As I embark on the learning journey on open learning, here ‘s some of my take-aways from the topic 2 webinar on sharing and openness where the guest speaker Bali Maha shared with us her experiences and thought-provoking insights.
1. Cupcake Story – Maha shared the cupcake story in which her daughter’ went to her best friend’s birthday party and was served with cupcakes that had used her creative work – a set of customized pictures that she had created based on a popular game. Her daughter was upset not because her friend had not sought her permission, but because she was not acknowledged for her work. What I learned here is openness is more than just sharing or getting permission to share. It’s also important for us to know how creators intend for their work to be used or reused.
2. Water and Air – Maha shared a quote from an Egyptian educator and author Taha Hussein – “Knowledge is like water and air.” The following lists some of the perspectives shared by the participation on the similarities between “open education” and “water and air.”: It’s free, dynamic, transparent, ubiquitous, vital to growth and life, reusable, accessible, and should be accessible by all”. I couldn’t agree more.
3. Free Digital Materials and Experiences – I especially like the quote by Sarah Lambert shared by Maha on the definition of open education – “Open Education is the development of free digitally enabled learning materials and experiences primarily by and for the benefit and empowerment of non-privileged learners who may be under- represented in education systems or marginalised in their global context.”. Here, I find myself intrigued with some key thoughts around “free digital materials”, “experiences”, “marginalised learners”. As we think about open learning, we tend to be focused on the current campus student experience and approach open learning based on the needs by our campus students, how they learn and what challenges they face. This is not enough. We need to also think about the online students, or learners who may be marginalized, those who are underserved or sidelined. We can take a more intentional approach to design our open learning for our online learners which will help them feel valued and have more motivation to engage and learn.
