Pathway to Support the Adoption of PBL in Open Data Education - paper proposes OD–Problem-Based Learning (PBL) pathway model

Oct 15, 2026

The paper addresses how governments’ open data initiatives can translate into effective OD skills for teachers, students, and employees. Drawing on education design literature and an empirical analysis of OD training activities across five European countries, it proposes an OD–Problem-Based Learning pathway model to guide educators through adaptation and implementation. The model supports teachers as learning designers by structuring OD course design across five steps: understand, review, design, teach, and reflect.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages20

Reading Time50 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Background of open data and OD education

Skills gap and rationale for PBL

Open Data teaching practice

Pathway to support the adoption of PBL in open data education Heilyn Camacho, Mette Skov, Tanja Svarre and Thomas Ryberg: Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark Abstract Governments, public sector institutions and organisations have started releasing and sharing information in the format of open data (OD) . The opportunities to create and innovate with OD will continue to grow, and there is an expectation that educational institutions will produce competitive graduates with OD skills. A key question arising from these expectations is how to equip the workforce and students with OD skills. Based on literature from education design and design fields and an empirical analysis of different OD training activities in five European countries, we identified a need to support OD teachers by developing a visual, structured and simple model to guide them through the adaption and implementation of PBL and foster their competences as learning designers, thus the paper proposes an OD–Problem-Based Learning (PBL) pathway model. The pathway model aims to guide educators by structuring the design process of OD training activities and promotes design skills among teachers. The pathway model comprises five main steps: understand, review, design, teach and reflect. Each step provides guidelines on how to plan an OD course. Key words learning design, problem based learning, teacher as designer, open data, university training, and vocational education Introduction In the past years, governments, public sector institutions and organisations have started releasing and sharing information in the format of open data (OD) to contribute to economic growth and increase transparency. Building on the principles of openness, participation and collaboration, the OD movement works towards increasing access to data and analytic tools that can reduce the need for specialist analysis competences in working with OD (Kitchin, 2014) . Furthermore, the movement aims to (1) increase citizen participation in public management to foster transparency and accountability and (2) create new services and products by combining public data with other datasets to foster innovation and creativity (Carreras, Fischer, & van Steenbergen, 2015; European Commission, 2011; Kuk & Davies, 2011) . However, fulfilling the potential of OD has faced difficulties getting the public to use the data because most people are unable to collect, process, merge and make sense of it (Hellberg & Hedström, 2015) . Other challenges relate to the quality and format of the data and to organisational challenges such as changing the cultural mind-set and establishing collaboration among multiple actors to exploit OD (Carreras et al., 2015) . The opportunity to create and innovate with OD will continue to grow and there is an expectation that educational institutions will produce competitive graduates with OD skills. It is also expected that employees and civil servants will develop those skills. However, it is not yet clear how to equip the workforce and students with OD skills. The present paper is framed within a project that aims to develop and promote OD education and training. The project is called ODEdu: Innovative Open Data Education and Training based on PBL and Learning Analytics ( [http://odedu-project.eu/](http://odedu-project.eu/)) . The project aims to establish a Knowledge Alliance between academia, business and the public sector to promote OD education and training. One of the goals of the project is to develop a learning model based on PBL and learning analytics. The assumption of the project is that PBL may be a pedagogical approach that will foster innovation and novel training activities within the OD field. The consortium consists of partners in five European countries (Greece, Malta, the UK, Belgium and Denmark) and local partners from three different sectors: academia, industry and the government. The European Data Portal report (Carreras et al., 2015) has identified

FAQs

What problem does the paper focus on in open data education?

The paper focuses on how to equip teachers, the workforce, and students with open data (OD) skills, given expectations that educational institutions will produce graduates with those competencies.

What is the OD–Problem-Based Learning (PBL) pathway model?

The paper proposes a visual, structured, and simple pathway model to guide educators in adapting and implementing PBL for OD training, while strengthening teachers’ competences as learning designers.

What are the five main steps in the pathway model?

The pathway model consists of five steps: understand, review, design, teach, and reflect, each providing guidelines for planning an OD course.

Oct 15, 2026

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