I’ve always thought of myself as a fairly open person. I’m
open to new experiences, learning new things, and exploring new ideas. That
said, I am also mindful of being too open – especially when it comes to sharing
my personal life and sharing my private thoughts about contentious issues. Don’t
get me wrong, I am all for open and intelligent debate, but these must be
governed by a set of mutually agreed rules of engagement.
So when faced with the question of where I stand when it
comes to open education, I can honestly say I don’t have an easy answer. For
the simple reason that open education means different things to different
people.
Open education in terms of MOOCs, means offering knowledge
to just about anyone who is willing and able to learn. A lofty ideal, which in
spirit, allows anyone who wants to learn, the platform to gain knowledge for
his or her own benefit or for the benefit of the community at large. Yet almost
seven years after MOOCs were first introduced, the numbers aren’t very
encouraging. With completion rates hovering just below 5 percent, detractors
are quick to declare MOOCs a total bust. But in my humble opinion, MOOCs aren’t
about to disappear into oblivion, they will just evolve with time.
In Weller & Anderson’s paper, Digital Resilience in Higher
Education, they speak of how technology will disrupt education as much
as it has disrupted music and entertainment, (think Spotify and Netflix),
journalism, (think citizen reporting) and commerce (think Amazon and
AliExpress). Whether at an institutional or individual level, there really is
no running away from this digital disruption. We have to ride the waves of
change and emerge stronger, more resilient.
As a learning designer for digital learning, be it blended
or not, I am excited to be part of this wave of change. My experience is a firm
juxtaposition of the state we’re in. Just as I’m searching open sourced
material, from open textbooks, to images, I am also searching platforms that
will keep our content protected, and secure. Even as we create content, we are
learning, exploring, and that to me is an experience that I will not trade for anything.
Ask me again in a few years’ time how open I am with sharing
our content, I may have a better answer for you. But for now, we’re all still
refining our own processes and building a body of work that may one day be
openly shared in varying levels. Till then, we continue engaging with our
subject matter experts to create compelling teaching materials to engage learners
“spoilt” by the digital disruption. How open this content will be, remains that
proverbial million dollar question.
References:
http://www.eurodl.org/index.php?p=archives&year=2013&halfyear=1&article=559
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/01/16/study-offers-data-show-moocs-didnt-achieve-their-goalshttps://harvardx.harvard.edu/files/harvardx/files/reich_reconsidering_moocs.pdf
