International Journal of Open Educational Resources Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2019/Winter 2020 | Page 183

Teaching Critical Thinking and Metaliteracy Through OER
并感谢 Emily Matott 就其在 RPOS250 中的学生体验所提供的反思。
关键词 : 元素养 ,OER, 协作 , 批判性思维 , 开放教育实践
Introduction
How do you design an undergraduate
course emphasizing
critical thinking skills when
you are used to teaching classes of a
more concrete nature, e.g., Introduction
to American Politics or the U.S. Congress?
It is of course part of your job as
a professor to constantly help students
to develop their ideas more clearly and
to sharpen their arguments, but how do
you make this kind of teaching more
explicit? The collaboration referred to
in this article’s title began with exactly
this set of questions when one of the
authors was confronted with just such
a challenge.
The metaliteracy framework described
below provides one set of tools
to enhance student critical thinking
skills and overall learning. The ongoing
professor-librarian dialogue that began
with the need to create a new course has
led to the application of this framework
as a major component of the class. In
this paper, we begin by pointing out
the enormous potential for open educational
resources (OER), we introduce
the metaliteracy framework employed
here as providing an important set of
OER to enhance critical thinking, and
we delineate the successful professor-librarian
collaboration that has contributed
to enhancing the overall student
experience and to focusing student attention
on becoming more active contributors
to their own learning.
Opening Education
through OER
OER benefits both learners and
instructors. Students appreciate
that these resources cost
little or nothing and are available online
at any time, while instructors value
the array of resources that supplement
existing materials, provide inspiration,
and engage students (Weller, de los Arcos,
Farrow, Pitt, & McAndrew, 2017).
While OER are commonly associated
with textbooks, they take a
variety of forms, from software to massive
open online courses (MOOCs)
to streaming videos. They range from
fairly traditional in their formatting or
mode of delivery to innovative and immersive.
Just as the format of an OER
may vary, so too will its use in a course.
An OER may simply be used as a substitute
for a non-open resource, with little
change in pedagogical method, or it
may be the catalyst—or the evidence—
of a shift to a more student-centered
pedagogical style.
175