I’m interested in opening up some of my courses and sharing the resources in a responsible way, but I don’t really know where to start. What options are there for offering courses that are open? How do I get support from my colleagues and how do I introduce the idea to my students? What are the opportunities and dangers of “going open”?
The Scenario in topic 2 seems to be written in another time. It ends with What are the opportunities and dangers of “going open”? The current pandemic situation with covid-19 turns openness in education into an even more urgent matter to deal with in higher education. No longer can we dwell on what opportunities “going open” can entail, instead we are more or less forced to examine how to handle the need for more openness in the education we offer. Recently, the past week or two I started thinking about this new situation we have been living with since March as something looking more and more like a new world order. Or at least that what will come to be the post covid world will be a world transformed in many ways. Even if this doesn’t mean that we will completely change all education into being distance based, digital and open; those are areas that we as educators need to consider and explore. How can we find balance between access, credibility, openness, equality in education; open as well as more contained, in our time? Is there a middle ground to find between what Wiley (2010) exemplifies by illuminating the 15th century church’s restriction of information and complete openness with free education for everyone?
We might be facing a new, post covid, world. But was there not a change in motion in the realm of education and knowledge making before the pandemic? Digital, online and open networked learning was already growing in higher education. According to Bates there are two significant and tightly connected parts of knowledge-making; content and skills. University educators’ experience and deep knowledge in the content of their own subjects is well established. The knowledge of how to develop students’ skills in higher education is however, Bates (a.a.) argues, built on the need of intellectual skills. He asks if there is enough insight in what kind of skills are needed in the time of the knowledge-based workers’ digital world. (Bates 2019)
Content in education, on one hand, depends on tutors’ expertise in the subject-matter. On the other hand, it is dependent on pedagogy to be possible for learners to process, expand and develop into knowledge. (BC campus 201022) To stress the partition between content and context as a pressing matter in relation to openness in education, we (PBL15) aimed at creating an open course that focused content more than context.
By emphasizing the content and leaving the context more or less without comment, our aim was to stress the importance of context for learning processes in open education as well as in traditional face to face education. The presented work in the Sutori however, was preceded by discussions about learning objectives and the relation between content and context. For instance, the granola assignment was based on the assumption that there are new skills needed for a new and open future in education.
The Granola Assignment
As creators of the introductory course 1BC7401 Breakfast in a pedagogical perspective, our aim is to meet the needs of the knowledge-based workers in the present and future digital society. By referring to two of Bates (2019) listed skills needed in what he calls a knowledge society, the granola assignment aims to develop;
The ability to learn independently; To be able to take independent measures to find information and process it in relation to breakfast knowledge from a perspective of open and digital education, as well as from didactic and academic perspectives. Since the base for knowledge is changing continuously in the digital, open society, learning independently is a prerequisite for present and future members of the knowledge society. Also known as our students.
Thinking skills; Critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, originality, are some of the thinking skills that Bates (2019) underlines as key notions for learners in the knowledge-based society. The ambiguity of digital environment calls for a creative approach. Together with Biestas’ (2013) assumption that learning itself is a creative and constructionist action, and Belshaws’ (2016) statement about digital creativity being context dependent, pluralistic and socially negotiated – openness in digital and knowledge-based education is the foundation of the course Breakfast in a pedagogical perspective. The learning objective that will be examined by the Granola assignment aims to focus these two skills. The assignment will focus the creative and critical thinking that will be needed to make a new, original recipe of an Organic Granola without added sugar.
References
Bates, T. (2019). Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for Teaching and Learning. (2nd edition)
BC campus 201022 https://open.bccampus.ca/what-is-open-education/what-is-open-pedagogy/
Belshaw, Doug (2016). The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. http://www.frysklab.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/The-Essential-Elements-of-Digital-Literacies-v1.0.pdf
Biesta, Gert (2013). The beautiful risk of education. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers
Wiley, David (2010) TED talk https://youtu.be/Rb0syrgsH6M
