Open Education Awards for Excellence celebrates its 10th anniversary with Rumpus!

In 2021, the Open Education Awards for Excellence celebrates its 10th anniversary.

Every year for ten years, Open Education Global has recognized the brilliance within the Open Education sector through its Open Education Awards for Excellence. The winners of these awards represent works that encapsulate the aspirations of the movement, further inspire outstanding achievements, and add immeasurably to the shared wealth of the open education community.

To celebrate this milestone, the OEG will host an online event on December 7th. The occasion will be a special look back at the outstanding achievements of the open education community in the last decade.

As a past winner of two special awards, OEG  invited Dr. Okada – representing Rumpus – to be part of the celebration.

Project/Initiative: ENGAGE – equipping the next generation for active engagement with science supported by fun in learning

Link: http://www.engagingscience.eu/en

Award: Creative Innovation Award

Year: 2017

Project/Initiative: VR classroom – Open APP using Virtual Reality with fun in learning

Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.SangarZucchi.VRClassroom

Award: Open App Award

Year: 2019

These awards were very important for the network led by Dr Okada in Brazil, UK and other European countries to support research-based practices and evidence-based policy on open education enhanced by Responsible Research and Innovation.  The network has just started another large European-funded project – CONNECT – inclusive open schooling with engaging and future-oriented sciences with a large number of teachers and students in seven countries. Participants of CONNECT phase 1  were more than 100 teachers and 1500 students from the UK, Brazil, Spain Greece, and Romania.

CONNECT team has developed a topical open schooling resource CARBON NEUTRAL launched during COP26 in the UK.  The aim of this OER is to help teachers to guide students to voice their views and develop competencies with scientific literacy.

 

The OER Carbon neutral  produced by CONNECT consortium team was designed to promote phenomena-based learning (PhenoBL) first popularised by Finland’s initiative of revolutionising their curriculum in 2016. This buzzword is back again, but this time it is connected to the Next Generation Science Standards.

“PhenoBL is a method of understanding a phenomenon—an observable event—using various methods and perspectives, which may often overlap. PhenoBL takes a broad, multi-faceted look at events and occurrences happening in the real world, such as climate change, migration, or even the European Union. Looking at these subjects from a number of different angles helps the students to truly understand the workings of natural and societal events.” (Twig Education, 2021)

CONNECT team led by Dr. Okada has also launched the platform built by the AI enterprise EXUS to engage teachers and scientists to work together for empowering students.

https://www.connect-science.net/about-the-project/

Through this platform, teachers can download open schooling resources produced by 10 partners in five languages.

Inspired by OE Global, open schooling educators, learners,  researchers,  entrepreneurs,  and policymakers are now connected in CONNECT for open sustainable education of this decade 2030.

“Open education goes beyond open access of knowledge, it also includes open approaches to cocreate knowledge responsibly. Open learners and Open educators are Open Researchers Innovators at heart.” (Okada, 2019)

 

RUMPUS wins the Open Education Consortium 2019 – Open App Award for excellence!

by Alexandra Okada

The Board of Directors and Awards Committee of the Open Education Consortium has just announced that the OU Rumpus Centre received the Open App Award for VR classroom

Milano, November 26th, 2019, Politecnico Bovisar Open Education Global Conference 2019 #OEGlobal19 www.oeconsortium.orgr  photo by Matteo Bergamini, CC

The Open App Award for Excellence is presented to an exceptional instrument proven to be an essential tool for professionals, trainers and teachers for building, and delivering open education.

This award is selected by the OE Awards Committee to recognize truly exceptional work in Open Education.

UK 2019, Open University female PhD students cocreating the Open APP photo by Dr Alexandra Okada , CC BY SA

The OU’s new interdisciplinary RUMPUS research group is based in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education, and Language Studies but has members from across the university and outside it. We examine the role of fun in learning and life, for both children and adults, and from both children’s and adults’ perspectives. 

BR Feb  22th, 2019, UNISUL photo by Sangar Zucchi , CC

The Open App project is an initiative of Rumpus Centre led by Dr. Alexandra Okada with a group of partners in the UK (David Wortley) and Brazil (Sangar Zucchi, Simone Fuchtler and  Ana Karine Rocha – PhD at the OU supervised by Dr Okada). It focuses on Open Educational Resources (OER) to be designed by youth based on ‘open schooling’ approach to foster skills for Responsible Research and Innovation. It is funded by Brazil government and supported by 360 in 360 Immersive Experiences (2018-2019). These OER for mobile devices about topical socio-scientific issues can be used, openly and freely, in formal and non-formal settings to enhance students and citizens’ immersive learning with fun and engagement. Our studies suggest that Virtual Reality (VR) can transform the way educational content is delivered making it easy to immerse learners in time and space with real-life settings relevant for society.

BR Mar  05th, 2019, UNISUL photo by Sangar Zucchi , CC

The Open App project team will be applauded for their dedication to openness, access, high quality and innovation at the Open Education Global Conference in Milan, Italy on November 26th.  In this event, Dr. Okada was invited to present the Open App project and talk about her work focused on exploring “fun” with immersive learning.

References:

OEC Global Photos

Okada, Alexandra., Rocha, A. K. L. T., Fuchter, S. K., Zucchi, S., & Wortley, D. (2018, December) Formative assessment of inquiry skills for responsible research and innovation using 3D virtual reality glasses and face recognition. Technology Enhanced Assessment (pp. 91-101). Springer, Cham

Sheehy, Kieron; Garcia Carrizosa, Helena; Rix, Jonathan; Seale, Jane and Hayhoe, Simon (2019). Inclusive museums and augmented reality. Affordances, participation, ethics and fun.The International Journal of the Inclusive Museum (In Press).  http://oro.open.ac.uk/view/person/ks47.html