Supervisor: judith ter vrugte
In this internship, you will look into the professional development of teachers for using OER (Open Educational Resources) in education. Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational materials in any format and medium that have been released under an open license. This license permits no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others. In theory, OER impacts crucial factors like the experience of autonomy of the teacher and the quality of education.
This topic can be chosen as internship only, but given the nature of the assignment it would be especially suitable for a combination with your thesis.
About the organization
The Impuls Open Learning Materials (IOL) program aims to improve the quality of foundational education (i.e., primary, specialized, and secondary education) by investing in the development of high-quality open learning materials and their distribution and use. When properly implemented, the use of open learning materials increases student motivation, reduces school dropout rates, improves learning outcomes, and enhances alignment with society and professional practice. Additionally, open learning materials in education allow us to quickly respond to current societal issues. It is also more efficient to use learning materials developed by colleagues or non-profit organizations rather than creating everything from scratch. We do this within four themes, with the ambition that open learning materials become a fully-fledged option for teachers and that we organize working with open learning materials in a sustainable manner.
To better understand what drives practitioners to use educational resources a questionnaire has been developed. This questionnaire is based on scientific research and the theory of planned behavior. The idea is that this questionnaire can be used as an instrument to ‘profile’ a teacher team. Based on the profiles managers can adapt their strategies to facilitate effective implementation of open educational resources by their team.
The next step is to optimize the questionnaire for usability, to collect data and create profiles (factor study) and to provide suggestions on how to respond to the different profiles.
Alert
IOL is a Dutch program, most communication and the questionnaire are in Dutch, and so will be some of the expected output for the program IOL.
METHOD
As part of this internship, you’ll collaborate with the project leaders OLP and Research from Impuls Open Leermateriaal.
As an intern in the work package Developing, Sharing, and Implementing Knowledge, you are responsible for carrying out the redesign of the questionnaire based on scientific findings, conducting the factor analyses, and the design of a guide on how to respond to the different profiles.
EXAMPLE PRODUCT INCLUDES
A report with the following components:
A report with the following components:
1. A concise literature review with the theoretical foundation of the questionnaire and (re)design choices:
- Overview and summary of relevant recent sources and core theories directly related to the questionnaire
2. The results of the factor analyses:
- A summary of the main findings
- Identified profiles and patterns
3. A guide on how to respond to different profiles:
- Overview of the consulted experts and their qualifications
- Summary of expert feedback
4. A discussion reflecting on the developed product (questionnaire and guide):
- Identification of strengths and potential weaknesses or areas for further development of the questionnaire
- An overall conclusion about the applicability of the questionnaire in educational practice
- Recommendations for possible adjustments or refinements to the questionnaire
- Suggestions for next steps, such as pilot implementation or further research
REFERENCES
Ajzen, I. (2020). The theory of planned behavior: Frequently asked questions. Human behavior and emerging technologies, 2(4), 314-324.
Clinton-Lisell, V. (2021). Open pedagogy: A systematic review of empirical findings. Journal of Learning for Development, 8(2), 255-268.
HAN (2024). Open education: open pedagogy. Via: https://libguides.studiecentra.han.nl/c.php?g=679717&p=4926242
Wijnen, F., Walma van der Molen, J., & Voogt, J. (2024). Measuring primary school teachers’ attitudes towards new technology use: Development and validation of the TANT questionnaire. SN Social Sciences, 4(2), 32.