Why Open Matters | Why Closed Concerns

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I am excited that I am early enough in the discussions to be the one to drag it out and write it down….

A tall pint of pale Belgian beer sitting by itself on a table in the original Delirium Cafe in Brussels Belgium “Free as in speech, not beer.”

But I would like to unpack it slightly differently from its common understanding in the open world. The “free” here involves work and a commitment. Witnessed at an alarming rate these past few months, free speech is no longer a guaranteed right. If we are to well, right the right to public discourse, there will be major effort involved.

Open education, to collaboratively and collectively increase knowledge, also takes work and dedication. You are committing to an idea, a resource, a development that is never finished. From all the subtle differences in the derivations of open, here we use the one connoting not finally settled, unresolved, open ended. If we revert to the software lingo ~ always in beta.

You either open your own work [read: blood, sweat, and tears] for others to not only use, but potentially dismantle, reconfigure, and | or rebuild or | and you take on the responsibility of using, perhaps remixing the blood, swears, and tears of another while still respecting the original. [Apologies for so many conjunctions.] Both scenarios can be scary as hell.

[Mr. Terry Greene caught my typo or Freudian slip – “sweat” not “swear”, but upon reflection, I let it stand. Heck, there’s a fair bit of internal cursing involved in education creation and curation!]

The alternative is less scary, but too stationary. If we go to the binary opposites again, closed or ‘unshareable’ | immutable seems more secure. But if there is nowhere to go, there is no way to grow.

Pencil sketch of Schroedinger's cat paradox with a live cat lying atop its own skeleton - all in a transparent cubeAs open as I have been to sharing any course resource I build, any assessment I craft, any discussion challenges I conceive, for the past decade this sharing has all been behind the walls of an LMS and a Canadian community college. As much as I pushed CC licensing and Copyleft, I couldn’t be truly open, because technically, I did not ‘own’ the work. So here I sit, perhaps perched next to Schroedinger’s cat both open and closed. I am anxious to see if current experiences and my ability to summon enough bravery land me on the right side of the fence.   

Why Open Matters

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Picture of an open door.For myself, “open” covers open pedagogy, open education resources, and open textbooks. I think open education is one of the most significant things to hit education in 500 years – probably since the invention or the wide-spread use of cheap paper. Open education is all about increasing the access to education and overcoming the barriers of geography, culture, and economics.

I currently teach Adult Basic Education. Since the 90s, I have been involved in teaching and education support (tutoring, writing labs, etc.) and have taught developmental English.  Open education or open pedagogy allows me to facilitate my students learning in such a way that they become independent learners. The syllabus becomes a negotiated contract, and the students from the very beginning of class, are brought into the process of mapping out where they are going to go though out the quarter. ABE students are taking courses for a number of reasons: some need to pass the GED, some are looking for HS or college credit to move on to a 2 year degree, some take classes as a step in finding their path. An open pedagogy allows me to help students understand that they have choices and that they are in charge of their learning. They are not just in a “class” but in a network of learners, creators, and professionals who will help them learn far beyond what we are doing in the physical building. Many of these students come from backgrounds and institutions where their own agency has not been respected or fostered. An open pedagogy allows us to teach students how to learn – how to make the critical connections that will allow them to be successful in college, their personal and professional lives.

Open education resources (OER) include open textbooks. ABE students are often the most vulnerable of the student population. Using peer-reviewed, open education resources or open textbooks allows me to lower the cost of education for students who are often at the mercy of their financial aide situation or lack there of. Open textbooks allow me to reuse and remix materials according to the needs of the students rather than hoping that we have found a textbook will actually work for them. I also am using open tools like WordPress.

The Pacific Northwest is growing fast. There are a 1000 people a month moving to Seattle each month. This growth is increasing rents and the cost of living, and so I have a moral obligation to use an open textbook (high quality, peer-reviewed that meets the course outcomes).

For a few years I was not teaching but working in the admin side of education as an instructional designer and director of academic technology. My previous teaching (and instructional design) was heavily influenced by George Siemens and Stephen Downes’ MOOC, Connectivism and Connective Knowledge, and Cormier’s Rhizomatic Education: Curriculum as Community.

Why Open Matters

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Currently I am enrolled in an edX Mooc that focuses on Open Education as well as Open Educational Resources (OERs). As an individual who works in the virtual classroom environment, I was encouraged by my superiors to take part in this course and see what could be gained from it – what I could share with my department.

So why does Open Education matter?

For me, open education matters because education itself is about the sharing of knowledge, ideas, and perspectives, and open education allows individuals to streamline this sharing. As more and more courses move to online formats many textbooks will move to a digital version, however, these digital copies will not vary dramatically in price in relation to their physical copies. Why is that? It this is just a money making scheme created by publishers? Why does information need to come at a financial cost?

