Abstract
Open Data is the name given to datasets which have been generated by international organisations, governments, NGOs and academic researchers, and made freely available online and openly-licensed. These datasets can be used by educators as Open Educational Resources (OER) to support different teaching and learning activities, allowing students to gain experience working with the same raw data researchers and policy-makers generate and use. In this way, educators can facilitate students to understand how information is generated, processed, analysed and interpreted. This paper offers an initial exploration of ways in which the use of Open Data can be key in the development of transversal skills (including digital and data literacies, alongside skills for critical thinking, research, teamwork, and global citizenship), enhancing students’ abilities to understand and select information sources, to work with, curate, analyse and interpret data, and to conduct and evaluate research. This paper also presents results of an exploratory survey that can guide further research into Open Data-led learning activities. Our goal is to support educators in empowering students to engage, critically and collaboratively, as 21st century global citizens.
Highlights
The illusion of access promoted by computers provokes a confusion between the presentation of information and the capacity to use, sort and interpret it. (Brabazon, 2001)In today’s information society, knowledge must be constructed by critically analysing streams of information from various sources and formats, and by understanding data and becoming capable of analysing and interpreting it
Higher education is already seeing a turn towards the development of transversal skills, which are defined by UNESCO (2015) as “critical and innovative thinking, inter-personal skills; intra-personal skills, and global citizenship” (p. 4); and as Rychen & Salganik (2003) note for the OECD, “certain areas of competence are needed in the labour market and in private relationships, in political engagement and so on, and it is these transversal competencies that are defined as key” (p. 7)
Our purpose in this paper is to consider how curricula can enable students to engage more frequently with the needs of society through critical engagement with raw data - which is increasingly made available by international organisations, governments, NGOs and academic research institutions as ‘Open Data’
Summary
Educational Resources: Towards Transversal Skills and Global Citizenship. This is the published version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. Reuse: Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. Open Data as Open Educational Resources: Towards transversal skills and global citizenship
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