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Open education

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Open education

Course overview

Welcome to the free OpenLearn course on open education. This course runs over seven weeks and is focused around the subject of openness in education. The standalone free course is an adapted extract from the Open University Masters-level course H817 Openness and innovation in elearning.

The course operates an activity-based pedagogy, so within each week there will be activities to undertake. Many of these involve writing a blog post detailing your thoughts on a particular issue, and then Tweeting about your post to enable other learners to read different opinions. If you are not comfortable with making public your thoughts in this way, you can simply substitute the blog posts for entries into an unshared document, and omit the Twitter activity. However, we recommend that you do create a Twitter account and do the activities associated with it if at all possible, as this does add a great deal of value to your networking practice. We will look at pedagogy associated with open learning itself in Week 5 of this course.

The course is set out week by week as many learners prefer to structure their study this way. However, it is not essential that you study it in this manner. If your other commitments mean you have to work ahead sometimes or need to catch up, this is fine – there is a lot of flexibility built into the structure of the course. The course is aimed at a postgraduate, Masters level, with the expectation of approximately 16 hours of study each week.

Martin Weller, on whose materials much of this course is based, says that The Open University struck it lucky with its name. Forty years after its founding, openness is more of a relevant topic in education than it was then. If you were starting a new university now, then Open would be a good choice. But what is meant by open education has changed considerably, particularly since the advent of the internet and it is these new interpretations that we will be looking at. They include:

  • Open educational resources;
  • Open licences;
  • Open courses or MOOCs;
  • Pedagogy for open education;
  • Literacies and technology for openness.

A word or two about studying an open course

To get the most from this course we recommend you enrol. While this course is unsupported, we hope that you may find support from your peers via Twitter and blogs.

The course is structured around activities that will not only help you understand the subject area better, but will also help you to become a networked practitioner.

Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

  • understand the issues in open education;
  • critically appraise the evidence around open education;
  • experience what it is like to participate in an open course.

1 Openness in education

As the course is about openness in education, in this first week you will explore some of the different interpretations of openness and consider priorities for research in this area.

1.1 Week 1 Introduction

The aim of this week is to familiarise you with some of the concepts and to get you thinking about some of the issues involved. We will then explore these in more detail in the coming weeks. The materials presented in this week are largely drawn from Week 7 of the Open University H817 course Openness and innovation in elearning.

1.2 Week 1 Learning outcomes

After studying this week, you should:

  • understand the areas of debate and priorities in the changing area of open education;
  • be able to make an initial consideration of evidence to support priorities in open learning research;
  • be able to make initial readings in open education literature;
  • be able to create a representation of openness in education.

1.3 The open course environment

During this course we will look at open courses in some detail, as well as the technology used to support open learning. For now, we will set out the technologies used in this course which, since the course needs to be open to all, are open technologies. You can familiarise yourself with these and do any setup required before the course starts.

Blogs

Many of the activities will require you to post your answer or reflections on your own blog. If you do not have one already, then you need to set up a blog, using a free service such as wordpress.com, blogger.com, weebly.com and so on. There are often options to buy extensions or upgrades to these services, but for the purposes of this course, the free options are fine. If you have an existing blog, you are free to carry on using that (although you may wish to set up a distinct blog to keep the course material separate).

If you prefer to keep this blog private, then, for the purposes of this course, set up a separate one using one of the free services mentioned above.

Twitter

As well as blogs and the OpenLearn environment, you may find it useful to use Twitter. This is not compulsory, but you will find it a useful way to find and connect with other learners’ experiences, past and present – and you can begin to build up your own network by following former and current students as well as academics whose work is referenced in this course.

If you post anything on Twitter that is relevant to the course, include the hashtag #h817open, so others can find it and we can gather together the conversation around the course. For example, a tweet about the course may go something like: ‘Just enrolled for the open course at the OU, looking forward to discussing with others. #h817open’. It is recommended that you Tweet about each piece of writing you make on your blog (for example when you are working on the activities in this course) which will potentially increase the audience (network) for your writing, and enable you to find and read others.

Activity 1: Getting to know the open environment

Timing: Timing: 4 hours

Familiarise yourself with the open environment we are using for this open course by doing the following:

  1. If you have not already done so, set up a blog, as mentioned above.
  2. Write an introductory post to your blog that describes your experience with open education. Is it just with the Open University through OpenLearn, have you studied a full OU course, or have you studied a MOOC, used open resources, or engaged with open access publications? Remember to tag it with #h817open (an explanation about tags can be found on Wikipedia).
  3. Go to http://twitter.com/ hashtag/ maode – you do not need a Twitter account to do this. Browse through recent posts about the Open University’s Masters in Online and Distance Education (MAODE) degree course. Then go to http://twitter.com/ hashtag/ H817 and browse the Tweets about the H817 course, from which this OpenLearn material is drawn.
  4. If you wish to use Twitter in this course (you do not have to, but we strongly recommend it as it provides a useful way to experience the thoughts and opinions of other people on the subjects you are studying here), create an account and make a Tweet, using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity1, announcing that you have started this course and have made your introductory blog post.
  5. Search Twitter using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity1 and spend no more than 15 minutes browsing the existing Tweets.

1.4 Flavours of openness

Figure 1

The Open University (OU) is arguably in a unique position to consider the nature of what ‘open’ means in higher education. When the OU was founded it defined ‘open’ as meaning open access, which was realised through not setting any formal educational qualifications for entry, and using a part-time, distance education model. But with the advent of the internet and digital technologies, what it means to be ‘open’ with regards to education has begun to change. In the remainder of this week’s materials, you will explore these different interpretations of openness, to set the scene for the remainder of the course.

Activity 3: Representing open education

Timing: Timing: 4–6 hours

The resources you have just accessed provide views on different aspects of what openness means in higher education.

  • Create a visual representation that defines openness in education by drawing on some of the concepts found in the resources on open education listed above (although it is not necessary to include all of them). You could use PowerPoint, an online tool such as Prezi, a concept mapping tool, or any other tool of your choice.

    The key is to provide a representation that draws together the key concepts of openness as you perceive them. Save it in a form that is shareable, e.g. an image, an embeddable file from elsewhere (such as Flickr, Prezi, etc.), or a link to a web-based resource (ensure these can be accessed without needing to sign up for the tool you have used).

  • Put your representation in a blog post, with a brief description of it. If you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about your blog post, including the hashtags #h817open and #Activity2, and spend no more than 15 minutes browsing the existing Tweets that use those hashtags.
Note

If you have difficulty with visual representations, then you can alternatively create a representation in another medium, including text lists, or audio.

1.5 Priorities of openness

Figure 2

Over the next two weeks you will look at one of the most prevalent, and successful, interpretations of what open education means, namely open education resources (OER). This is the process whereby universities, institutions and individuals make their learning content freely available. These can be whole courses, parts of a course, lecture notes, video lectures and so on. The key characteristics are that these learning materials are free to use and have a copyright licence that encourages reuse.

