration	Date	Product / output
Define the project, i.e. describe the resources; set objectives; specify target audience; design learning activities; choose learning environment; specify assessment	6 hours	19 -20 Dec 2022	Project designed
Project Open Education Resources	7 hours	21-23 Dec 2022	OER for the project are chosen
Script 1 activity with OEP	6 hours	26-29 Dec 2022	Script activity is prepared
Design evaluation criteria	6 hours	30-31 Dec 2022	Evaluation criteria is identified
Create an Open badge	5 hours	2-4 Jan 2023	Open badge created
Publish and share the project on the chosen Open platform	10 hours	5-6 Jan 2023	Project published

Main resources

UNESCO. (2019). Recommendation on Open Educational Resources http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=49556&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

• UNESCO. (2021). Recommendation on Open Science https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379949.locale=en •
UNESCO (2012). Paris declaration on OER. http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/Events/English_Paris_OER_Declaration.pdf •
UNESCO (no date).https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/sdg-goal-4
Open Education page on EduTechWikihttps://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Open_Education
Open Educational Resources page on EduTechWiki //edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Open_educational_resources
Open Educational Resources (OER)https://nsufl.libguides.com/oer
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11528-016-0095-7
https://www.open.edu/openlearn/education-development/open-education?active-tab=description-tab
https://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/CAS_Digital_Learning_in_Emergencies_(2022-23)

Project Open Educational Resources

Title	URL	Type of openness/ Licensing
The Virtual University and e-learning	https://campus.iiep.unesco.org/	CC By
Distance Learning	https://www.schoolcraft.edu/distance-learning/resources/open-educational-resources-oer/	CC By
Openness in Education Over the Last 100 Years.	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-016-0095-7	© Author/Publisher
Rapid Teacher Training Program on Distance, Open and Online Learning	https://openlearning.unesco.org/courses/course-v1:UNESCO+UNESCO-05+2021_01/course/	CC By
Using Flipped Classroom when teaching online	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hLOUlbAgs0&t=68s	Public Domain
Distance Education in Emergencies Background Paper	https://inee.org/resources/distance-educationemergencies	CC BY
Distance learning strategies in response to COVID-19 school closures	• https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000373305	CC By

Context: Distance learning and open education in emergencies

The education was deeply affected by emergency situation. Educational institutions unable to provide face-to-face education tried to continue their activities via distance education. As a result of the emergency open education could be an alternative to continue learning process during the Covid-19. Open and Distance Learning is a general term for the use of telecommunication to provide or enhance learning and to achieve an extended or distributed learning experience. It could be any learning activities within informal, non-formal and formal domains that are facilitated by ICT to lessen distance, and to increase interactivity and communication among learners, learning sources, and facilitators. It is a system of education that attempts to remove the administrative and educational bottlenecks experienced in the traditional face-to-face system and brings about self-directed and flexibility in learning such as place and time of learning.

Distance learning or distance education as the delivery mode of instruction refers to a learning environment in which teachers and students are physically distant and interaction occurs via technological affordances, open learning refers to a learning process where potential barriers are removed in order to address the needs of the students by enabling available free resources to study at their own pace.

Distance learning is booming across the globe with so many technologies being developed but also with the varied needs of the learners nowadays. Many education institutions have adopted distance learning as a main modality in their education.

Digital learning refers to any type of learning that uses technology. Anything that involves digital platforms, tools, systems, and applications by learners pertains to digital learning. This means that online courses, conducting internet research, even watching online videos, or using digital tools and devices face-to-face with their teacher in a traditional classroom are all considered digital learning.

