From Theoretical Debates to Lived Experiences: Autoethnographic Insights into Open Educational Practices in German Higher Education

The Open Science Fellow Program built a community where researchers learned how to work openly. Within this environment, questions emerged on what it means to teach openly, i.e. which practices represent open learning and teaching and which examples can be shared amongst colleagues and peers? Different concepts of open educational practices (OEP) aim at giving answers to open learning and teaching. At the same time, OEP still lack a common definition and many discussions on the topic only give minimal or implicit guidance to concrete approaches of being open —despite the creation and sharing of open educational resources.

Investigating how we as practitioners implement concepts of OEP in the classroom was the starting point for the autoethnographic study we describe in this paper. We conducted a literature review to map explicit concepts of OEP, we reflected those concepts regarding the adaptation in our own teaching and our experiences with OER-based and other open teaching concepts. We discuss four research papers and our respective position as practitioners in higher education in Germany. We reflect on the current state of ideas of OEP and their practical adaptation and implementation in learning and teaching scenarios.