We will be looking at OER and different types of licence in more detail later but for now it is sufficient to think of OER as freely available learning content from universities or other providers. Much of the research around open education has been derived from the OER movement.

A number of key questions have arisen, which can apply to most aspects of open education, including:

  • Sustainability – many OER projects have received initial funding from organisations such as the Hewlett Foundation. How sustainable are they after the funding stops?
  • Pedagogy – are different ways of teaching required to make effective use of open education?
  • Barriers to uptake – what prevents individuals or institutions from either using or engaging with open education?
  • Learner support – how can learners best be supported in these open models?
  • Technology – what technologies are best suited to open approaches?
  • Quality – how can we assure the quality of open educational content?
  • Rights – how do we protect the intellectual property of individuals while encouraging wide distribution?

During this course you will engage with these questions for different aspects of open education.

Activity 4: Identifying priorities for research

Timing: Timing: 3–4 hours

Imagine you are advising a funding organisation that wishes to promote activity and research in the area of open education.

  • Set out the three main priorities that the funding organisation should seek to address, explaining each one and providing a justification for your list.

In this activity you are just expected to start thinking about these issues, and to use your own experience and intuition; you are not expected to research them in depth. You will build on this work during the next week.

After creating your list of priorities, consider the following questions, which will give you some ideas as we move into the second week of the course:

  1. Do you feel some issues would be more easily solved than others?
  2. What would be effective ways to address some of the priorities listed?

Use the box below to record your thoughts.

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1.6 Week 1 References

Bates, T. (2015) ‘What do we mean by open in education?’, Online Learning and Distance Education Resources, 16 Feb [online]. Available at http://www.tonybates.ca/ 2015/ 02/ 16/ what-do-we-mean-by-open-in-education/ (accessed 12 September 2012).

CNN-1333 Open Course (2012) ‘The extended argument for openness in education’ [online]. Available at https://learn.canvas.net/ courses/ 4/ pages/ the-extended-argument-for-openness-in-education?module_item_id=52578 (accessed 12 September 2017).

Cormier, D. (2010) ‘Community as curriculm and open learning’, Dave’s Educational Blog, 17 Jun [online]. Available at http://davecormier.com/ edblog/ 2010/ 06/ 17/ community-as-curriculum-and-open-learning/ (accessed 12 September 2017).

Weller, M. (2014) ‘What sort of open?’, in Chapter 2 of The Battle for Open, Weller, M. (2014) Battle for Open: How Openness Won and Why it Doesn’t Feel Like Victory. London. Also available online at http://www.tonybates.ca/ 2015/ 02/ 16/ what-do-we-mean-by-open-in-education/ (accessed 12 September 2017).

Wiley, D. (2010) ‘Open education and the future’ [video clip], 3 June [online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M (accessed 12 September 2017).

2 Open education resources

This week you will be looking at arguably the most prominent manifestation of open education in recent years, that of open education resources (OER).

2.1 Week 2 Introduction

The materials presented in this week are largely drawn from Week 8 of the Open University H817 course Openness and innovation in elearning.

What to expect this week

This week we will build on some of the initial thinking we did last week on issues in open education, and look particularly at open educational resources in more detail.

OERs, as they’re called, are probably the most mature and visible of the new flavours of openness. This week you will look at a bit of their history, consider the issues they face, and then explore some OER collections in detail as you try to construct a course outline.

By the end of the week you should have a good understanding of OERs, and an appreciation for how they might be used in practice.

2.2 Week 2 Learning outcomes

After studying this week, you should be able to:

  • identify the key issues for open education resources;
  • analyse OER literature to identify issues;
  • specify a course design using OER;
  • review the learning object approach.

2.3 Learning objects

Figure 3 Stephen Downes

The OER movement (although even calling it a movement can be contentious) grew out of earlier work around ‘learning objects’. As elearning moved into the mainstream (around the year 2000), educators and institutions found they were creating often expensive learning resources from scratch. There was a relentless logic that, with the digitisation of content, these resources could be shared between institutions.

In the following activity you are asked to read an article by Stephen Downes, in which he sets out the case for learning objects and provides a comprehensive analysis of the subject.

Activity 5: The case for learning objects

Timing: Timing: 1 hour

Downes goes into detail on many aspects that are not necessary for this course. You do not need to read the article in detail – your aim is to gain an understanding of what learning objects were and why they were seen as important.

The vision of a large pool of shareable resources never quite materialised, despite the economic and pedagogic benefits they may carry. A number of criticisms have been raised regarding learning objects. We would now like you to take a look at some of these criticisms.

Activity 6: Criticisms of learning objects

Timing: Timing: 1 hour

Three criticisms of learning objects are given below: you should read/watch at least one of these:

  • David Wiley sets out what he terms the ‘reusability paradox’.
  • Norman Friesen raises three objections to learning objects in this paper: Three objections to learning objects and e-learning standards.
  • In this 2009 video [https://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/mod/resource/view.php?id=13620] Brian Lamb describes his experience with learning objects, which addresses many of the reasons why they didn’t realise the aims that Downes and others envisaged for them. Brian Lamb also explains some of the problems he encountered.
Discussion

Part of the problem of learning objects was that it often seemed alien to everyday practice, so that getting educators to share their content in learning object repositories proved to be a barrier. Unlike sharing research findings in published journals, or sharing teaching resources informally within an institution, there was no real incentive or established practice for sharing teaching material on this scale. And, as Brian Lamb points out, there was a tendency to over-engineer the systems required, with specific standards that had a language of their own.

You might reflect here on whether you have, or would, share teaching resources using the learning object approach. What do you think would be the main issues for educators and teachers?

2.4 OER issues

Figure 4

In 2001 the OER movement began when MIT announced its OpenCourseWare initiative. MIT’s goal was to make all the learning materials used by their 1800 courses available via the internet, where the resources could be used and repurposed as desired by others, without charge.

At the time this was revolutionary, since much of the accepted wisdom was that content was a key asset (the adage was that ‘content is king’) and it couldn’t be given away. The OpenCourseWare initiative also addressed some of the issues that were arising with learning objects, since it took existing teaching content and simply released it.

In reality, it wasn’t that simple to release the teaching content, since the material often required reversioning, rights clearance, or some form of adaptation. But nevertheless the initiative didn’t rely on individual educators engaging with complicated standards and adopting a new set of practices. Instead, OpenCourseWare built on existing practice by taking existing course materials and releasing these, rather than developing bespoke learning objects. However, there remain issues that have not been fully resolved, such as ease of reuse for different contexts and purposes. One approach, which is the one taken by The Open University with respect to OpenLearn, has been to produce short open courses based on longer original ones, using the content that most readily repurposes to an open environment.

Following on from the MIT announcement, an OER movement began, with many other universities following suit. In 2006, The Open University launched its own OER initiative, releasing distance education material via the OpenLearn project.

