Topic 2 reflections…
Picture: Brigham Young University faculty survey seeks to advance open education through academic libraries” by opensourceway is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
While writing this, the two weeks period for Topic 2 “Open Learning – sharing and openness” in the ONL202 course has not yet finished, but as I have some time right now, I thought to use this blog to sort some of my thoughts.
If Topic 1 “Digital literacies” felt like a “jungle”, Topic 2 feels even more so for me. I am in general very much for making this world more ”equal”, a better place, and the first videos I have watched, such as the one by David Wiley1 and Daphne Koller2 convinced me completely that open education is something we have to get involved with!
But then, open education can mean so many things. One definition made by the Open Education Consortium3 reads: ”Open education encompasses resources, tools and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide.” They further reason:”In fact, sharing is probably the most basic characteristic of education: education is sharing knowledge, insights and information with others, upon which new knowledge, skills, ideas and understanding can be built.” And of course I agree with this, who wouldn’t?!
However, in practice, things always come with two sides and a context. There are barriers to overcome4 (both from the educator and the student side!) and risks to consider5,6. Just personally, I wonder: can I really contribute? And when would I find the time? It is quite obvious that it can benefit my students today, if I make use of OER (open educational resources) where it fits. But what should I share? My context is that I give lectures in rather specialized courses with practical elements, which are tailor-made to serve the learning process of students in this specific course (at least that is the goal…) – would these be useful at all for students outside this context? And I cannot just decide to put the whole course online openly – there are other teachers involved, a department, a faculty, teachers outside academia…
To quote Alastair Creelman from our webinar on this topic: ”Openness cannot be simply the responsibility of one teacher.” This pretty much summarizes how I feel. It is too big, too much for me alone right now!
So to conclude for right now (maybe I change my mind during the coming discussions…): it is time for small steps again, as it is with the digital literacies. Maybe it is ok if I don’t start fighting the whole world’s unequal access to education RIGHT NOW by uploading all I have as OER. Maybe it is OK to start by feeling more comfortable to share other’s material (and thereby free time to interact more with my students and facilitate their learning)? Maybe I can start by seeking support in my environment for educational work that would be of use for students all over the world? I believe we already share within our environment, but maybe we can improve this even further! And we can keep our eyes open and try to reflect together to get active when we see a promising opportunity. Then we can support each other to deal with the insecurities, risks, and practical challenges that open education also implies besides the benefits.
1 David Wiley TED Talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M2
2 Daphne Koller TED Talk https://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_koller_what_we_re_learning_from_online_education
3 https://www.oeconsortium.org/about-oec/
4 Sanjaya Mishra (2017). Open educational resources: removing barriers from within, Distance Education, 38:3, 369-380, https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1369350
5 https://savasavasava.wordpress.com/2015/06/27/the-fallacy-of-open/
6 George Veletsianos, Royce Kimmons (2012). Networked Participatory Scholarship: Emergent techno-cultural pressures toward open and digital scholarship in online networks, Computers & Education, 58:2, 766-774, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.10.001%5D.