The COVID-19 pandemic that hit the world since 2020 had a significant impact on education (García-Morales, Garrido-Moreno, and Martín-Rojas, 2021). The pandemic disrupted teaching and research in higher education resulting in a loss in revenue streams and human resources. According to UNESCO (2022), the abrupt closures due to lockdown affected more than 90% of the world’s student population and resulted in massive closures of educational institutions in more than 190 countries around the world. More than 1.5 billion students and youth across the planet have been affected by schools and universities closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic (UNESCO, 2022).
Why digital learning and open education during emergencies: learners will be able to access learning materials and collaborate with their tutors and peers online can enjoy flexible, engaging and motivating courses of study. Digital education can expand the reach of learning to communities who could otherwise be excluded and provides scope for rewarding, personalized and self-directed study. Teachers have not prepared their learning content to adapt to online and distance learning, and preparing such content takes time. There is a need for effective pedagogical approaches: New effective pedagogical approaches are needed to keep learners motivated and engaged during distance learning

To ensure the continuity of curriculum-based study and learning for all particularly in emergency context. It is recommended that decision-makers at the institutional and national levels, as well as technology innovators, invest in quality, effective, inclusive, and equitable forms of Distance Education and open education to meet context-specific needs. This will enable them to fulfill international commitments, including those focused on human rights and SDG4, and to do so in a way that ensures that education will leave no one behind.

The importance of open educational practices during COVID-19

To help overcome the problem of limited time to prepare online learning content, teachers should make use of the thousands of open educational resources (OER) published and available in other national and international repositories as well as public online tools, platforms, and enabling technologies

Title of the designed learning programme/course

Rapid Teacher training - Distance and Open Education in Crisis Context

My project detailed description

The project aims to promote OE, help the learners understand how to use OER and asking them to contribute to OER by publishing their work. The learners will be asked to read some resources that discuss OER and to ensure they understood the basic concepts of OE. At the end, learners have to design a project and publish it online as an OER.

Global goal

1-To strengthen educators’ digital-pedagogical competencies to drive equitable, inclusive learning for all learners, building resilience to adapt to the evolving contexts.

2- To encourage effective, inclusive and equitable access to quality OER.

Local objective

1- To strengthen teachers' digital-pedagogical capacities to flexibly respond to the current crises at the country level.

2- To build teachers capacity to create, access, re-use, adapt and redistribute OE

Project Learning Outcomes

• Understand the issues in open education

• Present the 5R characteristics of OER

• Explain the importance of Digital and Open learning in emergencies

Project design

The teachers training on Distance and open Education consists of two level courses: Basic skills and Advance skills. The first level consists of three module (Basic skills) 40 hours of teaching, the modules are:

Module 1: Introduction to open and distance learning for teachers (14 hours)
Module 2: Distance education strategies and tools (12 hours)
Module 3: online and blended learning (14 hours)

The Second level consists four modules: (advance skills) 38 teaching hours

Module 1: Planning lessons and developing content for remote learning (14 hours)
Module 2: Production of audio-visual educational materials (12 hours)
Module 3: Remote digital educational content (12 hours)
Module 4: Assessment in the distance education process (12 hours)

There will be different types of learning activities.

• Digital resources, Presentation slides and reading materials will be shared with learners

Targeted learners

• 30 Syrian teachers who have at least 5 years of experience and familiar with digital skills
• Age between 30- 55 years old.

OE Activities for project learners

Caption text

Activity	Time to finish	Evaluation	Reward
Read UNESCO recommendations on Open Science and on OER from the resources	6 Hours	Short report to identify concepts of open education and OER and for the quizzes please refer to https://player.graasp.org/f6bfb85f-daea-4651-82a2-0bb237cae3dc	Assignment grade and to pass the quizzes
Read resources on the 5 Rs of using OE For example: https://nsufl.libguides.com/oer/5rs https://opencontent.org/definition/	6 Hours	short report (Present the 5R characteristics of OER )	Assignment grade
Complete one module on Rapid Teacher Training Programme on Distance, Open and Online Learning	18 Hours	assessment https://discovery.openlearning.unesco.org/learning/course/course-v1:UNESCO+UNESCO-06+2022_01/block-v1:UNESCO+UNESCO-06+2022_01+type@sequential+block@5161547f5f9248b9bdd78729fb60c0ea/block-v1:UNESCO+UNESCO-06+2022_01+type@vertical+block@b331aa2462f5478faa4efcce2ba8ab32	badge

Tools for publications

The following methods are some online, free, and widely used platforms that could be used to publish your work, and contribute to open education. However, any other tools are welcomed as long as its online, accessible, and free.

