Photo from John Martinez Pavliga shared by Creative Commons Licence
After listening to David Wiley’s chat with our class I have been doing a lot of thinking about Open Education.
The Open Education movement is about reducing barriers to learning by eliminating cost and designated location/time. By providing education for free and without pre-requisites or demands on location or time, almost anyone can participate.
My Reactions:
This is exciting. Reducing barriers means that education, especially higher education, is accessible to ‘all’. Open Education is an opportunity to end the privilege associated with post-secondary institutions.
However, what does getting credit from Open Education look like? Companies, career requirements and public perception are going to need to change. Degrees from universities are a crucial requirement for many jobs. How can Open Education give credit to participants and how can that credit be recognized on an equal play field as the traditional degree?
Access is also a problem as many people around the world do not have a ‘computer’ and Open Education is primarily delivered through the Internet. Wikipedia noted ” For example in Bangledesh, it is not affordable to have specific technologies. 17 per 100 households have radio and 4 per 100 have TV…”
The Learning Focus:
Open Education courses require, encourage and support participants to be self-directed inquiry based learners. Learners work collaboratively with others and form networks to support and motivate their learning.
My Reactions:
I am absolutely on board with the nature of learning in Open Education. I also strive to design learning experiences that are inquiry based and engage students by having choice.
Self-directed learning can be problematic. Students most often look to the internet for information and it can be difficult to sift through all of the available content. Students need to be able to judge quality but even more importantly, they need to be able to read it. Reading levels at grade 7/8 range greatly but adults also have a great range in reading levels. Information found on the internet is not accessible for every learner because of the reading level.
ddrew84 also raises an important point in her blog post. “The best learning takes place when a person feels inspired to ask a question. But what if the person who wants to seek knowledge asks the wrong question or looks to the wrong source to collect information?” Asking good questions is a skill and I’ve had many students ask questions that would not further their learning or would be very difficult to find ‘answers’ to. The Open Education course would need to be supportive enough to help this learner on their journey to find better questions.
Support Needed in Open Education
In the MOOC I participated in for our final learning project, we had a google hang out with Jesse Stommel and he discussed with us the issue of financially supporting MOOCs and Open Ed. He said primarily from his experience and research, professors and teachers doing this kind of work are doing it on the ‘side’ and for little or no compensation. He thinks this is detrimental to the work of Open Education, as it will mean less educators will do it. Furthermore, the quality of instructors/courses might decrease because of the lack of compensation. Also, the participants are hurt because the instructor has too many students and not enough time to help.
Jesse raises some valid points on the need for society to provide more support to Open Learning.
I am just starting to learn about Open Education but I feel very positive about its direction. I’m especially interested to see what the future will look like for Open Education and Post Secondary Education. How will those two worlds be joined?
I am also inspired to join the movement. I plan to start with sharing more of the resources I’ve created for other teachers to use and revise. I can use my blog and google docs to share. Open Education Resources also has a spot for people to contribute – check it out!
I’d love to hear from you:
- What are you thinking about Open Education? What pros or cons do you see?
- Do you share your resources? How do you do this?
Shauna Drackett: A Teaching and Learning Journey 
Hi Shauna, thank you so much for sharing your reflection with us. I agree with you that self-directed learning is a barrier many people need to deal with, especially for people who are not in the similar education system with western countries. For example, I couldn’t be used for self learning when I just arrived in Canada, as Chinese traditional education is teacher-centered, not learner-centered. I spent a lot of time to change my learning style.
On the other hand, about the access, even many people in our country own computers and internet, they can’t access oversea websites because of the state’s shielding technology. So it’s a very complicated problem besides the poor people.
I think open education need lots of supports both from the society and the individuals, but it will go well as this type of education is what people really need.
Fei you raise some good points about access on another level. I wonder how many other nations face restrictions to accessing web-sites? Open Education can only be open to everyone if it’s accessible to everyone. Thanks for your comment!
Your comment about the credit for open education really got me thinking. Will people be as likely to participate if there is no credit given? No certificate or degree at the end? It would seem that the motivation then would have to be entirely intrinsic, something most people lack!
You are right on when you point out that open education is only “open” to those of us with access to computers and internet. Without this access how can open education happen? And if this is the case, aren’t we once again excluding the people who really need access?
Great point about intrinsic motivation. We always say in education that we’d like our students to be motivated to learn without ‘reward’. But how many adults really do this? We learn for a purpose, maybe to make our current job ‘easier’, maybe to get a different job, or to learn a new skill to be able to do something we want to do. When we seek new learning we have a reason for it and most often that reason involves getting ‘something’ in return for that learning.
If Open Education’s ‘certificates’ aren’t valued by societies institutions will people continue to participate? The Open nature of Open Education also means there is little control on quality…that seems to be why Universities and post-secondary institutions are valued because there is an aspect of quality control systems within them.