In the next activity you will look at some of these OER projects in more detail.

Activity 7: Exploring OER issues

Timing: Timing: 4–5 hours

Last week you created a list of three priorities you determined for open education. This activity builds on that work, but is based on further research in the area of OER.

Based on your reading, write a blog post of around 500 words, setting out what you perceive as the three key issues in OER, and how these are being addressed. For instance, if you feel that accreditation of informal learning is a key issue then you should state why this is significant and link to some of the ways it is being addressed; for example through Open Badges or the Peer 2 Peer University.

If you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about your blog post, including the hashtags #h817open and #Activity7. Spend no more than 30 minutes browsing others’ responses using these hashtags.

2.5 Exploring OER

Figure 5

OER are commonly gathered together in repositories. These can be the output of one project or several projects gathered together. For example, the OU’s OpenLearn project gathers all of the OU’s open education material. The Ariadne Harvester project acts as a search engine across many repositories.

In the next activity you will explore the types of content found in OER repositories. 

Activity 8: An OER course

Timing: Timing: 6–8 hours
Scenario

Imagine you are constructing a course in digital skills for an identified group of learners (e.g. undergraduates, new employees, teachers, mature learners, military personnel, etc.). It is a short, online course aimed at providing these learners with a set of resources for developing ‘digital skills’. It runs for five weeks, with a different subject each week, accounting for about six hours study per week.

  • Devise a broad outline of the topics to be covered every week. Don’t deliberate too much on this; it should be a coherent set of topics but you don’t actually have to deliver it. (Spend no more than 30 minutes on this task.)
  • Now see how much of your desired content could be accommodated by using OER repositories. Search the following repositories and make a quick evaluation for each week of your course of the type of content that is available.

Judge whether the resources suit your needs well, partially or poorly. (Spend no more than 45 minutes on average exploring each repository, so a maximum of around four hours for this task).

Use the box below to make notes.

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  • Write a blog post, using your evaluation as the basis. Reflect upon whether the use of OER caused you to change what you wanted to teach, and what time saving (if any) would be gained by using OER. (Spend around one hour on this task.)
  • If you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about your blog post, including the hashtags #h817open and #Activity8 and search these hashtags on Twitter to see what other learners have said. (Spend up to one hour on this task.)
A note on accessibility of OER repositories

Repositories often contain material from a wide variety of authors, and repositories take different approaches to ensuring the accessibility of these resources. Some make accessibility a requirement, while others offer guidelines. The accessibility of resources drawn from a wide range of authors is another factor in the use of OER that you should consider.

John Richardson (Emeritus Professor in Student Learning and Assessment at The Open University) some years ago drew together the accessibility policies of several OER repositories though some of these sites have now changed significantly, or ceased operating (clicking the link should download the document to your device).

2.6 Week 2 References

de los Arcos, B., Farrow, R., Perryman, L.A., Pitt, R. and Weller, M. (2014) ‘OER Evidence Report 2013–2014’, OER Research Hub [online], http://oro.open.ac.uk/ 41866/ (accessed 1 July 2019).

Downes, S. (2001) ‘Learning objects: resources for distance education worldwide’, IRRODL, vol. 2, no. 1 [online], http://www.irrodl.org/ index.php/ irrodl/ article/ view/ 32/ 378 (accessed 22 May 2017).

Friesen, N. (2003) ‘Three objections to learning objects and e-learning standards’ in McGreal, R. (ed.) (2004) Online Education Using Learning Objects, London, Routledge, pp. 59–70. Draft available online at http://www.learningspaces.org/ papers/ objections.html (accessed 22 May 2017).

Lamb, B. (2009) Who the hell is Brian Lamb? (video), Barry Dahl blog, 26 October [online], http://barrydahl.com/ 2009/ 10/ 26/ who-the-hell-is-brian-lamb/ (accessed 22 May 2017).

McGill, L., Falconer, I., Dempster, J.A., Littlejohn, A. and Beetham, H. (2013) ‘Journeys to Open Educational Practice: UKOER/SCORE Review Final Report’, JISC [online], https://oersynth.pbworks.com/ w/ page/ 60338879/ HEFCE-OER-Review-Final-Report (accessed 8 September 2017).

Wiley, D. (2004) The Reusability Paradox, Connexions [online], http://opencontent.org/ docs/ paradox.html (accessed 31 May 2017).

3 Moving beyond OER

This week you will continue to look at OER and, in particular, the issues of rights and sustainability.

3.1 Week 3 Introduction

The overriding goal of OER is reuse – if no one reuses a resource then it may as well be closed. The materials presented in this week are largely drawn from Week 9 of the Open University H817 course Openness and innovation in elearning.

What to expect this week

Welcome to Week 3 of the open course on open education.

Having looked at OERs last week, this week you will be addressing some related issues. The first is around the nature of reuse. It is reuse that really defines OERs, that is the whole point of them, to be taken and reused by others.

There is often confusion around whether online resources, such as a YouTube video, can be reused, and this is where licences are important, so this week you will consider Creative Commons Licences.

You will also look at the issue of sustainability and OERs; that is, are they viable in the long term as an approach for universities?

And lastly you will look at what we mean by an open educational resource. Is it just material released through universities? Or is it any resource created that can be used in education?

Building on Week 2, by the end of this week you should have a clear understanding of OERs and reuse.

3.2 Week 3 Learning outcomes

After studying this week, you should:

  • understand how to use and apply appropriate licences for Open Educational Resources;
  • be aware of the issues regarding sustainability of OER as a university strategy;
  • appreciate the different scales of OER use (‘big’ and ‘little’ OER).

3.3 What does reuse mean?

Figure 6
Figure 7

David Wiley (2007) has been one of the key thinkers and drivers in open content, and he originally proposed the 4Rs of Reuse:

  • Reuse – the right to reuse the content in its unaltered/verbatim form (e.g. make a backup copy of the content)
  • Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify or alter the content itself (e.g. translate the content into another language)
  • Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other content to create something new (e.g. incorporate the content into a mashup)
  • Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions or your remixes with others (e.g. give a copy of the content to a friend). In 2014 Wiley (2014) added a 5th R: ‘Retain’ – the right to keep access to useful texts you have acquired during your studies (electronic copies of core text books, for example) after your course has ended and you have left the institution. He made this addition in response to the phenomenon he describes as ‘disappearing ink’, where to reduce the cost of texts, many education institutions have negotiated deals with publishers whereby the text can be accessed by students at a reduced cost but only for the duration of their course, in contrast to purchasing the full price hard copy which one would obviously retain ownership of in perpetuity.

Wiley (2007) makes the argument that the ‘open’ in ‘open content’ relates to licensing. It is about what the provider permits others to do with the content. It isn’t necessary for all 4/5Rs to be permitted, but the degree to which they are restricted can make a resource less or more open.

