Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) now offer a variety of options for everyone to obtain a high-quality education. The purpose of this study is to better understand the behaviours of MOOC learners and provide some insights for taking actions that benefit larger learner groups. Accordingly, 2,288,559 learners' behaviours on 174 MITx courses were analysed. The results show that MOOCs are more attractive to the elderly, male, and highly educated groups of learners. Learners' performance improves as they register for more courses and improve their skills and experiences on MOOCs. The findings suggest that, in the long run, learners' adaptation to MOOCs will significantly improve the potential benefits of the MOOCs. Hence, MOOCs should continue by better understanding their learners and providing alternative instructional designs by considering different learner groups. MOOC providers' decision-makers may take these findings into account when making operational decisions.

Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should be Free for All, by Peter Baldwin, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2023, 360 pp., US$35.00 (hardcover), also available as open access eBook https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/14887.001.0001, ISBN 978-0-2620-4800-2 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-2623-7395-1 (EPUB), ISBN 978-0-2623-7396-8 (PDF).

This quantitative study is designed to help educational institutions and instructors make informed decisions regarding the use of online proctoring software. The researchers studied the impact of proctoring software in online courses by comparing the final grades of two groups of online, undergraduate students who took the same online course with the same professor who administered virtually the same content, with and without proctoring software. The overall sample included 252 students in six different undergraduate courses. When regressing all six courses together, the data did not show that the addition of proctoring software created a significantly lower course grade. The researchers then regressed the data of each individual undergraduate course, with the addition of independent variables, which had a mixed-bag of results. Interestingly, an undergraduate business course showed that the use of proctoring software reduced course grades while other courses produced interesting significant findings relative to gender and attendance status.

This paper offers guidance for policymakers and institutions keen on embracing Open Educational Practices within their mentorship strategies, advocating for co-creation and collaboration as foundational principles, to promote a wide range of open practices to foster transparency, inclusivity, creativeness, innovation and collaboration in academic mentorship. This conceptual paper explores the transformative potential of Open Educational Practices in the context of academic mentorship, which is per-se an open practice. We have adopted an integrative approach for our literature review, which is a non-systematic model, to help us to mitigate algorithmic biases presented in scholarly databases, for analysing and discussing literature, alongside the review of case studies to explore the intersection of open practices and mentorship in academia. We aim to highlight the profound impact mentorship has on professional development, knowledge dissemination, and collaborative learning. Drawing on a diverse selection of literature and case studies reflecting mentorship programmes both formally and informally in academic contexts, this paper provides concrete examples from practice of how Open Educational Practices can be seamlessly integrated into formal and informal academic mentorship as a driver to enhance knowledge sharing, foster inclusivity, and bolster the quality of mentorship relationships.

This article suggests to reflect on the philosophical foundations of Open Education. It reaches out to Bergson's and Popper's respective understandings of Open Society; ontology of immanence, not-yetness; and post-inquiry. It invites to revisit ethos, eidos and praxis in Open Education to move away from a prevailing Western, dominant, unsustainable paradigm and explore a holistic approach, the inclusion of indigenous knowledge systems, the shift from an overall domesticating to a liberating education, and the making visible of what has been made invisible. This discussion precedes the presentation of a roadmap drafted for Open Education in the Swiss Higher Education landscape, explaining why it has been deliberately prepared at the epistemic level and how relevant this is in relation to the sustainability process, providing a horizon for the first of three steps -survival, security, sustainability.

Zawacki-Richter, O., & Jung, I. (Eds.). (2023). Handbook of Open, Distance and Digital Education. Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2080-6

Following the institution’s strategic goal to make it an affordable campus, institutional administrators advocated using open educational resources (OERs) to reduce the cost of attendance and improve low retention rates in gateway courses. In this project, researchers invited faculty members to systematically design, develop, and deliver three general education (GED) courses with OERs to promote and test innovative pedagogical approaches for student success and retention. The project also aims to enable students to complete and earn their degrees seamlessly and affordably. The purpose of this paper is to describe the initiative, disseminate information to instructors, administrators, and other scholars on the effective practices to integrate OERs into GED courses, and show the effectiveness of OERs in increasing students’ learning experiences, instructors’ teaching experiences, and student retention.

The concept of openness is a driving force in the larger educational landscape, and the journal Open Praxis pays special attention to it. This editorial examines past publications by benefiting from data mining and analytics approaches to better understand what has been explored thus far to shape a better future and identify a vision that contributes to these values, along with other related topics. The analysis of publications revealed two broad themes: (1) openness as a praxis and (2) digital and online technologies as catalysts for openness. This editorial has portrayed a panoramic view of the earlier publications that can help build a strategic road map and offers a road map that would effectively contribute to the accumulation of scholarly knowledge.

The true spirit of education involves psychosocial grooming and character building of learners. Teacher’s efficacy plays a vital role in achieving educational objectives. The effectiveness of teachers is usually evaluated through the academic grades of their students. Teacher’s efficacy, however, is originally the ability of a teacher to improve the cognitive functioning and humanistic values of students. The current study developed and validated a new scale entitled the Qualiquant Teacher’s Efficacy Scale (QTES) by involving 147 teachers and 59 students. The sample was selected thru a mixed method that involved convenient and purposive sampling techniques. QTES reflected strong validity and excellent reliability thru exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach’s alpha, item-scale, and item-total correlations. QTES is a unique measure for teacher’s efficacy because it defines teacher’s efficacy through cognitive functioning and humanistic values, offers two parallel and separate versions for teachers and students, and quantifies the qualitative data.

Knowledge translation (KT) is key to the scientific process, yet academic work produced often does not reach the public. In this article a unique undergraduate KT term assignment is presented where students summarize a large body of research into an artifact for public use. This assignment model may increase student engagement and learning outcomes while filling the knowledge-to-action translation gap. The option dovetails students’ and employers’ need for demonstrative performance prior to hiring, the academic push for publicly and freely available scientific knowledge (e.g., open access), and challenges involved with engagement with advanced material in both in-person and remote environments. The assignment is presented in the context of benefitting effective KT and enhancing open access to information; it is then analyzed using the American Psychological Association’s (APA) goals for undergraduates alongside Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning. Various APA goals accomplished through the assignment, benefits, limitations, and future directions are highlighted.