Author: Lori-Beth Larsen
Institution: Central Lakes College
Country: United States
Topic: Connecting Open Education to Primary and Secondary (K-12) Education
Sector: K-12
UNESCO Area of Focus: Building capacity
Session Format: Poster
Abstract
The aim of this poster session is to highlight two practical experiences of collaboration to implement open education in secondary education (K-12). It will describe our initiative to advance open education secondary education (K-12) in four mid-Minnesota rural high schools in collaboration with our college, Central Lakes College in Brainerd, Minnesota, USA. One of the OER we created in this collaboration uses the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals in an Introduction to Global Studies course. The other is a Critical Literacy textbook that encourages inclusive and equitable practices with a quality OER. We are connecting the Global Open Education Community. Our community college, Central Lakes College in Brainerd, Minnesota, USA runs a College in the Schools program. In this program, students participate in concurrently enrolled courses offered by their local high school taught by their high school instructors in collaboration with CLC Faculty mentors and receive college credit. This year I collaborated with two high school teachers to create OER for a Critical Literacy class and an OER for Introduction to Global Studies course. As we continue collaborating within the CIS program, we hope to contribute to effective practices in education by encouraging and furthering the use of open education, particularly in secondary education. In the first collaboration, Joy Davis, a secondary Spanish language teacher and I worked together to redesign and create an Open Education Resource to be used in both college and high school course for Introduction to Global Studies using the UN Sustainable Development Goals as an outline. We’ve created this resource from a variety of sources. Each section includes Essential Questions, Learning Activities, and an Assessment piece. We have primarily used reflective journaling for assessment. We wanted to use Open Pedagogy. In this resource, we’ve labeled the Open Pedagogy activities as “Renewable Assignments”. Much of this resource came from “Sustainable Foundations: A Guide for Teaching the Sustainable Development Goals” The guide was modeled after an inquiry approach; where learners are stimulated with questions and information about a particular issue to construct new knowledge and understanding. In this approach, educators become facilitators of learning, with students empowered to become self-directed as they explore each issue individually and collectively. In the second collaboration, Kathleen Porter and I (CLC Reading instructors) worked with Mitchell Denny, a high school English teacher to redesign our Critical Literacy course to be offered as a CIS course using Open Educational Resources. The Open Education Resource redesigned from this collaboration aligns the secondary curricula with the postsecondary curricula for the purpose of helping more secondary students be prepared for college level literacy skills. This collaborative project addresses opportunity gaps and outcome disparities across student groups by narrowing some of the literacy gaps for students entering college.Keywords
Secondary, Postsecondary, Global, Literacy, Connection, Collaboration
