Category: Uncategorized

Learning in communities: what worked, what didn’t, and what I’m still thinking about.

Topic 3 asked us to think about networked collaborative learning , what it means to learn with others across digital spaces, to build communities of practice, and to develop the kind of personal learning networks that can sustain us beyond any one course. It’s a topic that sounds straightforward until you’re actually inside it. Then it gets complicated.

My experience this topic was mixed, and I want to be honest about that rather than writing the version where everything clicked into place.

The idea that resonated most was the distinction between using tools and actually learning. It’s easy to mistake activity for learning. We posted things, commented, connected, and there were moments when I genuinely couldn’t tell whether we were producing insight or just producing content. The question I kept returning to was: is any of this landing? Is it changing how I think, or just filling the feed?

That line from the topic description feels more honest than most institutional language about online learning. The tools are not neutral. They shape what counts as participation, what’s visible, what disappears. When the platform becomes the point of reference, are you active, are you responding, are you present, the learning can quietly slip to the background.

The other thread I’ve been pulling on is the idea of a personal learning network. I came into this topic with a fairly thin PLN, people I follow, occasional exchanges, but not much that felt like genuine mutual learning. What shifted slightly this topic was recognizing that a PLN isn’t something you build once and maintain. It’s more like a practice: who am I paying attention to, and who is paying attention to me, and what are we actually exchanging?

Some of that happened organically in the group work. There were conversations, not posts, actual back-and-forth, where I felt something move. Not often, but enough to notice. Those moments felt qualitatively different from the broader network activity. Less visible, less measurable, more useful.

What didn’t work as well: the collaborative structure sometimes felt like it was producing consensus more than understanding. There’s a pull in group settings, especially asynchronous ones, toward agreement, toward finding the synthesis, toward closing down the discomfort of genuine difference. I noticed myself doing it.

I don’t have a clean resolution to that. But I think the question worth carrying forward is: what conditions allow a learning community to hold disagreement productively, to be a space for friction, not just affirmation?

If I had to say what I’m taking from this topic: the value of networked learning isn’t in the network itself. It’s in the quality of attention you bring to the people in it. That sounds obvious. It didn’t feel obvious while I was inside it.

Moral and Ethical Principles: There Is No Universal “Openness”

One of the most striking things I found is that openness is not a neutral act, it carries cultural and ethical weight that varies enormously depending on context. The implication and application of ethics differ significantly among various existing cultures, even within the same continent, region, and country (link). This means that what feels like a generous, collaborative act in one setting (sharing and adapting a colleague’s materials) may feel presumptuous or disrespectful in another, where a teacher’s work is understood as deeply personal and not available for modification. 

The moral mission of open education has found a touchstone in international human rights, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, both of which recognize education as a fundamental right (link). This is a powerful foundation, but it is worth asking: whose interpretation of that right shapes the OER movement? Much of the framing comes from the Global North, and that brings its own assumptions about what sharing, adaptation, and collaboration should look like.

A useful ethical checkpoint I came across suggests thinking about openness through three lenses (link): 

• deontological (what are my obligations as an educator?)
• consequentialist (what outcomes will sharing actually produce?)
• virtue-based (what does it say about me and my community if I share or if I don’t?)

Insufficient attention is typically paid to the important ethical differences provoked by open practices, and this framework helps make those differences visible rather than assumed away.

My personal reflection: before sharing any material, it is worth asking not just can I share this, but who bears the risk if I do? Students who appear in materials, colleagues whose ideas informed mine, and communities whose knowledge is embedded in content all have stakes in that decision.

Democratizing Education: The Promise Is Real, But the Barriers Go Deeper Than We Think

OERs have the potential to transform education by democratizing access to knowledge and fostering global educational collaboration (link). That potential is real, and it is one of the most compelling arguments for investing time in open sharing. But the research reveals a persistent gap between the promise and the reality.

Openness of access is coupled with a cultural closeness, and the democratization of media may inadvertently exacerbate the distances between privilege and exclusion (link). In other words, making something freely available online does not guarantee that everyone can meaningfully reach it. Research on EdTech in the Global South identifies five recurring hidden barriers: the affordability mirage of hidden data and repair costs, digital literacy gaps among teachers and students, infrastructure fragility around electricity and connectivity, cultural-linguistic irrelevance of content, and policy-governance gaps (link).

Digital inclusion requires that several prerequisites be met: affordable, robust broadband internet service; internet-enabled devices that meet the needs of the user; access to digital literacy training; quality technical support; and applications and digital content designed to enable self-sufficiency, participation, and collaboration (link). Most OERs assume most of these are already in place and for many learners globally, they are not.

The language problem also deserves attention. The vast majority of high-quality OERs are produced in English, which effectively limits who can access and adapt them. True democratization would require not just open licensing, but active investment in translation, localization, and culturally grounded co-creation with communities not just for them.

My personal reflection: releasing something under a CC license is a starting point, not an endpoint. If I want my materials to genuinely reach and benefit a diverse range of learners, I need to think carefully about who I am imagining as my audience and then actively challenge that image.