1- YouTube video

2- Wikipedia

3- Podcast apps

4- Personal blogs

5- Social media such as Twitter, Facebook, etc…

6- Commons network

Pedagogical approaches

1. The Constructivist Approach

The constructivist approach is based on the concept of constructivism. This is the belief that learners create their own understanding of the world around them, and this understanding is based on experience through their everyday lives as they grow. Using specific experiences, people transform information they’ve accumulated into knowledge and understanding.

This approach is handy for allowing learners to take a more active role in the learning process, as it encourages them to use their previous knowledge as a foundation for understanding new concepts, as opposed to passively receiving information.

2. The Collaborative Approach

The collaborative approach puts a big emphasis on collaborative learning, which is the idea that learners work together to gain a greater understanding of the information they’ve been presented with. The strength of this approach is that learners can capitalize on each other’s understanding of the information, and even their unique skills and resources.

This process allows for learners to create an environment where people can interact with each other by sharing experiences and knowledge. This can be done in a variety of ways, including exchanging ideas and information, and even evaluating or monitoring somebody else’s work.

https://www.twinkl.ch/teaching-wiki/5-pedagogical-approaches

• Videos and demos, learners- system interaction activities used in the learning project

• Collaborative learning activities by peers group discussion

• Work modalities are synchronous and asynchronous

• Tools: Web conferencing tools, padlet, Moodle and zoom

• Digital resources, Presentation slides and reading materials shared with learners

Open Pedagogy

Open pedagogy is a set of teaching and learning practices that is only possible in the context of the free access and 5R (reuse, redistribute, revise, remix and retain) permissions characteristic of open educational resources (Wiley, 2013).

https://jwu.pressbooks.pub/openpedagogyapproaches/

Open Assessment

The process of learning verification and feedback that takes place collaboratively, mediated by free access tools in which teachers produce or adapt assessment resources and students adapt and reshape these resources for the purpose of generating for themselves an assessment that meets their personal needs, learning styles and context (Chiappe, 2012).

• Graded Group work and assignments

Learners will be asked to do a small project based on the topics they selected, and the OERs they chose to analyze. The project could be in writing or producing a video, or a game, and the learner will publish his work as an OER. The Evaluation will be an open evaluation. Every Learner will be asked to discuss the work with their peers and provide a reflection report on their collaborative work. In addition to summative assessment through the final assignment and grading using a holistic rubric with four criteria and weight scales

Evaluation of the learning project

Full marks > 20 points A holistic rubric with four criteria and weight scales for a group presentation to present the challenges of open education learning to ensure that learners are able to analyze the challenges of Open Education.

Caption text

Criteria	Score scale
The analysis takes into account the reality in a holistic way. The practice used for assessing these four aspects, was valid and justified with evidence. Each aspect introduced is adequately discussed are clearly identified and stated. The style is concise, the language is clear	0 – 8
Demonstration of a clear understanding of the topic throughout the presentation. Stays on topic and writes clearly and distinctly	0 - 6
Collaboration with peers Almost always listens to, shares with, and supports the efforts of others in the group. Tries to keep people working well together.	0 - 3
Comprehension Learner is able to accurately answer almost all questions posed by peers about the topic.	0 - 3
Total	X / 20 pts

References

https://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/CAS_Digital_Learning_in_Emergencies_(2022-23)

https://player.graasp.org/f6bfb85f-daea-4651-82a2-0bb237cae3dc

https://www.twinkl.ch/teaching-wiki/5-pedagogical-approaches