Wiley and Green (2012) discuss the need for openness in education in order to ensure that the instructor is able to freely share knowledge with their students. Now, with more and more classes being online, students are more empowered than ever to attempt to “copy and share with an efficiency never before known or imagined,” and that includes course resources such as textbooks (Wiley & Green, 2012 pg. 82). Students who do the have the financial means to acquire necessary textbooks for their course are either a) forced to drop the class b) forced to do poorly in the class c) forced to acquire their textbook through illegal means by violating copyright laws. But what if there were no copyright laws to violate? What if, any student, despite financial differences, had instant access to their course materials at the click of a button without any costs or fees? A likely result would be an increased rate of retention in the course as well as an increased interest in the course by students who do not want to pay large amounts of money for course textbooks.

While this posting is primarily focusing on textbooks, there are other forms of openness that would be beneficial for both the student and faculty such as open access journals and open teaching.

Why should anyone need to pay to learn for the sake of learning? The students have already paid their tuition, why should they also pay for the tools they need to be successful in the course? These are the questions I would like to continue to explore as I move through this MOOC course.

References

Wiley, D., & Green, C. (2012). Chapter 6: Why Openness in Education? In D. Wiley, & C. Green, Game Changers (pp. 81-89). DC: EDUCAUSE.

 


Looking at Stars

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We grow up watching our stars and wanting to be like them. We can see them because they have to do their thing in the open. Because we can see them we can try to do it like them.

When I’m a pro skateboarder, I’m going to skate like Tony Hawk.

When I’m in a band, we’re going to sound like Tom Petty ?

When I’m a writer, I’m going to write like Margaret Atwood.

When I’m a teacher I’m going to teach like… I’m going to learn like… Umm, how can I know who to look up to?

When people teach and learn in the open we can see those heroes of learning. Of all shapes and sizes. I’m going to learn like Maha Bali. I’m going to teach like Jesse Stommel. I’m going to speak like Gardner Cambell or Rajiv Jhangiani. I’m going to experiment and share like Alan Levine. I’m going to care like Amy Collier. Well, I’m going to try to be more like all of them, anyway. And I’m going to do it in the open, too.

That’s why open matters to me. I can find and follow the people I look up to, try to emulate them and get better in whichever direction or area I think best.

photo: “STAR” flickr photo by jylcat https://flickr.com/photos/jylcat/120110649 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Introduction to Open Education

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I am taking a course this Fall on open education from George Siemens and David Wiley. I am looking forward to it because I have followed George and David’s work pretty closely for a number of years, and it will give me a chance to network with other educators interested in open education.

I find working with other faculty inspirational – I have some experience with open education but I always learn something new, useful, or interesting working with other teachers.

The course starts on Oct. 1st but it is an open course so I don’t think they care about late students ?

This posting is a test posting for the Learner Activity Hub.

 

Why Open Matters (#OpenEdMOOC)

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Attribution: https://goo.gl/images/2HT5iA

Openness in education matters because it reveals how actors within a group or network interact with each other. Instead of thinking philosophically about what the term means, defining openness within a particular local context helps determine specific relationships between individuals, materials (i.e., objects, technologies, etc.), and ideas. Hatakka’s (2009) discusses obstacles teachers face at the university level when OERs are considered. This is likely to be the result of possible power relationships between those who make decisions about didactic materials and those who do not; relationships between ideas that teachers might have about what content should be included in the classroom; and which technologies should or should not be used to access certain content or contact with other individuals (e.g., relationship building). How open content is, then, depends on how purposeful human relationships remain, how transparent processes are, how accessible tools or technologies are, and how the integrity of ideas get shared among individuals.

As a matter of degree (ontologically speaking), openness is a result of a learning trajectory – one that can grow or diminish based on a continuous flow of associations between ideas, materials, and human relationships. Siemens, Downes, and others have mentioned connectivism (or connected knowledge) in similar terms (Connectivism, 2017), but I see openness (as a network) through the same lens: a historical context to understand purposeful (social, material, and ideational) associations occurring at any given time. Understanding current associations and their histories can yield insights into any future directions of openness.

Example A

Teacher A gets criticized for using too much technology in classes with students and when assuming leadership positions with (teacher) colleagues. Students don’t see the reason for using technology and colleagues have been just fine over the years working the same way (without technology) to “get the job done”. Technology (an attempt to work more openly) just seems like more work on top of an already busy work schedule.

