Dissertations (Educational Technology)
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Item The Second Wave: The Impact of Digital and Open Practices on Faculty Scholarship in Higher Education(2024) Kehoe, Inba; Irvine, Valerie; Siemens, Raymond GeorgeOne of the noblest duties of the university is to enable and encourage “intellectual endeavour, valuing scholarship for its own worth and fostering a collaborative spirit in the furtherance of society” (Enabling Open Scholarship, 2016). The advent of the World Wide Web and ancillary advancements in technology have not only opened up scholarship for greater access, but created a transformation in the scholarly practice. The challenges faculty experienced in adopting new practices were examined and whether they straddled all domains of scholarly practice (e.g., research, teaching, and service), how universities measured impact and quality in this new publishing landscape, and what benchmarks existed for evaluating these forms of non-traditional scholarship. In this study, a phenomenographical approach was employed to understand the impact open scholarship practices have had on academic scholars employed at a university in Western Canada. An embedded triangulation mixed methods design approach was used for this multiphase study to obtain different but complementary data on the lived realities of scholars at the University. Phase 1 included a survey using an explanatory sequential design. After the data collection and analysis were completed, individual in-person semi-structured interviews were conducted. Phase 2 of the study included the analysis of a selection of primary university documents related to tenure and promotion. Finally, a joint analysis approach was used to present the findings from the mixed methods study (i.e., quantitative and qualitative studies). Six themes emerged from the study that highlighted ways participants conducted research (access to research and tools used), their adoption of open intentions and initiatives and use of social media platforms and social networks, accountability and transparency of university policies and guidelines, types of research outputs produced, and criteria for faculty evaluation. Based on the implications from these findings, five recommendations were offered for enacting change: establish administrative accountability, make all tenure and promotion documents openly accessible, broadly define scholarship, broaden the scope of impact, and develop a values-based framework model for assessment.Item Exploring educators experiences implementing open educational practices(2018-12-17) Paskevicius, Michael; Irvine, ValerieThis research focuses on how educators are using openly accessible sources of knowledge and open-source tools in ways that impact their pedagogical designs. Using a phenomenological approach with self-identifying open education practitioners, I explore how open educational practices (OEP) are being actualized in formal higher education and impacting learning design. Specifically, I examine how educators are bringing elements of openness into their everyday teaching and learning practice using educational technologies. I draw upon Giddens (1986) structuration theory, further developed for use in technology adoption research most notably by DeSanctis and Poole (1994) and Orlikowski (2000). This approach positions technologies as being continually socially constructed, interpreted, and put into practice. In an organizational context, the use of technology is intrinsically linked with institutional properties, rules and norms, as well as individual perceptions and knowledge. The findings suggest that OEP represents an emerging form of learning design, which draws from existing models of constructivist and networked pedagogy. Open technologies are being used to support and enable active learning experiences, presenting and sharing learners work in real-time, allowing for formative feedback, peer review, and ultimately, promoting community-engaged coursework. By designing learning in this way, faculty offer learners an opportunity to consider and practice developing themselves as public citizens and develop the knowledge and literacies for working with copyright and controlling access to their online contributions, while presenting options for extending some of those rights to others. Inviting learners to share their work widely, demonstrates to them that their work has inherent value beyond the course and can be an opportunity to engage with their community. Dataset available: https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/CA77BB