About this companion

This companion has been put together to support students’ learning during the EDUC5272M module within the School of Education at the University of Leeds.

This companion was introduced in 2025/26. It is the first time an open living book is used in this module as part of a critical and creative curriculum design that intends to foster authentic inquiry-based and collaborative learning, through connections and opening-up a window into the world beyond the module.

Opening-up

Making the module companion available as an openly licensed Pressbook supported by the University of Leeds Library is a conscious decision. It recognises the institution’s social responsibility (University of Leeds, 2025a) and the role educators can play to make a contribution towards the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4: Quality Education for all. This is one of the 17 SDGs (UN, 2015) and all together underpin the Sustainability Strategy (University of Leeds, 2025b). The Leeds Sustainable Curriculum (University of Leeds, 2025c) together with the Open Educational Resources (OER) policy (University of Leeds Library, n.d.) and Curriculum Redefined  (University of Leeds, 2025d) encourage educators to design curricula that are flexible, inclusive and transformative as well as circular by design and therefore sustainable (Potting et al., 2017).

The curriculum design of this module, as presented in this companion, is a collaborative endeavour with students. The companion is an OER itself in the form of an open book as a whole and through its parts and utilises other available OER. OER and Open Educational Practices (OEP) based on sharing and collaboration are fully interwoven into the ecosystem of critical and creative participatory pedagogies and practices that enable deep, authentic and contextualised engagement in learning that is empowering for our students and transformative enabling them to make a positive contribution to our world (Tlili et al., 2025).

The companion

Part 1: The companion provides information about the module design and learning approaches as well as readings, resources and tools. It aims to help you navigate through the module and the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) work you will be engaged in with your peers.

Part 2: For each unit, you will find two possible scenarios. All scenarios are in Part 2. Each group will be invited to select one for each unit. And if you wish to further tailor any scenario, in this part of the companion you will also find out how you could do this.

Part 3: The intention is that this companion is dynamic. It will therefore be an open living book that creates opportunities for you to contribute your narratives on imagining the future of education and bring flavours from your professional context and home country to diversify perspectives and enrich future learning experiences on this module. There is plenty of space for your narratives in Part 3 of the companion.

Part 4: In this part, we plan to curate learning activities relating to the module. Learning activities you can create and share for others to use going forward. Some example activities are proposed. There are unlimited opportunities!

A learning scaffold

The companion provides a useful scaffold and reference guide for what is needed in each unit. It also provides suggestions for various tools and technologies including special sections specific frameworks for your inquiry, such as

• the FISh model (Nerantzi and Uhlin, 2012) to support you with your inquiry and
• the What? So what? Now what? Reflective model (Rolfe et al. 2001) to help you with your reflection.

The companion is largely original. Some parts of it have been adapted using available Open Educational Resources. These are listed below, and the original open educational resources are fully acknowledged in the companion. The introductions to each unit have been generated by GenAI based on key concepts relating to each unit.

FISh model: Developed originally for the open FDOL course: Nerantzi, C. and Uhlin, L. 2012. The FISh model: Focus, Investigate, Share. Developed for the open cross-institutional course Flexible, Distance and Online Learning (FDOL), University of Salford (UK) and Karolinska Institutet (Sweden). design | about flexible, distance and online learning (FDOL) (wordpress.com). The section has been adapted from the Social Justice Jam: Spaces for Change Handbook, v1.0 by the Discovery Delivery Group, Curriculum Redefined, University of Leeds, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence. https://leedsunilibrary.wordpress.com/2024/09/12/open-education-and-the-social-justice-jam-spaces-for-change-2024/

Reflect ‘n’ learn: This section has been adapted from the Social Justice Jam: Spaces for Change Handbook, v1.0 by the Discovery Delivery Group, Curriculum Redefined, University of Leeds, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence. https://leedsunilibrary.wordpress.com/2024/09/12/open-education-and-the-social-justice-jam-spaces-for-change-2024/

Working in groups: This section has been adapted from the Social Justice Jam: Spaces for Change Handbook, v1.0 by the Discovery Delivery Group, Curriculum Redefined, University of Leeds, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence. https://leedsunilibrary.wordpress.com/2024/09/12/open-education-and-the-social-justice-jam-spaces-for-change-2024/

Thank you!

I would like to thank first of all the School of Education for supporting the collaboration with our amazing students as consultants. I thank Zachary Farouk Chai, a doctoral student in digital education within the School of Education for his collaboration in the redesign of this module as well as Alexandra Poradowska, Maria Pavlopoulou and Stephen Taylor for the insights they shared from experiencing previous iterations of this module, their feedback on the new design and their creative input and valuable suggestions. A big thank you also to Kirstine McDermid, Open Education Resources Manager in the Library for her ongoing support, patience and advice, Odysseas Frank, the 3D artist who generously offered his artwork to be used for this companion, colleagues Damian McDonald, Danielle Millea and Richard Skowron from Digital Education Service for helping us create the Food for thought clips to accompany the book as well as John Palfreyman, Associate Professor in Digital Strategy, Leeds University Business School for reviewing the module companion critically and for his valuable suggestions.

As you can see this has been a collaborative effort and I am grateful to everybody and their contribution to this project.

Heartwarming!

One of the students who participated in the reimagining of the module noted the following “I wish I could take the module again”, another one stated about the assignment and the opportunity to publish part of it “This is amazing! I would really love to do this with one of my previous or future assignments”.

Interested in using the companion?

If you have found this companion and you are not part of the EDUC5272M module and you use it for your own personal inquiry and learning, we would love to hear from you. Furthermore, please visit the School of Education website to learn more about our programmes and modules and how you could join us on one of our innovative programmes.

We would love to hear from you if you are an educator interested in collaborating with us and creating connected student learning experiences.

The book can be downloaded for offline use.

Chrissi Nerantzi, Module leader