Open Praxis is a peer-reviewed open access scholarly journal focusing on research and innovation in open, distance, and flexible education. It is published by International Council for Open and Distance Education - ICDE Web of Science (ESCI) Impact Factor for 2023 is 0,9; ranked 457 out of 759 in Education and Educational Sciences in Q3. Scopus Cite Score is 3.5; ranked 453 out of 1543 in Education category in Q2 and 72 out of 2801 in Library and Information Sciences category in Q2. Facts and Figures: 2024 article acceptance rate is 33%, rejection rate is 67% (13% desk rejections - 54% rejections after review). While the number of days for acceptance is 44, the number of days for rejection is 16.

This paper presents and analyses solutions where open education and open science were utilised to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education. The COVID-19 outbreak and associated lockdowns created huge challenges in school and higher education, demanding sudden responses which aimed to sustain pedagogical quality. Responses have varied from conservative to radically innovative. Universally, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted and shocked societies worldwide, and education systems were on the front line. The lockdowns largely stopped face-to-face and formal education in almost all countries, and in most cases, distance learning soon became the ‘new normal’. A central challenge concerned sustaining educational visions and ideals in such circumstances. To better understand the state of the art in the educational landscape, we collected case studies from 13 countries during the first year of the pandemic starting on 11 March 2020 (when the World Health Organization declared a pandemic). This paper presents summaries of the full country reports that were collected and describe lessons learned. Our overall aim was to identify good practices and recommendations from the collected case studies that can be taken forward in the future. We categorised the responses on the three generic educational levels (macro, meso and micro) and identified seven key aspects and trends that are valid for all or most countries: (1) formal education at a distance for first time; (2) similar approaches for formal education; (3) missing infrastructure and sharing open educational resources; (4) diverse teaching and learning methods and practices; (5) open education and access to open educational resources; (6) urgent need for professional development and training for teachers and (7) assessing and monitoring learning environments, teachers and students. Finally, we identified key recommendations on how open education and open science can benefit formal education in schools and universities in the future, namely, improved awareness of open educational practices, provision of ICT infrastructure, embracing and sustaining the practice of open access publications and OERs, capacity building for stakeholders and finally encouraging research and development in the area of open education and open science. We found significant evidence for the proposition that open education and open science can support both traditional face-to-face and distance learning.

The Impact of OER on Teaching and Learning Practice

Explicable AI in education (XAIED) has been proposed as a way to improve trust and ethical practice in algorithmic education. Based on a critical review of the literature, this paper argues that XAI should be understood as part of a wider socio-technical turn in AI. The socio-technical perspective indicates that explicability is a relative term. Consequently, XAIED mediation strategies developed and implemented across education stakeholder communities using language that is not just ‘explicable’ from an expert or technical standpoint, but explainable and interpretable to a range of stakeholders including learners. The discussion considers the impact of XAIED on several educational stakeholder types in light of the transparency of algorithms and the approach taken to explaination. Problematising the propositions of XAIED shows that XAI is not a full solution to the issues raised by AI, but a beginning and necessary precondition for meaningful discourse about possible futures.

While several studies have investigated the various effects of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP), few have focused on its connection to learning achievement. The related scientific literature is divided about the effects of OER and OEP with regards to their contribution to learning achievement. To address this tension, a meta-analysis and research synthesis of 25 studies (N = 119,840 participants) was conducted to quantitatively investigate the effects of OER and OEP on students’ learning achievement. The analysis included course subject, level of education, intervention duration, sample size, geographical distribution, and research design as moderating variables of the obtained effects. The findings revealed that OER and OEP have a significant yet negligible (g = 0.07, p < 0.001) effect. Additionally, the analysis found that the obtained effect can be moderated by several variables, including course subject, level of education and geographical distribution. The study findings can help various stakeholders (e.g., educators, instructional designers or policy makers) in understanding what might hinder OER and OEP effect on learning achievement, hence accommodating better learning outcomes and more effective interventions.

This paper argues for a revaluation of the potential of open education to support more critical forms of pedagogy. Section 1 examines contemporary discourses around open education, offering a commentary on the perception of openness as both a disruptive force in education, and a potential solution to contemporary challenges. Section 2 examines the implications of the lack of consensus around what it means to be open, focusing on the example of commercial and proprietary claims to openness commonly known as ‘openwashing’. Section 3 uses Raymond's influential essay on open source software ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’ as a framework for thinking through these issues, and about alternative power structures in open education. In Section 4, an explicit link is drawn between more equal and democratic power structures and the possibility for developing pedagogies which are critical and reflexive, providing examples which show how certain interpretations of openness can raise opportunities to support critical approaches to pedagogy.