In this example, openness matters because it forces students and colleagues to address all relationships between individuals, ideas, and technologies. In doing so, complaints extend beyond just being forced to use technology but may reveal other possible issues (and possible solutions) that plague the need for change. Thus, understanding openness makes it impossible to only blame technology without understanding the broader perspective, say relationships between teachers and administrators and certain ideas related to curriculum, assessment, and instruction.

Example B

Teacher B is not allowed to use open educational recourses (OERs) in classes because they are viewed as invalid and unreliable. Instead, the curriculum committee decided that the institution should adhere to (an expensive) textbook as the primary source of course content for the duration of the term.

Compared to example A, which is perhaps more of a communication problem, openness (and related issues) in example B is likely to relate more towards issues of power and prestige (politics). Teacher B may avoid employing OERs (or even learning about OERs) for fear of facing consequences if not complying to current institutional policies.

Openness matters because it forces educational stakeholders to address matters of equitable teaching and learning processes from multiple perspectives. It makes transparent how individuals engage with each other and the relationships they form; the ideas that are being shared between social relationships; and the where, when, and how these social relationships form based on the technologies and spaces that facilitate such awareness. Transparency helps to understand what openness is, and it helps to understand how the network forms. If there is any uneasiness about open education, it stems from confronting issues that naturally emerge from a continual sharing of ideas and experiences throughout the network. Hence, terms open and closed networks then fall on opposite ends of a dynamic and complex continuum. Depending on the context, an open network could be both a positive and negative pursuit (and vice versa). Are schools ready to go open? How might instructional leaders prepare teachers, students, and parents to be more open? How can schools evaluate whether becoming more open is effective, efficient, and engaging? One can agree that working towards becoming more open is a good thing while at the same time realize jumping suddenly into open territory without a network that is prepared for it can have a negative effect.

Openness matters because it becomes an exercise in exploring Wiggins and McTighe’s (2005) six facets of understandings: one can explain, interpret, and apply; one has perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge. To understand open education is to be able to utilize these six facets within specific contexts, and then share this knowledge with those from different contexts so that the generalities of openness in the abstract don’t become a distraction.

What is Open Education? #OpenEdMooc #OpenPL #OpenEdMoocCanada

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neon sign with the word open
Neon open sign Public Domain CC0

As a long-time admirer of open education and the use of open educational resources (OER), I like to begin conversations about openness by probing whether the person I’m talking with has defined open education for themselves, or heard it defined by others. I am always curious to know what it means for them. Open education is an amazing and chaotic concept. Like all movements, practices, frameworks, philosophies, disciplines, etc., there are many different aspects to open education that are always “open” for interpretation and expression. The diversity of what open education means for people is one of my favourite things about it!

For me, open education is a practice that involves critical reflection about who creates knowledge, and who controls its dissemination in traditional, closed, and system-constrained methods of education. My open education practice also includes deep considerations about how digital, Internet-enabled, community-based, equitable, inclusive, diverse, and unconstrained (or at least less constrained) forms of human learning take place. Open education in my world is a near constant internal and external dialogue about how I might simultaneously learn, share, and support the learning of others. I spend a lot of time observing systems, educators, and learners to better understand the subtleties of “education” as a social construct. Open education can be as complex for me as reading and discussing decades of learning theory, and as simple as finding and sharing an image with an open license.

A boatload of what open education means for me stems from my privilege as an employed person living and studying in North America. I acknowledge and respect the far more pressing need for open educational practices to create equitable access to learning in marginalized and severely under-supported systems around the world. I both hope, and check in, about whether or not what I’m doing in open education is useful where the need is greatest. What I don’t know about this need could fill volumes. I keep listening and learning.

There are two hashtags in my title for this post. I’m taking the Introduction to Open Education edX course as a community member in two different communities. The first, #OpenEdMoocCanada is related to my connection to a Canadian higher education community of practice called the Open Rangers (yes it is extremely awesome and fun). The second #OpenPL is related to research I’m conducting with Kristina Peters, one of the leaders of the U.S. GoOpen movement, and Rebecca Heiser an online instructional design practitioner-researcher. We’re interested to learn more about what open education means for PK-12 educators, and whether or not the format of an open course (the edX MOOC) is an effective place to engage in professional learning about the use of OER in primary and secondary school contexts. Welcome to open education! It can be everything all at once.

For those that are just beginning to explore what open education means for them, there is usually a driver. A common driver at the moment is a personal or institutional wish to embrace open educational resources (OER) such as open textbooks, as a cost savings for learners (or in the case of PK-12, the driver is often cost savings for districts). Another common driver for explorations of open education is empowerment. This can be the personal empowerment of a learner to explore, learn, and share learning about what interests them, and also the power of an educator to revise and remix learning resources to align with local contexts and needs. These are all great reasons to start thinking about open education!

