ABSTRACT
Throughout the pandemic, educators struggled to provide flexible educational approaches in response to the constantly shifting need for safe spaces and places for learning. The move to remote learning and the increasing adoption of supportive digital technologies made the need to consider how merging physical/virtual, online/offline spaces can provide more equitable and inclusive access to education even more urgent as ongoing digital inequities were exposed. This chapter explores how Open Educational Practices (OEP), which focus on participatory pedagogies, the use of open licensing and open technologies, the development and adoption of open educational resources (OER), and collaboration with and recognition of multiple voices and perspectives can help promote student agency and create more inclusive and just learning experiences. It will also take a critical approach to openness, to consider what kinds of exclusions and closedness can be inadvertently introduced when we work in open, online networked learning spaces. Using a spatial lens, the chapter examines what engaging with openness can look like in practice and includes analysis of a specific case of an open learning design that uses OER and an open platform to help create a more student-centered, equitable, and accessible learning space.
