Here you may find reflective posts about the topics – most recent on top

TOPIC 2

HOW OPEN IS OPEN LEARNING?

Not strangely the theme that has captured my imagination is again “openness” in open learning. I have no doubt of the benefits of openness in learning. Everyone has access (or some access) to any course material. This is not far from the idea of public space which I have been studying. The two paradigms overlap also because neither are open to everyone equally, but some of us want them to be, so we try. This is all that I think we can do. There are so many red tapes about compiling our course materials and so many limitations to follow related to privacy and copyrights that at the end – I believe – the openness in “open” really becomes a shadow. Social justice plays the most important role in this discussion and this is why we ought to indeed opt for “open learning”; however, we also need to be aware of all the obstacles our communities and ourselves create for that openness to never fully materialise. I see then an ambiguity in this discussion; I won’t call it hypocrisy although it may seem like this at first. For instance, regarding the “equality” in sharing and participating in an open learning environment, that one of the suggested resources mentions, there is evidence from various scientific fields (political and feminist studies) that such equality is an misleading illusion. In societies that are stratified in various overt and covert ways an open shared space to learn amongst equals cannot but only promote those in a more powerful position (the smarter, the wealthier, the more eloquent, the more entitled to speak up, those with higher digital literacy, etc). This is the way I paraphrase Nancy Frazer’s (1990) critique on Jurgen Habermas (1962) to fit in our topic. To conclude this post, I will write what was the first thought that came to my mind when thinking on my reflection: there is no “open learning” as such and that does not mean that we should not strive for it.

TOPIC 1

ONLINE PARTICIPATION – SHARING & OPENNESS

The aspect I find most intriguing is not digital literacies as much as participants’ willingness to share and to be open.

In our group (6) we looked into various issues relating to the topic. I believe that we could not resolve how sharing and openness from both learners and teachers depends on the level of privacy we are willing to give up. As teachers we often “preach” and encourage our learners to engage in discussion with each-other in an environment we claim is safe or that should be safe. When it comes to sharing our own personal experiences and perceptions, however, we feel the need to preserve our own privacy, since teachers undergo similar processes day in day out for years. Surely, we must preserve some part of our selves out of the prying eyes of streams of students! What is the reason for this need for privacy? Does it make any difference to anyone, or to us, if we keep our guard up regarding and don’t share? In our lifetimes, in careers in which we accept to facilitate learning, does it make any positive difference if we actively keep our personhood private? Especially, when most of our learners are young adults who are themselves quite timid, insecure and … in effect private? Within our Finnish welfare society wherein the private and the public intertwine constantly, does actively pursuing our privacy as teachers serve any good purpose? I suggest we accept that we live and work navigating through multifarious spheres of publicness from global and inconsequential, to meaningful and one-to-one. Even as teachers we move from these two polar opposites. If we accept that we are facilitators of learning processes to take place, then we better shed off the idea of preserving our private Self; share whatever useful for learners to learn. Thank you.

Open Networked Learning

A course, a community, an approach