“The underlying forces driving the development of open education are the basic human needs to learn and grew throughout every stage of life.”

P. Blessinger and J. P. Anchan (2015)

Open Education has accompanied me in my professional environment for several years. We deal mainly with conceptional and practical aspects of creating, sharing, and reusing OER in higher education institutions (HEI). In the Special Interest Group (SIG) OER we discuss the benefits of OER, quality assurance for OER, copyright, and related proprietary rights.

In January 2019, the first conference openlearningdays.ch on OER took place in Lucerne. Since then, my focus shifted from the practical and legal aspects of OER towards the philosophy behind it. As D. Wiley (2010) in his  TEDx Talk Open Education and the Future mentioned, “open is a word that has a lot of different meanings”.

Openness

A. Akkari (2019) in his keynote Open Educational Resources in North-South Partnerships: how to share and broaden our educational knowledge?  pointed out the advantage of intercultural learning by sharing educational resource. This is the first time, I have come across the term “intercultural learning” in this context, and I find it very important in a discussion about open education for the whole world. Intercultural learning complements the understanding of open in the educational context from D. Wiley (2010). For him open in this context means sharing, giving, and being generous with other people. P. Blessinger and T. J. Bliss (2016) supplement the interpretation of the word. Open means to be flexible, free, and welcoming. Democracy will be strengthened, and human rights are supported.

Dimensions of open education

Inamorato dos Santos, Punie and Castaño-Muñoz (2016, p. 4) created a framework of open education with the goal “to promote transparency for collaboration and exchange of practices among higher education institutions”.
“The framework […] seeks to promote a […] holistic approach to open education. It proposes that contemporary open education goes beyond OER and open research outputs to embrace strategic decisions, teaching methods, collaborations between individuals and institutions, recognition of open learning and different ways of making content available. Contemporary open education is mostly enabled by ICTs and hence, there is endless potential for innovation and reach” (Inamorato dos Santos, Punie and Castaño-Muñoz, 2016, p. 24).

The framework identifies 10 dimensions of open education. There are 6 core dimensions (the “what” of opening up education) and 4 transversal dimensions (the “how” educational practices are opened up).

1. Access grants permission to learners to engage with e.g. educational content, courses, programmes and communities of practice.
2. Content refers to material for teaching and learning, and research outputs.
3. Pedagogy refers to the use of technologies to broaden pedagogical approaches
4. Recognition is the process of issuing a certificate, diploma or title and the process of formally acknowledging and accepting credentials
5. Collaboration is about connecting individuals and institutions by facilitating the exchange of practices and resources.
6. Research is about removing barriers to access to data and research outputs.
7. Strategy is the creation of a unique and valuable position on openness.
8. Technology refers to technological infrastructure and software which facilitate opening up education.
9. Quality refers to the convergence of the 5 concepts of quality (efficacy, impact, availability, accuracy and excellence).
10. Leadership is the promotion of sustainable open education activities and initiatives.

Literature:

Akkari, A. (2019,
January). Open Educational Resources in North-South Partnerships: How to
share and broaden our educational knowledge? Presented at the
openlearningdays 2019, Lucerne. Retrieved from https://tube.switch.ch/cast/videos/1f832383-30ed-4cf7-9ce9-dd5819705114

Blessinger, P., & Anchan. J. P.  (2015). Democratizing higher education:
International comparative perspectives. New York: Routledge.

Blessinger, P., & Bliss, T. J. (2016). Introduction to Open Education: Towards a Human Rights Theory. In Open Education: International Perspectives in Higher Education (pp. 11–29). Retrieved from http://books.openedition.org/obp/3539

Inamorato
dos Santos, A., Punie, Y., Castaño-Muñoz, J. (2016). Opening up Education: A Support Framework for Higher Education
Institutions. JRC
Science for Policy Report, EUR 27938 EN; doi:10.2791/293408

Wiley, D. (2010, March). Open Education and the Future. TEDx Talk presented at the TEDxNYED, an all-day conference examining the role of new media and technology in shaping the future of education, New York, NY, USA. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M