Many resources you encounter online have no rights information associated with them (think of most YouTube clips for example). This can place the educator in an awkward position – did the uploader have permission to use that video? If I use it in an educational context am I breaking copyright?

Creative Commons Licence

Most OER projects and repositories deliberately want to encourage reuse so they adopt specific licences to promote this. The most common licence is the Creative Commons licence, although other licences exist.

The Creative Commons licence has a number of ‘settings’, so the rights owner can choose whether or not to place a set of restrictions on the reuse of their material and what those restrictions should be. These are explained on the Creative Commons website. The following Slideshare presentation also explains the different rights and the logic behind them:

Alternatively, this blog post from a lawyer explains them: ‘Creative Commons Licenses Explained In Plain English’, or this infographic from the OER Research Hub explains them for teachers.

For its OpenLearn project the OU selected a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence. There are three elements to this licence:

  • Attribution – anyone reusing this content needs to attribute the OU as the original creators. They can’t pass it off as their own content, for example.
  • Non-commercial – people are free to reuse the content, as long as it is not for commercial purposes. So they can’t take OpenLearn material, repackage it and sell it, for example.
  • Share Alike – anyone taking this material and adapting it must share it under a similar licence.

These are actually fairly easy conditions to meet for most cases, and the key to the Creative Commons licence is that it assumes reuse as the default. So the user (or reuser) needn’t ask for permission to reuse the content if they meet these conditions. This doesn’t mean, however, that other forms of reuse are prohibited, just that they do need explicit permission.

The Non-Commercial licence is one in particular that causes some anxiety because what constitutes commercial use can be a grey area. For example, if you use some Creative Commons – Non-Commercial (CC-NC) material in a course and then charge students a fee to study that course, does that constitute commercial use?

In The Case for Free Use: Reasons Not to Use a Creative Commons – NC License (2005), Erik Moller argues that the NC licence is ‘harmful’, while Alma Hales and Andy Lane set out the reasons why the OU adopted the Creative Commons licence in Creative Commons and The Open University (clicking this link should download a document to your device).

Activity 9: Choosing a licence
Timing: Timing: 1 hour

For your blog posts on this course so far, consider which of the Creative Commons licences you would use, and justify your choice in a further blog post. Then think about two different resources you have produced previously, perhaps teaching resources if you have them, or perhaps something more personal like photographs of a famous landmark, and consider which licence you might choose for these – add your justification to your blog post. If you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about your blog post, including the hashtags #h817open and #Activity9, and search the hashtags on Twitter to see what other learners have said.

3.4 Sustainability

Figure 8

One of the issues that is often raised for OER projects is that of sustainability. Many OER projects have received funding from bodies such as the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Producing OER and maintaining large projects with associated staff is not a zero cost activity, and so questions arise about maintaining such projects when the original funding ends. This is what sustainability refers to in OER terms.

In a report for OECD in 2007, David Wiley defined sustainability as ‘an open educational resource project’s ongoing ability to meet its goals’ (p. 5). Wiley proposed three models of sustainability, which he labelled:

  • the MIT model,
  • the USU model,
  • the Rice model.

Activity 10: Applying sustainability models

Timing: Timing: 3 hours

You can use the box below to record your notes.

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3.5 Big and little OER

Figure 9

In The openness–creativity cycle in education (Weller, 2012), Martin Weller suggests that another way of thinking about OER is in terms of their granularity. We have seen large-scale projects such as MIT’s OpenCourseWare that can be viewed as institutional approaches to OER. It is these types of project that Wiley focuses on, and which we can classify as ‘Big OER’.

However, another approach to OER is to produce them at the individual level, as a by product of the everyday activity of educators, researchers and teachers. This embraces not only specifically designed teaching material, but also other types of content that could be used in a teaching context; for example, presentations, articles, blog posts, etc. This ‘Little OER’ approach is not in conflict with the larger projects but represents another means of tackling sustainability.

Activity 11: Different types of OER

Timing: Timing: 3 hours
  • Write a blog post of less than 500 words on either the benefits and drawbacks of big and little OER approaches (from Martin Weller’s conference submission) or the benefits and drawbacks of OER Learning Objects and OER Courseware (from the Creative Commons Wiki). Remember to tag your post with #h817open and, if you wish, to Tweet about your post using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity11.

3.6 Week 3 References

Common Craft (2013) Copyright and Creative Commons [online]. Available at http://www.commoncraft.com/ video/ copyright-and-creative-commons (accessed 23 May 2017).

Creative Commons (n.d.) Free to Learn Guide/Different Types of OER Meet Different Needs [online]. Available at https://wiki.creativecommons.org/ wiki/ Free_to_Learn_Guide/ Different_Types_of_OER_Meet_Different_Needs (accessed 12 September 2017).

Geffrotin, Y. (2007) Creative Commons: Spectrum of Rights [online], slidecast. Available at http://www.slideshare.net/ gya/ creative-commons-spectrum-of-rights (accessed 23 May 2017).

Hales, A. and Lane, A. (undated) Creative Commons and The Open University, internal document, Milton Keynes, The Open University.

Moller, E. (2005) The Case for Free Use: Reasons Not to Use a Creative Commons - NC License [online]. Available at http://freedomdefined.org/ Licenses/ NC (accessed 23 May 2017).

Weller, M. (2010) ‘Big and little OER’, in: OpenED2010: Seventh Annual Open Education Conference, 2–4 November 2010, Barcelona, Spain. Also available online at http://oro.open.ac.uk/ 24702/ 2/ 926FFABC.pdf (accessed 12 September 2017).

Weller, M. (2012) ‘The openness–creativity cycle in education’, Special issue on Open Educational Resources, JIME, Spring 2012 [online]. Available at http://jime.open.ac.uk/ jime/ article/ view/ 2012-02 (accessed 23 May 2017).

Wiley, D. (2007) On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resource Initiatives in Higher Education, Paris, OECD. Also available online at http://www.oecd.org/ dataoecd/ 33/ 9/ 38645447.pdf (accessed 23 May 2017).

Wiley, D. (2014) ‘The access compromise and the 5th R’, Iterating toward openness, 5 March [online]. Available at http://oro.open.ac.uk/ 24702/ 2/ 926FFABC.pdf (accessed 12 September 2017).

4 MOOCs

This week we look at the emergence of massive open online courses and how these differ from OERs.

4.1 Week 4 Introduction

So far we have looked at open educational resources that can be taken and reused by other educators, or used by learners. Another approach to open education is to run courses that are freely open to all. These have been labelled MOOCs (massive open online courses) and are the focus of this week. The materials presented in this week are largely drawn from Week 10 of the Open University H817 course Openness and innovation in elearning.  

What to expect this week

This week we move away from OERs and look at a more recent development in open education, namely massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Whereas OERs are concerned with open resources that can be used anytime and adapted, MOOCs are courses that take place over a set time frame, studied with a cohort.

