The facade of my open learning journey started with open access publishing. This is perhaps one common ground for researchers and educators to understand the importance of open learning and sharing. The basic principle that underpins innovation and knowledge is the availability of existing knowledge to be accessible to anyone who wishes to scrutinize it and develop it further (Costello et al., 2019). Standing on the shoulders of the giants is a popular expression in sync to this principle. Evidently, restricting access to knowledge in anyway, e.g., paid subscriptions and fees, contradicts this. Costello et al. (2019) argue that following this pursuit can create elite groups with access that may not necessarily build the knowledge further.

My university follows the open access principles. Within this scope, researchers are encouraged to adopt the creative commons CC BY 4.0 license, to publish in parallel in the University repository, and to evaluate the integrity of the journals using for example Publication Forum. To tackle the challenges of article processing charges (APC fees) through negotiated agreements, my university is also a member of FinELib consortium. I have strictly followed these principles for my publications as these can also yield more readers, potential collaborators, and further knowledge creation.

A few years ago, I was also introduced to the concept of open source hardware which essentially projects the concept of creative commons licensing to tangible artifacts. I have also co-authored a publication entitled “Additively Manufactured Parametric Universal Clip-System: An Open Source Approach for Aiding Personal Exposure Measurement in the Breathing Zone” that follows the principles of free and open-source scientific hardware for significantly reducing the costs of scientific hardware and allowing scientists to manufacture components using digital and general-purpose technologies (Kukko et al., 2020). Back in 2018, I also remixed a design to calibrate 3D printers parametrically, which to date has had over 900 downloads. Assuming each download was used to calibrate a 3D printing machine, the outcome is rewarding. Here is a link to printable part sources.

In general, the two weeks spent on this topic were quite interesting. The discussions on the emergence of AI tools raised valuable insights and concerns on the authenticity and legality of the underlying data set that AI tools use. I was fascinated to read about the Responsible AI License (RAIL), that empowers developers to restrain the use of AI technologies to prevent irresponsible and harmful applications. I enjoyed becoming familiar with a greater scope of openness covering multiple facets. I admired the framework and principles of open education resources, practices, and policies. These have also been extensively covered within the open science and research policy of my university. The library of open educational resources provided by the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Finnish National Agency for Education contains open educational resources from all levels of education. Further, I found the resource collections provided in the topic brief to be highly useful. Together with my team, I acknowledged that openness comes with challenges and can potentially lower the barriers to misuse. Navigating this domain responsibly is of utmost importance.

 

References:

Costello, E., Huijser, H., & Marshall, S. (2019). Education’s many “opens”. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 35(3). https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.5510

Kukko, K., Akmal, J. S., Kangas, A., Salmi, M., Björkstrand, R., Viitanen, A.-K., Partanen, J., & Pearce, J. M. (2020). Additively Manufactured Parametric Universal Clip-System: An Open Source Approach for Aiding Personal Exposure Measurement in the Breathing Zone. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10196671