Authors:
Safa'a AbuJarour
1
;
Henri Pirkkalainen
2
;
Jan Pawlowski
3
;
Markus Bick
1
;
Migle Bagucanskyte
4
;
Anna Frankenberg
5
;
Raimund Hudak
5
;
Constantinos Makropoulos
6
;
Dimitra Pappa
7
;
Vassilis Pitsilis
6
;
Anne-Christin Tannhauser
5
;
Elena Trepule
4
;
Aristedes Vidalis
6
and
Airina Volungeviciene
4
Affiliations:
1
ESCP Europe, Germany
;
2
University of Jyväskylä, Finland
;
3
Ruhr West University of Applied Sciences, Germany
;
4
Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania
;
5
Duale Hochschule Baden Württemberg, Germany
;
6
National Centre for Scientific Research, Greece
;
7
National Center for Scientific Research, Greece
Keyword(s):
Open Education, Open Educational Resources, OER, Collaboration Platforms, Collaboration.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Computer-Supported Education
;
Information Technologies Supporting Learning
Abstract:
Increasing the current low uptake of Open Education Resources (OER) is a key challenge for researchers and practitioners in the field. User studies have shown that collaboration is a main success factor for successful open educational activities. However, effective collaboration in open educational contexts requires well planned processes and platforms supporting collaboration, in particular in physically distributed settings. We have been investigating the value of such platforms, their main features and user requirements to enable collaboration from immature ideas to completed resources. We used quantitative and qualitative research methods to collect insights from potential users of such collaboration platforms to validate our approach. Based on these insights, we developed a collaboration platform for open education. We validated our platform using observation groups and focus groups to identify the key design principles of powerful collaboration platforms for Open Education. Exa
mples are the need for a simple tool, use of a common terminology, and considering Intellectual Property Rights. In this paper, we present our findings from an initial validation of our collaboration platform and give recommendations towards powerful collaboration platforms for open educational contexts.
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