You will look at the background to MOOCs, the learner perspective and also compare different MOOCs.

Such open courses make a virtue of people being connected and networked. MOOCs generally provide only limited formal support from lecturers or tutors, so this peer support becomes more important. So the last activity in this week will look at what is called the personal learning network.

4.2 Week 4 Learning outcomes

After studying this week, you should understand:

  • the different types of MOOC and the issues surrounding them;
  • the learner experience in MOOCs;
  • the concept of personal learning networks;
  • how personal learning networks and MOOCs might interplay in an individual’s learning experience.

4.3 What are MOOCs?

Figure 10

Although the ‘massive’ of the title implies that vast numbers of students are necessary, this isn’t always the case; some MOOCs can be relatively small in scale but many have attracted large numbers of students.

The term ‘MOOC’ was coined by Dave Cormier and arose after his analysis of one of the first MOOCs, the ‘Connectivism and Connective Knowledge’ course (known as CCK08) run by George Siemens and Stephen Downes. Other early pioneers include David Wiley and Alec Couros, who both ran open versions of campus courses, whereby a course with fee-paying students with access to the course instructor was also made open to non-fee-paying participants who didn’t receive the direct support of a tutor or lecturer.

MOOCs need to be open to all, so tend to adopt a range of delivery mechanisms. The result is often a more distributed course structure than traditional courses, with learners using their own blogs or social media in combination with centrally provided resources.

One of the most innovative MOOCs in its use of technology has been DS106, the digital storytelling course run by Jim Groom. In this course learners keep their own blogs, which are aggregated together into the main course blog. There is also an assignment bank where learners suggest assignments, and a radio station that is open to anyone to use for broadcasts.

The early experimentation led to more mainstream adoption of MOOCs, and in 2011 two Stanford University professors offered an open course in artificial intelligence that attracted over 100,000 students. This was followed in 2012 by Harvard and MIT announcing the formation of edX, a joint initiative to offer open courses. In addition, the Stanford team founded Udacity, a commercial enterprise to offer open courses, and a number of universities started offering courses through Coursera.

Activity 12: Background to MOOCs

Timing: Timing: 4 hours
  • Watch this interview in which George Siemens and Dave Cormier are interviewed by Martin Weller, about a range of issues concerning MOOCs.
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  • Read McAuley et al. (2010), The MOOC Model for Digital Practice.

    This is a lengthy report so if you do not have time to read it all focus on the Executive Summary and the section entitled ‘Gaps in knowledge about MOOCs’.

  • Read Weller (2012b), MOOCs Inc.
  • Before we examine MOOCs in more detail, briefly consider if the MOOC approach could be adopted in your own area of education or training. Post your thoughts in your blog and, if you wish, you could Tweet about them using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity12 and take a look at what other learners have posted.

4.4 The learner experience in MOOCs

Figure 11

There is a strong emphasis on learner independence and peer support in MOOCs. Partly this is a result of their scale and that they are free – the providers of the course cannot afford to employ sufficient staff to provide support. This approach has also derived from the values of the early adopters, who wanted to explore pedagogies based around social connections. This has led to some criticism that MOOCs are only suitable for more experienced learners and those who are technologically competent. Arguably, the MOOCs arising from commercial ventures have adopted a more traditional pedagogic approach.

The completion rate for MOOCs is very low, as this article in The Atlantic points out. However, if courses are free and people are trying them out, then a high drop-out rate might be expected, but it is worth considering whether this high attrition rate raises problems for MOOCs as a general approach, or whether we need to use different metrics to assess the ‘success’ of a MOOC.

Activity 14: Comparing MOOCs

Timing: Timing: 4 hours

Compare either DS106 or Rhizomatic Learning with offerings from FutureLearn or Coursera.

(You may not be able to access a course on these sites without signing up – you don’t have to do this but we recommend that you do, in order to gain a sense of the material in a MOOC. Some courses are only available over certain dates, so you may not be able to enrol on the MOOC of your choice.)

If you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about them using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity14 and take a look at what other learners have posted.

Use the box below to make any notes.

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4.5 Personal learning networks

Figure 12

In MOOCs, and also in other online learning communities, the phrase ‘PLN’ (personal learning networks) is often used to emphasise the role of the network of peers that are important in learning. As we saw with the idea of little OER, use of an individual network not only provides a means of disseminating and finding resources, it also provides a means of discussing ideas and connecting with peers.

The concept of a PLN grew out of earlier talk of a PLE (personal learning environment). The idea of a PLE is that with the advent of so many free, easy-to-use tools that are not formally controlled by an institution, people were constructing a set of tools that helped to structure their informal, everyday learning. This was in comparison with a virtual learning environment (VLE, also sometimes called an LMS or learning management system) for instance, which is very structured and is organised and hosted by the institution.

A PLN emphasises that it is the people in the network that are significant, and places less focus on the actual technologies. For instance, you may have a well-developed network of peers in Twitter that helps inform your professional practice, but if that network migrated to another tool, for example Google Plus, the personal value to you is derived from the people and their expertise, not the specific tool they use.

Activity 15: Defining a PLN

Timing: Timing: 0.5–1 hour

As with many new terms, PLN is used in a variety of contexts. The Wikipedia entry defines it as:

‘an informal learning network that consists of the people a learner interacts with and derives knowledge from in a personal learning environment. In a PLN, a person makes a connection with another person with the specific intent that some type of learning will occur because of that connection.’ (Wikipedia, 2016)

  • Use search tools to find other definitions of a PLN, and come up with your own hybrid. If you wish to do so, Tweet this definition (across several Tweets if necessary rather than abbreviating it) using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity15.

Use the box below to make notes.

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Activity 16: Examining a definition

Timing: Timing: 2 hours

Now you have your definition of PLN, think about the relationship between a PLN and studying on a MOOC. How do the two things interplay? How might developing your PLN aid your learning on a MOOC? How might undertaking a MOOC aid the development of your PLN?

Now:

  • Write a blog post of up to 500 words discussing the potential synergies between a PLN and studying a MOOC (and any negative effects, if you think of any). If you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about your blog post using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity16 and spend up to half an hour browsing other learners’ responses.

4.6 Week 4 References

Bates, A. (2012) ‘Daniel’s Comprehensive Review of MOOC Developments’, Online Learning and Distance Education Resources, 1 October [online], http://www.tonybates.ca/ 2012/ 10/ 01/ daniels-comprehensive-review-of-mooc-developments/ (accessed 23 May 2017).

Daniel, J. (2012) ‘Making sense of MOOCs: musings in a maze of myth, paradox and possibility’, Journal of Interactive Media in Education, no. 18 [online]. Available at http://jime.open.ac.uk/ jime/ article/ view/ 2012-18 (accessed 23 May 2017).

