Practicum in leadership skills for an inclusive knowledge society

Open education initiatives are confronted with particular implementation challenges, which require a sensitive, flexible and supportive leadership. Through learning, reflection and application of insights to real case situations (from the literature or from their own experiences), students will be empowered to enact this type of leadership.

In this course, students will obtain the following competences:

• Establish and manage inclusive educational ecosystems;

• Recongnise common patterns within communities of practice related to open education and develop appropriate support and incentive structures;

• Develop and implement competency and skills models for companies to assist human resource managers with open education solutions.

Knowledge obtained in the first semester of the first year course Introduction to open education is needed. Students should be familiar with key concepts around open education, strategies for implementation of open education and the issues around creating an appropriate learning environment for learner success.
They should be able to use this knowledge to work individually and in teams on issues around leadership.

During the course students will learn by ex-ample and through their own reflection how to development leadership in implementa-tion of open education initiatives. The course defines leadership as “a process of social influence, which maximises the ef-forts of others toward the achievement of a common good”. The common good here is contributing to the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in particular to the de-velopment of an inclusive knowledge socie-ty. During the lectures they will explore the theoretical background, models, strategies, concepts and approaches. Then they will combine online lectures, self-learning and hands-on to develop practical approaches to effective leadership for the implementation of open education. The topics will be ex-plored in four blocks:

• Leadership skills with a focus on appli-cation to flat and network structures;

• Leadership and implementation support in the field of education;

• Open education as an issue of innova-tion support;

• Sustainable Development Goals as common value and implementation ob-jectives.

After completing this course, students will:

• Understand the challenges of leadership of open education initiatives and have developed insights and competences, which help them to lead initiatives successfully

• Be able to support and influence processes within flat and network structures

• Understand differences at the individual, institutional and national level of implementation, and be able to adapt their leadership tools, methods and behaviours accordingly

• Have demonstrated through team assignments and project reports how their leadership approach can be applied to contributing to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals at individual, institutional and societal levels

• Interim presentations • Final exam

Dr. Dominic Orr is adjunct professor for educational management at the University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia and part of the team leadership at GIZ for the BMZ-funded digital learning platform called atingi, which has over 400 thousand registered users. He follows and shapes educational reform through his work. In 2020 a publication he co-authored on the future of higher education in 2030 was published by Springer. He has worked as an external consultant for the EU, the OECD, UNESCO and the World Bank.

Selected bibliography:

Janssen, B., & Orr, D. (2020). Falling Walls Future Learning Report 2020. Falling Walls. Unpublished internal report.

Orr, D. (2020). Bologna Process in the Global Higher Education Arena. Going Digital? European Higher Education Area: Challenges for a New Decade, 503–515. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56316-5_31

Orr, D. (2020). Mind the gap - preparing for the future of higher education now (ACA Think Pieces). ACA. https://aca-secretariat.be/post_other_pub/aca-think-pieces-the-world-after-covid-19-4/?yearPub=2020

Orr, D., Luebcke, M., Schmidt, J. P., Ebner, M., Wannemacher, K., Ebner, M., & Dohmen, D. (2020). Higher Education Landscape 2030: A Trend Analysis Based on the AHEAD International Horizon Scanning. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44897-4

Orr, D., Pupinis, M., & Kirdulytė, G. (2020). Towards a European approach to micro-credentials: a study of practices and commonalities in offering micro-credentials in European higher education. European Union. https://doi.org/10.2766/7338

Miao, F., Mishra, S., Orr, D., & Janssen, B. (2019). Guidelines on the development of open educational resources policies. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000371129

Buchem, I., Orr, D., & Brunn, C. (2019). Making competences visible with Open Badges. Hochschulforum Digitalisierung. https://hochschulforumdigitalisierung.de/sites/default/files/dateien/HFD_AP_Nr48_Open_Badges_Bericht_2019_EN_web.pdf