Open educational practices

Open educational practices (OEP) are part of the broader open education landscape, including the openness movement in general. It is a term with multiple layers and dimensions and is often used interchangeably with open pedagogy or open practices. OEP represent teaching and learning techniques that draw upon open and participatory technologies and high-quality open educational resources (OER) in order to facilitate collaborative and flexible learning. Because OEP emerged from the study of OER, there is a strong connection between the two concepts. OEP, for example, often, but not always, involve the application of OER to the teaching and learning process. Open educational practices aim to take the focus beyond building further access to OER and consider how in practice, such resources support education and promote quality and innovation in teaching and learning. The focus in OEP is on reproduction/understanding, connecting information, application, competence, and responsibility rather than the availability of good resources.^{[citation needed]} OEP is a broad concept which can be characterised by a range of collaborative pedagogical practices that include the use, reuse, and creation of OER and that often employ social and participatory technologies for interaction, peer-learning, knowledge creation and sharing, empowerment of learners, and open sharing of teaching practices.

OEP may involve students participating in online, peer production communities within activities intended to support learning or more broadly, any context where access to educational opportunity through freely available online content and services is the norm. Such activities may include (but are not limited to), the creation, use and repurposing of open educational resources and their adaptation to the contextual setting. OEP can also include the open sharing of teaching practices and aim "to raise the quality of education and training and innovate educational practices on an institutional, professional and individual level." The OEP community includes educational professionals (i.e. teachers, educational developers, researchers), policy makers, managers/administrators of organisations, and learners. OER are often created as part of an OEP strategy, and viewed as a contribution to the transformation of 21st century learning and learners.

Open educational practices fall under the broader movement of openness in education, which is an evolving concept shaped by the shifting needs and available resources of societies, cultures, geographies, and economies. Developing a precise definition, thus, is a challenge. OEP are sometimes used interchangeably with the term open educational pedagogies. While OEP are inclusive of open pedagogies represented by teaching techniques, OEP can also incorporate open scholarship, open course design, open educational advocacy, social justice, open data, ethics, and copyright." Creating a database or repository of open educational resources is not open educational practice (Ehlers 2011) but can be part of an open teaching strategy.

OEP can be grounded in the concept of open pedagogies as described by Hegarty which include:

Nascimbeni & Burgos (2016) offer a definition that identifies activities such as course design, content creation, pedagogy, and assessment design as areas for infusing OEP. Paskevicius provides an alternative definition:

Teaching and learning practices where openness is enacted within all aspects of instructional practice; including the design of learning outcomes, the selection of teaching resources, and the planning of activities and assessment. OEP engage both faculty and students with the use and creation of OER, draw attention to the potential afforded by open licences, facilitate open peer-review, and support participatory student-directed projects.

While a canonical definition of open educational practice does not exist, various groups and scholars have provided their interpretation or viewpoint. A definition used by others either in its entirety or as basis for further development is provided by the Ehlers, who defines OEP "as practices which support the (re)use and production of OER through institutional policies, promote innovative pedagogical models, and respect and empower learners as co-producers on their lifelong learning path". Here is a list of some other OEP definitions.

Best practice case studies identify a number of OEP areas.