Sustainability online? Actors, hierarchies, and communication patterns in collaborative development of open educational resources
Abstract
The concept of ESD is innovative, aiming to catalyse changes in the way we learn; in this context, new teaching/learning approaches and ESD pedagogies have been widely discussed in the literature. Digital media may also change the learning process if different actors including students are involved in co-creating learning content.
The question raised in this chapter is whether these changes in the "metabolism" of information could contribute to the transformations foreseen by ESD, and how. The authors focus on open educational resources (OER) used in higher education, specifically wiki systems, and explore mutual relationships/hierarchies of actors involved in its development.
In a case study, they discuss whether competences to collaboratively develop OER may support ESD competences, what the opportunities/limitations of this synergy are, and offer a framework to reflect academic writing processes from sustainability point of view.