My own practice is teaching in the nursing programme. This requires of the teacher a high degree of openness and sharing of for instance examples from the profession. The examples enable students with no prior experience of the nursing profession to imagine and understand the context or situation that is referred to. Although recent changes concerning the format of teaching, from on-site to digital and online, this has not changed the content of teaching or knowledge related to teaching.

Technology is a major facilitator for openness, and for sharing not only locally but also globally. Accessibility of content and knowledge is related to knowledge made available for all people through open sharing and discussions. Making knowledge available and accessible to all, involves equal opportunity for learning, which may be further supported by keeping to discursive rules, and to evidence-based discussions that are relevant to the topic.  

However, it is of pertinence that sharing is done fairly, and according to rules and regulations. This is something made possible with Creative Commons-license. Digital technology enables the search for openly licensed resources in for instance Google, in accordance with Creative Commons-license. Further use of copyright material requires an understanding of the regulations concerning Creative Commons-license, and a description of what this license includes is also easily accessible online.

Generally, the advantages of open technologies are a higher degree of accessibility of knowledge, and the possibility of sharing knowledge globally, and in this way reaching a wider audience. However, there may also be disadvantages. To avoid the misinterpretation of a content, sometimes there is a need to have some sort of a pre-understanding of the context that is focused on in teaching. So there is a need to contextualize a content.  

My experience so far from the course Open Networked Learning – ONL is that learning may be developed in a collective that highly regards the individual experiences and individual need for knowledge. Thus, there is no pre-arranged path for the course other than its relation to topics. Thus, topics may be the contextualization I mentioned earlier as necessary. This means that learning takes the way of the individual in a collective through the engagement of problem-based work.

References used in this blog:

Christidis, M. (2020). Integrated teaching for expanded vocational knowing [Doctoral thesis]. Department of Education, Stockholm University, Sweden.

Creative Commons guide. A short overview to CC-licensing by Creative Commins Aotearoa New Zealand.

Cormier, D. What is a MOOC?

Bates, T. (2019). Teaching in a Digital Age: Guidelines for Teaching and Learning. (2nd edition)

Oddone, K. (2016). PLE or PLN or LMS or OLN? Blog post about the ONL-course.

Ragupathi, K. (2020). Being open: drawing parallels with the Coffee House model.

Ragupathi, K., & Creelman, A. An introduction to openness in education. 2020-10-11.

Ragupathi, K., & Creelman, A. Perspectives of openness [Podcast]. 2020-10-11,

Wiley, D. TED-talk: Open education and the future.