From Theoretical Debates to Lived Experiences: Autoethnographic Insights on Open Educational Practices in German Higher Education

The Open Science Fellow Program offered a community where researchers learned to work openly. Within this environment, questions came up on how to teach openly, i.e. which practices stand for open learning and teaching and which proven examples can be shared amongst colleagues and peers? Different concepts of open educational practices aim at giving answers to open learning and teaching. However, open educational practices still lack a common definition and many discussions on the topic only give minimal or implicit guidance to concrete approaches of being open - despite the creation and sharing of open educational resources. Investigating how we, practitioners, implement concepts of open educational practices in the classroom was the activator for the autoethnographic study we describe in this paper. Starting from a literature search to seek evidence of explicit concepts of OEP, we reflected those concepts with regard to their adaptation in our own teaching and our experiences with OER-based and other teaching concepts. The paper discusses four investigated research papers that each were reflected by the four authors - practitioners in higher education in Germany. It summarizes the main findings to draw conclusion on the current state of ideas of open educational practices and their practical adaptation and implementation in learning and teaching scenarios.