Open educational resources and practices

Open educational practices (OEPs) involve the use of open educational resources and open technologies that facilitate collaborative and flexible learning. They aim to improve the quality of teaching and learning and promote innovative educational practices that involve social interaction, co-creation of knowledge and peer learning, and which recast traditional teacher/learner roles in less hierarchical power relations. This conceptualisation of OEP also relates to open pedagogy and open digital pedagogy, with their focus on dialogue, on bringing disparate learning spaces together, and on questioning the power relations that exist within and outside HE.

Open education initiatives have had a considerable influence on the practice of language teaching and learning. Now also a growing research area, practices such as sharing, re-use, the use of creative commons and other open licenses, and new modes of learning such as massive open online courses (MOOCs), student participation in online peer production communities (such as Wikipedia or the TED Open Translation Project), or language learning in the wild have received attention from educators and communication experts.

Entry requirements

Minimum 2:1 undergraduate degree (or equivalent) and an MA or research methods training at MA level (or equivalent). If you are not a UK citizen, you may need to prove your knowledge of English.

Potential research projects

• Volunteer translation communities online
• MOOCs for language learning, translation and professional development
• Motivation in language MOOCs
• Open educational resources and professional practices of language teachers
• Open education and informal language learning

Current/recent research projects

• Teacher's Practices through Adaptation of Open Educational Resources for Online Language Teaching
• Experiences of Online Volunteer Translation and Implications for Translation Education
• Predicting successful completion of MOOC
• MOOC as a business tool to improve recruitment of nursing students
• MOOC learning trajectories
• Testing the effectiveness of MOOCs as a vehicle for professional development of educators in further education
• Using MOOCs in foreign language teaching for Chinese college students
• Exploring Self-regulated Learning in Higher Education Language Courses using MOOCs

Potential supervisors

• Dr Inma Alvarez Puente
• Dr Qian Kan
• Dr Mara Fuertes-Guitierrez
• Dr Helene Pulkere

Fees and funding

PhD fees

Professional doctorate fees

Some of our research students are funded via the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership or The Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership; others are self-funded.

For detailed information about fees and funding, visit Fees and studentships.

To see current funded studentship vacancies across all research areas, see Current studentships.

Links

• School of Education, Childhood, Youth and Sport
• Institute of Educational Technology