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Photo: Fotorech
https://pixabay.com/photos/sky-freedom-happiness-relieved-2667455/

During the last weeks we have been thinking, talking and investigating the topic of Open learning – sharing and openness in our course and PBL group.

The concept of sharing and being open has been quite natural to me. At least at my everyday work with my colleagues. Me and my colleagues are used to co-teach and it really means being together and supporting one another during all the teaching sessions. In the courses I am teaching at my university, all the materials are in the open LMS environment for everyone to see. I mean everyone. In the world. As I have understood, that is also the way our organization is supporting us to do although it is not forced to leave all the materials all wide open.

David Wiley [1] invites everyone to be more open and have the mindset of sharing, “giving without giving it away” and creating a “culture of generosity”. He sees that in that way the quality of education will rise and we will be able to develop ourselves. I believe in what David says. The first time I started in this job (now it’s my second round) I was really impressed how open all my colleagues were and they were sharing all the materials they produced for different occasions. It also helped me a lot to learn how to do that / this job and it truly changed the way I was thinking about sharing. I worked in a different unit for a while and as a team leader I tried to support such working environment where we can share and develop by exposing ourselves and our work.

I actually feel that it is hard for me to find many negative sides about being open. I also believe that by sharing your knowledge and expertise you won’t loose anything but most likely you will gain something in return.

Martin Weller (2014) points out that while there are many positive sides in the openness there are still some downsides that are not always acknowledged. As an example he raises the fact that most of the LMS are produced by commercial operators and their motivation is money, not developing the world of higher education. We might now have a lot of different options available, but “diversity in the market is not in their interest” (p. 6). I think it is part of our responsibility as consumers or end users to also raise these questions.

Open education and open materials will help many who otherwise would not have the opportunity to reach those physical environments where the materials are produced or where those people are. If we are saying that now everybody can have an access to the best educational institutes I say that is not true. Maybe everybody with digital tools, internet connection, literacy (and I mean just the basic literacy), time and energy to educate yourself are able to reach the online materials and education but not everybody in the world have those.

Hmmm. I started with so many positive thoughts about openness and sharing but ended up to more negative side. Maybe just keeping in mind that the general thought about being open and sharing is great but it’s also important to keep the other influence it might have in mind.

References:

[1] David Wiley. TED-talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M

Weller, M. (2014). Battle for Open: How openness won and why it doesn’t feel like victory. London: Ubiquity Press.

Openness in education