There are a few webpages that I like to use to introduce Open Education, they are easy reads. If open education is somewhat new for you, I encourage you to explore these and the many Internet places that talk about open education. If you haven’t done it before, start to form an idea of what open education means in your personal and professional contexts. I’d love to hear how you describe what you discover.

Capetown Open Education Declaration +10

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition): Open Education

Open Education Consortium: Open Education Information Centre

United States Department of Education #GoOpen: Open Education

Openness Matters (#OpenEdMOOC)

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Jenny Connected asks,

What are your thoughts on what appears to be a course about cMOOC principles being offered as an xMOOC?

I will discuss my thoughts by addressing a few comments made by Jenny Connected…

I don’t think George and David have claimed that this is a cMOOC have they… It may be that George and David are simply making use of a ready made platform for structuring their course, in the same way that CCK08 used Moodle, but that the course activity will be distributed across blogs, twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.

This seems to confirm that this course is designed to be some combination of both and xMOOC and a cMOOC, whether explicitly stated or not. I agree that any course offered through edX can potentially be both an xMOOC and a cMOOC, but am a little surprised to see them listed as instructors in an edX course, that’s all – no value judgment, just saying.

I don’t think cMOOC principles necessarily fully equate with open education… it might be one of the reasons I feel increasingly uneasy about open education.

I am not sure I follow… what MOOC principles fail to align with open education? And which of them causes one to feel “increasingly uneasy”? I’m thinking of the following MOOC principles in particular: meaningful, engaging, measurable, accessible, and scalable (Drake, O’Hare, & Seeman, 2015). I view these five principles as iterative and reciprocal: engagement depends on accessibility, learning analytics depends on scalability, etc.

This course is being offered on a platform that is usually associated with xMOOCs, but this doesn’t mean that it is being offered as an xMOOC.

I agree, but it also does not mean that it is not being offered as an xMOOC. And since edX courses are usually associated with xMOOCs… Again, when I imagine a MOOC being offered by Wiley and Siemens, the last place I think about is edX (or any other LMS). I doubt edX is really needed to market such a course given the following both educators have.

I’m not sure who owns the data that will be generated on the EdX site…

Good point. It’s also not apparent who will be generating most of the content and how, when, and where it will be delivered, furthering the ambiguity between where the course will ultimately fall along an xMOOC-cMOOC continuum. For instance, will I gravitate towards the edX platform, elearnspace, or somewhere else? Potentially each with their own content licensing agreeement?  Because the course is being offered in edX, however, it seems possible that some amount of content will remain under edX’s own licensing agreement (along with participant interactions?), which I assume differs from the freedoms offered with a Creative Commons license?

I have nothing against an xMOOC nor a cMOOC (or anything in between); both easily can coexist based on the type of course, instructors, and learning preferences of the participants. I can see why offering a MOOC in edX might reach more individuals (than say a private Moodle website) and at the same time, allow those who need it, a certification for having completed the course.

But openness matters in a MOOC. The degree a course remains open influences how participants engage with both content and each other. The technologies that are used, when and where engagement occurs, and types of social (human) interactions that emerge collectively evolve based on how open a course ends up being. A simple example is comparing those seeking a certificate of completion with those who are not. Usually certificates are awarded based on a single set of objectives that may or may not be the same set of objectives one would normally choose if obtaining a certificate were not desirable. Meeting one set of objectives in order to get a credential can influence the technologies used, when and where engagement occurs, and the types of social interactions that are required. Thus, because one seeks certification, the course becomes less open (i.e., contrived). Thus, openness matters to the degree one recognizes personal learning objectives (or outcomes) that were either predetermined or emergent throughout the learning process.

The best kinds of MOOCs are those where participants themselves create most of the content and discussions. Instructors add value when they are able to navigate and curate emerging content so that it is becomes more easily obtained and understood by all. A MOOC can have starting and ending dates, but the resulting interactions and outcomes from the MOOC remain as a digital “footprint” for all to witness – an artifact that could also be contributed to afterwards as well. This degree of openness and the desire to leave something behind can motivate one to participate (to the degree that individual objectives are recognizable), but becomes a challenge anytime a learning management system (LMS) becomes a mandatory part of the learning design – not saying this is the case here with edX.  This leads me to the following question:

Is it possible to receive a credential (credits, certificate, badge, etc.) for having completed a MOOC without using an LMS?

The reality is that some prefer using an LMS while others do not. MOOC designers will need to account for this by determining how open the course could potentially be.

This is what I’ll be reflecting on as I take this course: how the degree of openness impacts decision-making processes around licensing, open educational resources (OERs), and learning analytics.