Downes, S. and Siemens, G. (2008) ‘2008: CCK08 The first Massive Open Online Coure (MOOC)’, The MOOC Guide [online]. Available at https://sites.google.com/ site/ themoocguide/ 3-cck08---the-distributed-course (accessed 12 September 2017).

Downes, S. (undated) The MOOC Guide [online], https://sites.google.com/ site/ themoocguide/ home (accessed 23 May 2017).

Kop, R. (2011) ‘The challenges to connectivist learning on open online networks: learning experiences during a massive open online course’, International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, vol. 12, no. 3 [online], http://www.irrodl.org/ index.php/ irrodl/ article/ view/ 882 (accessed 23 May 2017).

McAuley, A., Stewart, B., Siemens, G. and Cormier, D. (2010) The MOOC Model for Digital Practice, Charlottetown, University of Prince Edward Island, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s Knowledge synthesis grants on the Digital Economy. Also available online at http://davecormier.com/ edblog/ wp-content/ uploads/ MOOC_Final.pdf (accessed 23 May 2017).

Rosen, R. (2012) ‘Overblown-Claims-of-Failure Watch: How Not to Gauge the Success of Online Courses’, The Atlantic, 22 July [online], http://www.theatlantic.com/ technology/ archive/ 2012/ 07/ overblown-claims-of-failure-watch-how-not-to-gauge-the-success-of-online-courses/ 260159/ (accessed 23 May 2017).

Weller, M. (2012a) ‘Amnesimooc’, The Ed Techie, 25 June [online], http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/ no_good_reason/ 2012/ 06/ amnesimooc.html (accessed 23 May 2017).

Weller, M. (2012b) ‘MOOCs Inc’, The Ed Techie, 28 May [online], http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/ no_good_reason/ 2012/ 05/ moocs-inc.html (accessed 23 May 2017).

Wikipedia (2016) Personal learning networks [online], 12 June 2016, http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Personal_learning_network (accessed 31 May 2017).

5 Pedagogy in open learning

This week you will examine the pedagogy and approaches to teaching used in open education.

5.1 Week 5 Introduction

In the last activity you were encouraged to critically examine the term ‘personal learning networks’ and whether this was a useful contribution to educational technology or not. This can be seen as representing one of the key questions for those in educational technology, which can be summarised as: ‘How much of this is new and therefore requires new theories or practice, and how much is an extension of existing practice?’

This question is particularly relevant when it comes to the pedagogy adopted in open education approaches. It is this question that we will consider in detail this week, by examining some of the emerging pedagogic theory in open education.

What to expect this week

Having looked at two recent developments in open education, namely OERs and MOOCs, this week you will consider what teaching and learning approaches are suitable for open learning.

Do we need new theories of pedagogy, or are these just adaptations of existing ones?

To answer this you will consider the impact of abundant content, and then look at two theories that are sometimes applied to open education, namely connectivism and rhizomatic learning.

For these you will be considering whether they help you in framing approaches to open learning, how you might implement them, and whether they are useful.

5.2 Week 5 Learning outcomes

After studying this week, you should understand:

  • the impact of abundant content;
  • connectivism as pedagogy for online courses;
  • rhizomatic learning as pedagogy for online learning;
  • how to take into account learner experience when designing a connectivist course;
  • the advantages and disadvantages of specified pedagogies.

5.3 Student co-creation

Figure 13

In North America, one particular form of OER that has gained interest over recent years is that of the open textbook. These are textbooks that are released with an open licence so they can be modified and adapted by educators or students. The digital format is usually free and the print version low cost. The initial motivation for open textbooks was to address the high costs of textbooks in higher education, where they can account for one quarter of a student’s expenses. This led to a number of projects, such as OpenStax and BCcampus, designed to produce textbooks for specific topics, usually those with high student numbers, for example introductory statistics.

Initial research focused on demonstrating the efficacy of open textbooks compared with traditional, purchased versions. This work demonstrated that student performance was as good, if not better with open textbooks, satisfying the ‘first do no harm’ principle. Further work in this area has also highlighted that there is no correlation between textbook cost and student performance. While it is important to establish the basis for adopting open textbooks and to remove objections on the grounds of quality, most of the open textbooks were being used in much the same manner as existing ones, so while there were savings for students, there was no change in pedagogy.

More recently however, educators have started to explore the open aspect of these books, in that it allows them to engage students as modifiers and co-creators of a textbook. Robin Red Rosa explains how she used an open textbook to enable her students to annotate, add and edit the resource, with the aim of future courses using it.

Activity 17: Student co-creation

Timing: Timing: 3 hours
  • Read de Rosa (2016) My open textbook: pedagogy and practice.
  • Consider how a course you have studied (maybe this one) could use such an approach. What might be the drawbacks and benefits? Post your thoughts on your blog. If you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about your blog post using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity17.

5.4 Connectivism

Figure 14

Connectivism has been described by George Siemens, its original proponent, as a learning theory for the digital age. As such, connectivism is often referenced when people talk about MOOCs or learning with OER. Most learning theories were developed prior to the digital, networked age and have been adapted to fit with it, whereas connectivism was developed specifically in response to the possibilities offered by a global network. The question ‘Does this give us anything new?’ is also relevant for connectivism, as some of the criticism about it has been that connectivism repackages existing ideas.

In the next activity we’d like you to read a paper by George Siemens outlining his theory of connectivism. We’d then like you to read a blog post by Stephen Downes in which he explains his perspective on what connectivism is, and also attempts to address some criticisms of it.

Activity 18: Theory of connectivism and its critics

Timing: Timing: 2 hours

We can view connectivism as a perspective on learning, which places the network at the core of its approach. While other learning theories may be applicable in this context, none are so deliberately focused on the importance of the network. Connectivism is not without its critics, and the aim of this activity is for you to explore whether you feel it offers a useful framework for considering education.

Perhaps the best way to think about connectivism is to implement it, so that is what we’d like you to do in the next activity.

Activity 19: Implementing connectivism

Timing: Timing: 6 hours

In this activity you will be devising a course that takes a strong connectivism approach, based on some key principles devised by Siemens:

  • Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
  • Learning is a process of connecting specialised nodes or information sources.
  • Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
  • Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known.
  • Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
  • Ability to see connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill.
  • Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
  • Decision making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.
  1. Take the description of the short course on digital skills that you developed in Week 2 and recast it, so that it adopts a highly connectivist approach. Or, if you prefer, you could take this ‘Open education’ open course as an example and recast it in a more connectivist model, or another course you have familiarity with.
  2. You should take each of the principles set out above and state how they are realised in your course, either as a general principle or by giving an example activity.
  3. Blog your course outline, along with how the principles are realised, and if you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about your blog post using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity19.

