- What does open education mean to you?
- What are you willing to share openly? and with whom?
- What are the limitations to openness?
Starting point is that I am very open as a person. I like to say what I mean without wrapping it into a lot of nonsense – keep the message and intentions behind it clear and transparent. Sharing and openness feels for me like giving gifts to others. I have read about how giving can make yourself happier – proven by research that shows it activates the same spots in the brain as food and sex. Here is for example one article in TIME magazine about the topic: https://time.com/collection/guide-to-happiness/4070299/secret-to-happiness/
The article starts with these words: “There is a Chinese saying that goes: “If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap. If you want happiness for a day, go fishing. If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody.” For centuries, the greatest thinkers have suggested the same thing: Happiness is found in helping others.
For it is in giving that we receive — Saint Francis of Assisi
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity — Leo Tolstoy
We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give — Winston Churchill
Making money is a happiness; making other people happy is a superhappiness — Nobel Peace Prize receipient Muhammad Yunus
Giving back is as good for you as it is for those you are helping, because giving gives you purpose. When you have a purpose-driven life, you’re a happier person — Goldie Hawn
And so we learn early: It is better to give than to receive. The venerable aphorism is drummed into our heads from our first slice of a shared birthday cake. But is there a deeper truth behind the truism?”
So when it comes to teaching – being a fairly new educator (seven years now) – I have appreciated to be able to google for contents for lectures and workshops. Being a responsible citizen I also always use filters for copyright when googling – which sometimes takes out all good materials from the results. So when I learnt to know Creative Commons as a concept that felt really good! And after that googling with CC-filter have provided me with lots of good materials and ideas.
Then I also have access to “almost open” materials through licenses my employer have provided. For example LinkedinLearning. In my PBL08 group we had very good discussions about the amount of time we put in to producing materials when there are so much good materials to access about the “theory” for a topic – should we instead put time into coaching/facilitating assignments and workshops with the students were they apply what they learnt from open sourced materials? Should we facilitate discussions that deepens the learnings and have assignments were they apply it to their discipline? And what does that mean for the role of the teacher – being more of a coach for the students? But the assessors role would remain – how would we measure the applied learnings achieved and not the theorethical learnings?
So how do I feel about sharing my materials then? I do create assignments and content that could be utilised by others. Colleagues are of course nearest – and if a colleague takes over a course I have had I would give all the materials to him/her and help him/her get started by utilising my materials. Still I know from my own experience that I anyhow need to alter the materials I get from colleagues so that they fit me and my style of teaching. But building on “proven good” materials is a good starting point.
But would I put my materials out with CC-access for anybody? Why do I feel hesitant? I guess I would give it to anyone approaching me and asking for permission to use it – so why not just put CC there? Maybe this ONL212 will give me a better insight and fact based starting point for a decision to publish my materials? But were would I publish? How would it find the right audience? And why do I think my materials would even be interesting for someone?
THE FOUR COMPONENTS OF CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES
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Attribution (BY) Proper attribution must be given to the original creator of the work whenever a portion of their work is reused or adapted. This includes a link to the original work, information about the author, and information about the original work’s license. |
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Share-Alike (SA) Iterations of the original work must be made available under the same license terms. |
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Non-Commercial (NC) The work cannot be sold at a profit or used for commercial means such as for-profit advertising. Copies of the work can be purchased in print and given away or sold at cost. |
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No Derivatives (ND) The work cannot be altered or “remixed.” Only identical copies of the work can be redistributed without additional permission from the creator. |
These elements can be mixed and matched to create a total of six Creative Commons licenses.[2] This table is from the ONL212 reading resources for Topic 2 and it gives me a better understanding of the CC concept. Maybe this could be a topic in my courses too – to help the youngsters understand copyright issues?
Maybe one “fear” is that someone would take my materials and sell them as their production – that would upset me…I think… So am I willing to give my contents for free but not for commercial use? How can I know that this CC-license would be honored by users of my materials? And why not just let anybody do anything they like of my materials? Is it because creative work is something one invests not only time but also emotions and energy into?
In a country of free education (like the Nordics model) the free materials maybe do not have the same value as it has in countries were education costs so much that only the privileged can access universities? But of course not everyone can get a study seat in our universities – but we have this Open University system giving parts openly to anybody interested. Still might be limited seats…
“Depending on the source you consult, open pedagogy might be a series of practices, a learning style, or a state of mind. For the sake of this chapter, open pedagogy is defined as a series of practices which involve engaging students in a course through the development, adaptation, or use of open educational resources. ” says the OER Starter Kit article. This already shows both how broad and vague the topic of OER is.
https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit/chapter/open-pedagogy/
https://www.colorado.edu/center/teaching-learning/teaching-resources/open-education/open-educational-practices-and-pedagogies
In my PBL08 group we also realised how broad this topic is and how many perspectives this topic of OER has. Our discussions from both educators and students viewpoints are summarized in this padlet: https://padlet.com/tanverilysl/eyxng3q0kbiez44b
In the second webinar on Tuesday 26 October, 11:00-12:00 (CEST) we got the chance to discuss open education and our PBL work, both in groups and with hosts Kiruthika Ragupathi and Alastair Creelman. This was a chance to discuss your group work with other ONL participants. During this webinar we also produced a Padlet of the thoughts and opinions on OER. There are a lot of similarities to my PBL08 groups thoughts – this webinar also pinpointed the development process of ONL212 groups – there was a lot of peer-understanding and relief about how the group work with the topics 1 and 2 has worked so far… The responsible for this webinar was Kiruthinka Ragupathi and she referred to her own blog post from when she attended ONL and what insights she got – I can relate to a lot of what she has put to words there – and might take some tips from it when going into Topic 3 were I have the facilitators role probably both weeks.
