Topic 2: What does openness mean to me? Some thoughts.

What is openness and which value does it have in my private and professional life? The two past weeks made me reflect on my own practices and my attitudes towards openness and sharing. What I learned is: Always start with yourself. How can I expect others to be open when I have not shared much myself yet? In my professional life, sharing OER is part of the job description. I have not much thought about possible disadvantages yet. The usual understanding is- Being open is great – Sharing is caring. In my group`s work we have discussed a lot of personal experiences, positive ones but one cannot deny negative aspects as well.

I feel using OER has a lot of advantages for me. The quality assurance is more work, for sure, but other than that it is great to use MOOCs or reuse material. Nevertheless, when sharing openly as a creator, the workload cannot be denied and also the feeling of being judged is a thought I have had as well. I am trying to navigate through and try to start in small steps.

Later, I will teach at Secondary School. So, my thoughts are partly in academia and partly in the role as a teacher. Which platform could I use to share teaching material openly? How can I encourage my colleagues to be open as well and introduce a “culture of sharing”? Which benefits will I have from being open? Is it enough to not have disadvantages from it?

Really interesting was the Reusability Paradox by Wiley (2004, in: Weller, 2014, chapter 4) which says that the potential to reuse material is lower when the paedagogical value is higher. So, does it make sense to share all material? What I understand from that is that sharing material that does not need much context is better suitable for reusing them. Other material with more context could be shared in a whole teaching unit. Generally, Weller (2014) names the three factors reusability, standardisation and culture that shape and are shaped by the development of OER.

Another topic I am unsure about (as so many others as well) is the influence of AI. What impact AI tools might have on me and my career? – I do not know yet. Will intellectual property be harder to protect than before? Probably. Will I benefit from AI tools for my teaching? For sure! Will it change a lot in the way we teach and learn? Yes. I am happy to dig deeper and exchange ideas.

So, in summary I have a lot of thoughts about openness and sharing and try to reflect on my own practices. This topic was a good opportunity to think about how I can be more open 🙂

Literature:

Weller, M. (2014). Battle for Open: How openness won and why it doesn’t feel like victory. London: Ubiquity Press.

Wiley, D., Waters, S., Dawson, D., Lambert, B., Barclay, M., Wade, D. & Nelson, L. (2004). Overcoming the Limitations of Learning Objects. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 13(4), 507-521. Norfolk, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). Retrieved November 1, 2023 from https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/6586/.