I have to admit, that I have never found open learning very intriguing question, and definetely not one related to my field. I had actually never really thought of the subject matter before it was introduced to us as second topic of ONL2020 course, and even then I could not see it having any connection to teaching of design. Of course some lectures could be opened to anyone online, but as most learning does not happen listening lectures but working with design assignments – together with peers, often in studio premises and preferably getting feedback, help and constructive critic from teacher – that would not really open up the design studies.

However, in the group discussions related to this topic I understood that the concept of open education can be seen as highly important – many in our group saw open learning as means to make knowledge and learning available for everyone despite of wealth and origin. I could definitely see the point. But still I could not see the connection with design studies.

After reading a blog post Being Open: Drawing parallels from the Coffee House model (2020) from Kiruthika Ragupathi I could see that my understanding of open learning had been very narrow. I had been seeing it only as open content but I learned from this post that it could also mean an open platform for discussion. And in that it is actually possible to see connections to design studies.

In this blog post Kiruthika Ragupahti discussed openness and what it could mean in education by finding connections between open learning and coffee house models of the early seventeenth century. This can seem surprising at first, but as these first coffee houses were indeed places of open discussion around politics, science, art and other important topics, that does actually make sense. Coffee houses were even referred to as “penny universities”. Ragupahti writes in her post about important matter, code of conduct and rules that are necessary for open discussion to work but which on the other hand – if defined too tight and even exclusive – can ruin the whole concept of openness.

What I personally got interested in, is how this idea of open (online) discussion could be used in design studies. Maybe I could build an open course with:

– Open content such as lectures and instructions and a design assignment

– A system for dividing the students into study groups of, say 8-10 students, and a platform where they can discuss and share content

– Schedule, where the usual tutorings, mid-critics and critics would be replaced by open discussion with peer group

– The structure of these sessions would be very important for the idea to succeed: I should carefully write instructions for what questions to ask and discuss, and how to give constructive criticism. These should guide the students in discussion, but not be too strict to keep the natural conversation going.

– The commitment of students to this course would be naturally very important.

We’ll see what will happen – this could be an idea worth trying out!