Instructions for Participants of the Open Education and Open Science E-Course

The e-course consists of eight interconnected parts: an introductory section, six thematic modules, and a concluding section. Content is delivered sequentially, allowing participants to acquire theoretical knowledge and develop practical skills through individual and team tasks during the implementation of the e-course.

The e-course is not designed for self-paced study; rather, it is a mentored (tutored) e-course, and you will be under the active guidance of an instructor throughout the entire learning process. Your instructor will play a key role in ensuring the successful completion of the course within the set deadlines. They will provide active support by answering questions, offering clarifications, and giving timely feedback on your submitted assignments. The instructor will also actively moderate forums, set tasks and deadlines, respond to questions, and monitor your individual progress. You are also expected to participate actively in discussions and maintain continuous communication with the instructor and other participants.

Each module provides materials for independent learning: it includes books and/or lessons for self-study, as well as links to external sources and video lessons. Some modules also contain self-assessment quizzes, which are completed independently for self-checking knowledge. Practical tasks in the course are intended for individual work or work in three-member teams, whereby working with the same team members throughout the course is recommended to ensure continuity and efficiency. Collaboration with other participants will be encouraged through planned activities, including forum discussions, synchronous classes, and peer review.

Within the forums, participants will have the opportunity to discuss the development and challenges of open access, declarations, identifiers, and identification systems, as well as examples of good practice consisting of a set of platforms and repositories that support open access in Croatia. Furthermore, discussions will be facilitated regarding open research data, open metadata, open source, and open peer review, and it will be possible to ask the instructor questions. Copyright and licences, the creation of open educational resources, and digital badges will also be discussed via the forums. Synchronous classes will be organised to discuss these topics.

The practical task related to SWOT analysis is prepared according to a template to identify strengths and weaknesses within the organisation as well as opportunities and threats, whereby participants need to create either one unified or two separate SWOT analyses for open science and open education for their institution. As part of one of the practical tasks, participants will have to select a dataset, research, code, or other resource and make it publicly available by applying FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), which are crucial for effective open access to data. Participants will also have to protect a total of two examples/contents with licences: one piece of content must be created by the participant on the topic of openness in education and science (such as a PPT presentation, image, video, document, etc.) and protected with a CC licence of their choice, while for the second example, the participant can use one of their existing contents (such as a PPT presentation, image, video, document, etc.) and protect it with an appropriate licence. Within one of the practical tasks of the e-course, participants will have to design and describe in detail one teaching activity for their subject/teaching level that integrates the principles of open education.

Peer review is also included in the e-course, where participants will evaluate the designed activities of their fellow participants using peer assessment according to defined criteria and a rubric. Participants will also have to design a concept for an open digital badge that could recognise a specific skill or achievement of students in the teacher's subject, and the e-course also includes a self-evaluation of the badge according to the criteria prescribed in the rubric. One of the practical tasks for participants is to design a short research project or research proposal. This proposal must be built on the analysis and reuse of an existing, publicly available set of open research data. It will also be necessary to work in teams of two or three participants from the same higher education institution to determine the structure and identify, define, and describe the basic elements of an open education and science policy for the higher education institution.

The instructor will inform you of the detailed work schedule for the topics during the e-course.