When There Is No Access

Common Challenge

The common question that many raised in discussion today was: how do we provide access to knowledge and information on the internet, when there is NO access to the internet.

Hmmm…

For me the questions are: how do we access the knowledge when it is written in a completely foreign language that only the elites in my country use, and the tools for accessing the knowledge vault is totally banned in my country?

No social justice to speak of here, I guess huh?

No no, the situation is not so bleak in China. The Chinese have developed a very rich and highly complex virtual and open learning ecosystem that is powered by elitists with access to the “free” knowledge in the world outside of china and laboriously brought the knowledge they have acquired back to a deliberately closed off China.

This learning ecosystem is completely inaccessible to non Chinese speakers. A real pity. I look forward to the day where non Chinese thought leaders can efficiently access the Chinese MOOCs and cross pollinate the ideas with the English speaking world. So much good can come out of the hybridisation of ideas, and we live in hope that the day will come sooner than later.

An Asian Perspective

My fellow PBL 3-er Janne found this very good resource on open learning environment from an Asian perspective. https://en.unesco.org/icted/sites/default/files/2019-04/pub_PS_OER_Asia_web.pdf

The first chapter itself was on China! Although the data was at least a decade old, but sadly, the fundamental challenges that are impeding the development of a robust, nation-wide OER is still very present to this day. Until and unless faculty members are richly rewarded and their performance is tied to making education and knowledge available to a larger learner pool, the opening learning systems will not see much progress.

We have hope though, that the resources for open learning is greatly enhanced in China since the report’s publication in 2013. There are now tools that are so easy (ding talk for instance) as compared to Zoom and these tools have made MOOCs much more convenient and if I may even say, enjoyable, within the Chinese context.

Some Great Progress

Here are two screen shots of MOOCs in China that are accessible to everyone within two closed, highly selective botanical communities. One community has approximately one thousand “residents” and the other is open to anyone and everyone with interests in botany and access to the internet, and a working knowledge of the Chinese language (aha! that’s the main caveat!) I believe these two communities are not so different from having closed access within one’s academic community (such as a university) or ONL.