The second topic in the ONL202 course was about the sharing and openness in ‘Open Learning’. The discussions were about how to share an online course or course material, why it is of interest, what value could it add, and the possible consequences of sharing online course material. The discussions around this topic became very interesting since almost everyone agreed that having access to an open online course is good. There are a lot of benefits of having a course like those. The society is benefited from this. There is no point of reinventing the wheel. More or less the things David Wiley talked about in his TED-talk [1].
However, when it was discussed how to make your own course material openly available online, most of the discussions were unfortunately quite pessimistic, including our PBL group. The negative points were related to lack of time, lack of resources, motivation/reward for doing it, and lack of infrastructure or an appropriate sharing platform. I totally agreed on the negative points and did not see a point in making open online material unless there is encouragement from the management or that it fits in the policy of the university. It seemed almost like we were forced to change the system individually by creating open online material in our hobby time for the ‘greater good’.
During the course of discussions, we realised that we were probably a bit ahead of our time in this topic. These kinds of initiatives are indeed coming up, though in a modest number, gradually. One such initiative in Sweden was taken this year where more or less all universities in Sweden received allocated funding from the government to develop open online course(s). When we changed our thinking about how we would do this given we already have funding and resources, the discussions were completely flipped, and everyone was very positive. When I found out that our university received money for this activity, I contacted my Head of Department to check if I could use it to make an online course. Now hoping for a positive response soon. 
The major conclusion from this topic for me was to indeed open our minds to this form of education and to understand that even though it may not be obvious today, this is coming up and we better be prepared. The most probable near future would be that funding agencies would allocate money for making an open course, and we as teachers could apply for it. Attending this course means for me that I would grab that opportunity as soon as it comes!
Ref 1: Open education and the future, Short TED-talk by David Wiley
