How Will I Research Open Education?

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Today’s task was to build a sketch of a research plan, as a result of a deep dive into literature reviews, both systematic and meta-analysis. I realized, as I was writing, that I have had some recent experience reading systematic literature reviews, with two in particular coming to mind.

  1. Trends in Distance Education Research: A Content Analysis of Journals 2009-2013 by Bozkurt et al., 2015.
  2. Digital competence and digital literacy in higher education research: Systematic review of concept use by Spante et al., 2018.

I have the benefit of the open access research guidebook written for those who research open educational resources (OER) as published by the Open Ed Group and written by John Hilton III, David Wiley, Lane Fischer, and Rob Nyland. I have the benefit of research done by those in the GO-GN Network as models of completed research as well as research under development [GO-GN publications]. With this in mind, I drafted a plan for the research proposal for this course. Here is my ‘draft’. I’m looking forward to feedback to bring this into a clear focus.

Systematic Literature Review Plan

This systematic review seeks to synthesize current literature relevant to open educational practices by teacher educators in faculties of education to identify research methodologies, research techniques, and research findings. The PRISMA framework will guide this review through identification, screening, eligibility, and inclusion. An excel spreadsheet will capture the systematic process as it occurs.

The focus questions are:

  • How are open educational practices defined in current research?
  • What research methods, techniques, and tools are being used to examine open educational practices within teacher education programs? Are there differences over time or from geographic locations?
  • What are key findings about open educational practices in teacher education that can inform current practices in Canadian faculties of education?
  • Inclusion criteria:
    • currency (2000 – 2019),
    • geographic (global with attention to Canadian locations),
    • research type (quantitative or mixed method),
    • context (faculties of education, excluding other higher education disciplines but attending to alternative names for teacher education programs),
    • participants (teacher educators, excluding pre-service teachers or other supporting roles such as instructional designers),
    • location (can be from online, blended or face to face teaching),
    • open education practices (OEPr),
    • open educational pedagogies when co-mingled or defined as OEPr, and
    • peer reviewed, English language publications.
  • Search parameters include date limitations and deviations of key words. These include variations to open educational practices (open education pedagogies), teacher educators (preservice teacher educators), faculties of education (teacher education, teachers’ college), quantitative research, and mixed method(s) research.
  • Databases include ERIC, Google Scholar, ProQuest, Project MUSE, JSTOR or other relevant education focused collections as recommended by the research librarian.
  • Data extraction and analysis will focus on:
    • definitions of open educational practice,
    • context and geographic location,
    • questions asked in the research,
    • types of research methods and methodologies used in the study,
    • research techniques and tools used to analyze the data, and
    • key research results.