5.5 Rhizomatic learning

Figure 15

Another learning theory closely associated with MOOCs and open education is that of rhizomatic learning. This invokes the biological metaphor of a rhizome, likening learning to the roots of a plant. The roots can spread out laterally and horizontally, consisting of a series of nodes, with no distinct centre, beginning or end, and no defined boundary – the only restrictions to growth are those that exist in the surrounding habitat. Rhizomes resist organisational structure and chronology and instead grow and propagate in a ‘nomadic’ fashion. Seen as a model for the construction of knowledge, rhizomatic processes hint at the interconnectedness of ideas as well as boundless exploration across many fronts from many different starting points.

The rhizome work develops a metaphor proposed by French post-modern theorists Deleuze and Guattari (1987), but Dave Cormier has done most work on this as a theory in modern education. Cormier suggests that rhizomatic learning is a means by which learners develop problem-solving skills for complex domains.

For the educator, supporting rhizomatic learning requires the creation of a context within which the curriculum and knowledge are constructed by contributions made by members of the learning community, and which can be reshaped and reconstructed in a dynamic manner in response to environmental conditions. As Cormier (2010) puts it, ‘the community is the curriculum’. The possibly open syllabus represents the scope of the local habitat the rhizomatic learning process can explore, and provides the context for a community-negotiated curriculum. The learning experience itself may build on social, conversational processes, as well as on a personal knowledge-creation process, through the creation of large, unbounded personal learning networks that may incorporate formal and informal social media.

Some examples of rhizomatic learning are often found in MOOCs, where students are expected to operate in a networked, open manner and offer peer support. Dave Cormier ran an open course on rhizomatic learning itself, which naturally embodies the approach in its pedagogy.

Work with adolescent gamers by Kathy Sanford, Liz Merkel and Leanna Madill (2011) looked at how adolescent gamers’ experiences revealed the complex learning systems in which they contributed, created and participated in their gaming communities. The authors of the paper conclude that there is ‘no fixed course’ in gaming, and that their subjects actively blurred the boundaries of the following traditional identity categories: producer/consumer, teacher/learner and individual/collective.

The advantages of a rhizomatic approach are that, as with connectivism, it is more ‘network native’ as a theory than many existing pedagogic approaches. It promotes peer support, learner responsibility and an appreciation of the power of the network. You may like to consider the differences and similarities between connectivism and rhizomatic learning.

Activity 20: Exploring rhizomatic learning

Timing: Timing: 3 hours
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  • Consider your reaction to the video.
    1. Were you convinced by rhizomatic learning as an approach?
    2. Could you imagine implementing rhizomatic learning?
    3. How might rhizomatic learning differ from current approaches?
    4. What issues would arise in implementing rhizomatic learning?

Write a brief blog post discussing your thoughts about rhizomatic learning and if you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about your blog post using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity20.

5.6 Week 5 References

Cormier, D. (2010) ‘Community as curriculm and open learning’, Dave’s Educational Blog, 17 Jun [online]. Available at http://davecormier.com/ edblog/ 2010/ 06/ 17/ community-as-curriculum-and-open-learning/ (accessed 24 May 2017).

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus (trans. B. Massumi), Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.

Downes, S. (2007) ‘What connectivism is’, Half an Hour, 3 February [online]. Available at http://halfanhour.blogspot.co.uk/ 2007/ 02/ what-connectivism-is.html (accessed 24 May 2017).

Embracing Uncertainty – Rhizomatic Learning in Formal Education (2012) YouTube video, added by Dave Cormier [online]. Available at http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=VJIWyiLyBpQ (accessed 24 May 2017).

Sanford, K., Merkel, L., Madill, L. (2011) ‘“There’s no fixed course”: rhizomatic learning communities in adolescent videogaming’, Loading…, vol. 5, no. 8, pp. 50–70. Also available online at http://journals.sfu.ca/ loading/ index.php/ loading/ article/ viewFile/ 93/ 106 (accessed 14 November 2012).

Siemens, S. (2005) ‘Connectivism: a learning theory for the digital age’, International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, vol. 2, no. 1 [online]. Available at http://www.itdl.org/ Journal/ Jan_05/ article01.htm (accessed 24 May 2017).

Weller, M. (2011) ‘A pedagogy of abundance’, Spanish Journal of Pedagogy, vol. 249, pp. 223–36. Also available online at http://oro.open.ac.uk/ 28774/ (accessed 24 May 2017).

6 Operating in an open world

This week you will explore the types of technology used in open education, and why they have been adopted.

6.1 Week 6 Introduction

The focus of this week is to really consider what it means to operate in an open context as an educator and a learner.

What to expect this week

Firstly you will look at the issue of technological determinism and the significance of technology and pedagogy. This is a very large, contentious topic which we only begin to address here, but in areas such as open education, where technology is influencing practice, it is important to consider the interplay between the two.

There are then two activities which relate to this. The first is to consider what technologies are significant for open education. Your focus here should be on the open part of education in particular, and not just education in general.

The next activity is to think of the learner perspective and consider what skills, or literacies, are important for an open learner. Again the emphasis is on someone operating in this open context, rather than all learners.

6.2 Week 6 Learning outcomes

After studying this week, you should understand:

  • the relationship between technology and pedagogy;
  • which technologies are effective in open education;
  • open learning literacies as a subset of wider digital literacies.

6.3 Technology versus pedagogy

Figure 16

There is often a tension between the significance of technology and pedagogy in educational technology. For some, the technology is not significant and their focus is on pedagogy. Others prefer to emphasise the possibilities that technology offers us and wait for theory to catch up. It is probably more useful to think of the two as being involved in an iterative dialogue. Technology opens up new possibilities and is used in ways that its designers never intended, which in turn drives theoretic development which feeds back into technology development, and so on.

This view of technology, and particularly how it relates to education, is addressed by Martin Weller (2011) in Chapter 1 of The Digital Scholar, reproduced below.

Technology determinism

This talk of technology ‘allowing’, ‘facilitating’, ‘affording’ or ‘suggesting’ methods of working or approaches raises the issue of technological determinism. This subject arises in almost every discussion around technology and education, so it is worth addressing it early. Technology-related viewpoints tend to be dystopian or utopian in nature. Examples of such views are not only to be found in science fiction. Educational technology literature over the past twenty years shows the promises and fears that have been associated with a variety of technologies, including computers, CD-ROM, computer-assisted learning, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and videodisc. The Internet and social media are just the latest in this list.

What both the positive and negative viewpoints have in common is that they see the technology itself as shaping human behaviour, so-called technological determinism, a phrase first coined by American sociologist Thorstein Veblen. The technological deterministic viewpoint is that technology is an autonomous system that affects all other areas of society. Thus human behaviour is, to a greater or lesser extent, shaped by technology. This seems to remove human will, or ingenuity, from the social process, and is thus usually rejected as excessively mechanistic. However, there seems to be such an anxiety about being labelled a ‘technological determinist’ that many people in education seek to deny the significance of technology in any discussion. ‘Technology isn’t important’, ‘pedagogy comes first’, ‘we should be talking about learning, not the technology’ are all common refrains in conferences and workshops. While there is undoubtedly some truth in these, the suggestion that technology isn’t playing a significant role in how people are communicating, working, constructing knowledge and socialising is to ignore a major influencing factor in a complex equation.

