In China, a teacher is highly regarded, amongst other reasons, because they possess knowledge. And having knowledge gives the teacher power. The power to grant access to classes to acquire knowledge. The power to give a fresh graduate a job. The power to make or break one’s career. The power to help someone get ahead in life.
To give away knowledge is akin to losing power.
The Qin Emperor took power away from everyone by burning all the books in China. Most teachers don’t have the power to burn all books these days to keep the power to themselves, but they do have the power to retain the upper hand by keeping just one last trick up their sleeves and not impart all their knowledge to everyone.
Yet, isn’t teaching about giving away knowledge? How does a teacher develop a learner comprehensively and efficiently if one always hold back something? David Wiley’s asked the same question in his TEDxNYED presentation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M). Mr. Wiley gives many thought-provoking quotes, but as philosophically enticing as they are, none give practical pathways to “How” to let a teacher know how to “give knowledge without giving away”.
Fortunately, the ONL facilitators saved the best reading for last and I found Chapter 11 of Bates’ ‘Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for Teaching and Learning” most helpful in wrapping my head around the concept of opening learning. Here’s the link to the book (
Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for Teaching and Learning).
Here are the key take-aways taken straight from the Chapter. The red highlights are to help me speed read and remember the salient points (sorry if they are an eyesore to you).
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1. Open educational resources offer many benefits but they need to be well designed and embedded within a rich learning environment to be effective.
2. The increasing availability of OER, open textbooks, open research and open data means that in future, almost all academic content will be open and freely accessible over the Internet.
3. As a result, students will increasingly look to institutions for learning support and help with the development of skills needed in a digital age rather than with the delivery of content. This will have major consequences for the role of teachers/instructors and the design of courses.
4. OER and other forms of open education will lead to increased modularization and disaggregation of learning services, which are needed to respond to the increasing diversity of learner needs in a digital age.
5. MOOCs are essentially a dead end with regard to providing learners who do not have adequate access to education with high quality qualifications. The main value of MOOCs is in providing opportunities for non-formal education and supporting communities of practice.
6. OER, MOOCs, open textbooks and other digital forms of openness are important in helping to widen access to learning opportunities, but ultimately these are enhancements rather than a replacement for a well-funded public education system, which remains the core foundation for enabling equal access to educational opportunities.
Aha. Got it. Thank you Mr. Bates for clearing up my confusion about the role of opening learning with these 6 succinctly written take aways.
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The Watershed Scenario is a situation that’s very close my heart and what I am doing now (www.wildchina.cn). One of the most well developed open access image resources in the world, Arkive (https://www.wildscreen.org/arkive-closure/) was forced to closed due to the lack of funding.
So the very pragmatic decision we have to make is: how much restriction do we place on access to knowledge so that we can monetise the knowledge, and when and how do we give away knowledge without giving.
I do not have clear answers now, but I do know that Bates’ book will be a great place to start looking for some answers.
Thank you ONL facilitators for saving the best book for last.
