Over the past two weeks, I served as a topic leader within the problem-based learning group no. 8. Within the topic “Open Learning – Sharing and Openness” we were asked to study a scenario in which a (university) teacher is willing to make her/his course fully open, but does not know where to start. Our group engaged to fruitful discussions that critically approached the topic of Openness in education from multiple angles.
I was particularly inspired by the interactive teaching session given by Maha Bali (Associate Professor of Practice, Center for Learning and Teaching, American University in Cairo, Egypt) who talked about “Exploring Nuances of Open Educational Practices”, and emphasized the social justice dimensions of the topic. In her published work (Bali et al., 2020) Dr. Bali describe three “dimensions” of open educational practices (OEP) as follows:
1. Content-centric <- – -> Process-centric
2. Teacher-centric <- – -> Learner-centric
3. Pedagogical focused <- – -> Social justice focused
With this conceptualization in place, one can certainly make strong arguments for increased openness in education that is ideally leaned towards process- and learner-centric programmes. The question of pedagogical versus social justice focus is a tougher one to crack at least for me. Hence I hoped Google might know better. A 1931 Article in The Political Quarterly defined the purpose of a university as follows:
“…acquiring, communicating, or advancing knowledge, pursuing in a liberal spirit the various sciences which are a preparation for the professions or higher occupations of life.”
Since then, much has happened in technological capabilities of a teacher, but how has the purpose of the university changed? In her blog post, Achala Gupta discusses findings from the Eurostudents project that surveyed student’s perceptions on the purpose of university.
The study found that gaining access to employment, achieving personal growth, and contribution to societal improvement were among the most frequently mentioned answers among the undergraduate students. These student-centric factors are important to consider in all education that we offer, but how to address them in open education. Particularly interesting is the question of social justice and whether or not universities should offer open education to anyone and at what price? It seem obvious that most of us agree with David Wiley who in his 2010 TED talk described open education as “act of kindness allowed by technological progress” and made the point that “By sharing your knowledge you don’t lose that very knowledge”.
There are also some general pitfalls to be aware of. How to ensure access to education in emerging and developing nations? Is it possible to learn practical skills that are still invaluable in experimental sciences such as chemistry and biology by attending online courses? University teachers may not have incentive to open up their courses without institutional support (or push). Universities may not have all the resources needed to examine limitless number of course participants, and it seems increasingly important to be able to measure quality of teaching as percentage of students who successfully completed the course (among other KPIs that may not always fit to the university environment).
Now that the COVID-19 has pushed most of the higher education online, the next important steps include education of the teachers about online participation and enabling technologies. Doing this, one should not forget the essence of teaching that involves interaction with the students (in real time) and ability to tune the teaching and learning process based on both intuition and formal feedback. Although over-emphasizing technology may backfire, there are plenty of (free) online resources that can be used to enrich open education. There is hope that I for my part will be able to adopt some of these tools and put them to use later this year in my new course (Chemistry of Renewable Materials, part of the MSc programme in Sustainable Chemistry in Stockholm University). In the meantime, I continue my learning process and look forward to the coming topics of the ONL211 course.
References
Alexander, S. 1931. “The Purpose of a University.” The Political Quarterly 2(3): 337–352.
Bali, M., Cronin, C., & Jhangiani, R. S. (2020). Framing Open Educational Practices from a Social Justice Perspective. Journal of Interactive Media in Education. 2020 (1), p. 10. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/jime.565
Gupta, A. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2021/01/21/whats-the-purpose-of-university-your-answer-may-depend-on-how-much-it-costs-you/, Accessed 5-April-2021.
Wiley, D. TEDxNYED – David Wiley – 03/06/10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M
