As we discussed about Topic 2 on sharing and openness for the past weeks, one aspect that really resonated with me is the effectiveness of open education. Does sharing and opening up more equate to better education or even accessible education?

Given that tertiary education (such as universities) are not accessible to everyone (often limited by the financial situations of the students, or their grades not making the cut), can sharing and opening up the access to the course materials and education resources give these students a chance to “attend” courses they might be interested in, but were unable to? Can this be considered “education” as the students would be gaining new knowledge and information, but there would not be formal assessments or certification for them?

I have also shared about the SKillsFuture programme, an initiative by Singapore’s government, to promote lifelong learning in our group discussion. This allows students, from any background, to take up courses that can be offered by universities, polytechnics and even private institutions. In this way, it is sort of a “restricted” openness where educational resources are made available to wider public that are not enrolled officially, thus, promoting greater inclusion and social diversity where anyone that have interest can enroll in those courses offered. Furthermore, it also help in upskilling and/or reskilling of the workforce. The government, in fact, encourages us to do it by heavily subsidizing the courses and providing financial support (eg. in form of SkillsFuture credits – cash amount that you can only spend on the courses). Furthermore, the courses need to be accredited by the government agency and provide some form of structured assessment.

I wonder if this kind of “restricted” openness more effective compared to the Open Education? I found this article by Friesen et al. that analyse the credentialing of open education. Quite an interesting read!

References:

Friesen, N. & Wihak, C. (2013). From OER to PLAR: Credentialing for Open Education. Open Praxis, 5(1), 49-58. International Council for Open and Distance Education