Open Educational Resources as the Third Pillar in Project-Based Learning During COVID-19

Claartje Rasterhoff,Costas Papadopoulos,Susan Schreibman

doi:10.18357/kula.205

Abstract

Teaching in higher education in the Netherlands was affected, as in most other parts of the world, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper reflects on how two courses were taught and experienced by students during the 2020–21 academic year in the MA Media Studies: Digital Cultures at Maastricht University. It particularly focuses on how the integration of open educational resources into the course design, what we call a third pedagogic pillar, contributed to the success of the two courses and students’ positive learning experience.

Highlights

Teaching in higher education in the Netherlands has been affected, as in most other parts of the world, due to the COVID-19 pandemic
At Maastricht University (UM), teaching in the 2020–21 academic year went from a fairly optimistic first term (September–November), in which students by and large attended classes in person while adhering to social distancing measures, to an increasingly fragmented and constrained teaching environment in our second term (November–December), in which we rapidly pivoted to a good deal of online teaching and blended learning
This paper reflects on how two courses were taught and experienced by students during the 2020–21 academic year in the Media Studies: Digital Cultures (MADC) at UM, focusing on how open educational resources (OERs) contributed to the students’ positive learning experience during COVID-19

Summary

Introduction

Teaching in higher education in the Netherlands has been affected, as in most other parts of the world, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The integration of #dariahTeach’s OERs in what were essentially online critical making processes resembles how students create and navigate information and knowledge outside academia Based on this year’s experience with designing and teaching these two courses, this paper argues that online, multimodal, and project-based ways of learning should be fundamental to how we teach in the post-pandemic classroom. For DT&M, it was used as an alternative modality to teach theory supporting the students’ own design/making projects (Figure 3), while with CDC it was used mainly to teach students the workflow for digitising objects in 3D, from capturing and processing to publishing them online (Figure 4) For both courses, we did not follow the respective #dariahTeach courses in their entirety but selected those sections that aligned with our learning objectives. It will draw from various sources: 1) students’ responses to the formal evaluation questionnaires; 2) instructors’ observations and informal discussions with students in feedback sessions

Design Thinking & Maker Culture

Conclusion