Abstract
This paper presents findings from the first half of a study focusing on workforce competence (WFC) and open educational practices (OEP) in a core unit for university students. Approximately 500 students per semester from across college disciplines take the unit in cultural studies. This unit has been redeveloped by our team at a university in remote northern Australia with a well-established blended delivery practice. I used developmental evaluation and content analysis to identify criteria for developing WFC skills in unit content, students’ feedback, and work samples. Initial findings suggest that OEP, interdisciplinary use of educational technology and critical pedagogies embed WFC skills for many students. Students endorsed how we used technologies, OEP and unit content as vehicles for desirable skills. OEP can cultivate workforce skills in different qualifications and could sidestep the conflicting dilemmas graduates face with futures that demand flexibility and specific job fit. This short piece shares initial analysis of emergent links between OEP and WFC and points to ways OEP, related interactions and workforce skills can improve learning design strategies across the education sector.
Highlights
FunkJournal of InteractiveCovid-19 pressures, funding restructures, and loss of international students has increased scrutiny on university education
Collaborative pedagogies contributes to job readiness within blended delivery and interdisciplinary contexts
open educational practices (OEP) are conceptualised as multiple entry points to learning and openness (Cronin & Maclaren 2018)
Summary
Covid-19 pressures, funding restructures, and loss of international students has increased scrutiny on university education. This paper summarises some findings of my Global OER Research Network (GO-GN) fellowship, focused on workforce competence (WFC) in OEP This fellowship examined links between the use of critical pedagogy and OEP to develop WFC via blended delivery in largescale learning. Critical use of learning technology and OEP can re-present (Freire 1970) workforce knowledge and authentic, collaborative, context-embedded practice (Cummins 1996, 2000; DeRosa & Robison 2015). Relying on expensive digital tools exacerbates divides between world class and remotely situated and lower profile ‘bush’ colleges (Czerniewicz 2018) This limits opportunities for which blended delivery and distance education exist (Prinsloo 2016). The shifts required are increased student participation and empowerment (Arinto, Hodgkinson-Williams &Trotter 2017), reliant on non-automatable human agency, adaptability, collaboration, creativity, and problem solving
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