When I signed up for this ONL211 course, I have to admit that I did not think about the word ‘open’ in the course’s name. Actually, I tried not to see it because the word ‘open’ made me uncomfortable. I realized this when we began topic 2: Open learning – sharing and openness.
If I think about my teaching career, I have been pretty “open” in the old fashion way. I have shared my materials and ideas with colleagues and new teachers. I have been also very keen to participate in all discussions and workshops available in my field, but this has been more offline and face to face. It has always surprised me that there are so many teachers who are protecting and almost hiding their materials, ideas and thoughts from other teachers, because in my experience when I have been open and willing to share, I have got much more in return: new ideas and materials, suggestions how to do something better or differently. So, I always give to new teachers the same advice: share, be open, engage. But when I think about being open and openness online, I am suddenly nervous.
When we started to discuss open learning in our PBL group, I noticed that I wasn’t only one who was nervous about open learning and sharing and openness. We came to conclusion that we all feared that being open meant that we would loose something – our ideas, rights to our own material, ability to control things or even our livelihood. But when our PBL group met a couple days later, we all had found lot’s of positive aspects in sharing and openness.
If I think about past academic year, I have benefitted from open access material more than before. Last year all teaching was online and remotely and obviously, I had to think about my approach to teaching and learning materials from a different angle. I had been part of some Finnish language teacher’s Facebook groups and these groups have been past year more active than ever. Suddenly everyone was more willing to share ideas and materials. I used much more open access materials as additional learning materials in my courses, and this gave me opportunity to focus on more activating my students and building a better online course. I also asked my students to share useful websites, videos etc. on our Teams group but results were slim. Useful open access materials are sometimes difficult to find, and it takes time, but during ONL211 course I started to think that my courses were very much teacher lead and part of it was that I controlled the materials we were using. So maybe next course I will try to build in the course that learners have a bigger role in finding and choosing useful learning materials. A step closer to problem based learning?
Lately, I have been thinking my own openness. How I can be more open as an educator? I see openness as being part of teaching community, but at the moment I feel that I am somewhere in the outskirts of this community. Openness is something I have still process, but word ‘open’ doesn’t make me anymore (so) uncomfortable.