As this book seeks to explore the ways in which approaches founded in new technologies can influence scholarly practice, the charge of technological determinism may well be raised. It is not my contention that the presence of the technology will automatically lead to certain changes. Indeed, many of the interesting examples of digital scholarship are entirely unpredicted, what is often termed ‘emergent use’, which arises from a community taking a system and using it for purposes the creators never envisaged. This is particularly a feature of the kind of fast, cheap and out-of-control technologies that constitute much of the social media/Web 2.0 collective. For instance, it has been well recorded that Flickr developed from a company which was aiming to manufacture an online game, and the photo-sharing application was just a simple tool to aid the game. As founder Caterina Fake commented, ‘Had we sat down and said, “Let’s start a photo application”, we would have failed. We would have done all this research and done all the wrong things’ (Graham 2006). Similarly, the proliferation of applications that have been built to interact with Twitter and Facebook were not predicted by the founders of those companies, nor the way in which people have used them.

A deterministic perspective would underestimate the role of people and the context in which the technology is used. Kling, McKim and King (2003) propose a ‘sociotechnical interaction network’, which emphasises the interaction between people, institutions and technologies. They analysed ‘e-scholarly communication forums’ to reveal the relationship between participants, resource flows, business models and other individuals and groups who do not participate in the network directly. Their work builds on what has been termed ‘social construction of technology’ (or SCOT), which is seen as a direct response to technological determinism (Pinch and Bijker 1984). In this perspective technology development is seen as the result of competition and negotiation between different groups or actors, rather than a finished artefact that is released (or inflicted) upon a rather submissive society.

SCOT is not without its critics, for example, Clayton (2002), and the detailed debate around the interplay between actors and technology is beyond the scope of this book. What the work of Pinch and Bijker and Kling et al. highlights is that it is possible to examine technology, technological influence and practice without falling into the trap of technology determinism. In this book it is the complex co-construction of technology and associated practice that is intended, with an iterative dialogue between the technology and the practices that it can be used for. Inevitably though, for the sake of simplicity and to avoid repetition, this complexity may be somewhat glossed over, and I will refer to a technology or an approach as if there is a direct line between them. For this I ask the reader’s indulgence and request that it should not be taken to be demonstrative of a technological deterministic mindset, while at the same time recognising the significance of technology in the overall process.

(Weller, 2011)

This tension between the role of technology and pedagogy is particularly acute in open education. Many of the approaches we have looked at would simply not have been possible without internet technology. But in turn, as we have seen with MOOCs, educators need to devise practices that will enable these possibilities to be realised. We now also need to develop concepts and theories to interpret what is happening, which is itself shaping the next phase of technology development to support MOOCs.

The focus of this week then is on the types of technology that support open education, as an understanding of these is important in appreciating the direction and possibilities in the field.

Activity 21: The chicken and egg conundrum – technology and pedagogy inter-relate

Timing: Timing: 3 hours
  • Use your blog to discuss the relationship between technology and pedagogic theory and practice, drawing on your own context and experience.
    1. What is your own experience and view?
    2. Do you regard either pedagogy or technology as more significant than the other?
    3. How do technology and pedagogy influence each other?
    4. Do you have experience where either technology or pedagogy has been given more weight than the other?

When you have completed your blog post, if you are content to share your thoughts in this way, Tweet about it using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity21.

6.4 Technologies for openness

Figure 17

What technologies are important in open education (rather than just online education)? This will depend on what you want to achieve, but we would suggest a few have been particularly significant in shaping the type of practice that has arisen.

6.4.1 Blogs

Blogs were a relatively early technology adopted by a few practitioners in education. The informal nature of the communication that takes place in blogs, and the removal of the filter for publishing, meant they appealed to some educators. Ideas could be shared easily and, because blogs tend to link to each other and users comment on each other’s blogs, they soon gave rise to a community of ‘edubloggers’.

This type of exchange seemed more personal and intimate than the formal publication routes, and the publication route more immediate. This made blogs a useful medium for experimenting, sharing ideas and connecting with a global network of peers.

Vanessa Dennen (2009) studied a number of academic bloggers, and argues that they use blogs to construct an online identity, which forms a significant part of their overall academic identity. She highlights six tools used in constructing an identity on a blog:

  1. Name and blog title
  2. Profiles
  3. Post content
  4. Voice
  5. Affiliations
  6. Visual design.

6.4.2 Links and embeds

The significance of hyperlinking was that it allowed easy connections to be made between content. The theory of connectivism is in many ways premised on the simple method of making links between one web document and another, using HTML.

This seems fairly obvious but almost as significant was the embed code, which allowed people to easily embed content from one site in another. For example, rather than linking to a YouTube video you could embed it into your own blog post by copying the embed code provided for every YouTube video.

The embed code was an essential element in the rise of what became known as ‘web 2.0’. This saw people creating content easily and also having a simple means by which to share and spread that content. There was thus a virtuous circle between the rise of blogs (and later social networks) where many people were now writing online regularly, and their search for content to link to and write about. Being able to embed content in your own site was invaluable in maintaining a blog, or later a MySpace or Facebook page, because it meant you didn’t have to send the reader to another site to view the content; they could view it in situ.

For open education this was significant as it allowed the easy creation of learning content that drew on different resources; for example, a Slideshare presentation, a document in Scribd and a YouTube video. It also created a motivation to create and share content, since it could spread in a viral fashion. This encouraged academics to adopt many of the web 2.0 tools as a means of dissemination.

6.4.3 Social networks

The rise in popularity of social networks, most notably Twitter and Facebook, really became significant from around 2008. These can be seen as an effective means of combining the preceding elements, as they encourage easy sharing, connections and combinations of media. The use of social networks in education is varied, from individual educators having popular Twitter accounts, to course-specific feeds on Google Plus, to Facebook pages for universities or subject areas.

You will undoubtedly have your own opinion regarding social networks and their use in education. For open education they have been significant for a number of reasons:

  1. They facilitated the connections between peers, which gave rise to some of the significant open education developments. (For instance, the early adopters of MOOCs were all active on social networks and in contact with each other.)
  2. They provided some of the tools for use in open education. For instance, Twitter was used as a communication channel for live synchronous events.
  3. They provided a conduit for sharing and disseminating OER or gaining involvement in MOOCs.
  4. The open nature of social networks has been significant because anyone can participate in the discussion – it does not take place in a closed environment.

6.4.4 Virtual learning environments

Virtual learning environments (VLEs) or learning management systems, such as Moodle and Blackboard, provide many of the tools required for elearning in one system. They have grown in use since the early 2000s and now almost all universities have an institutional VLE.

They may seem a somewhat surprising technology to select in terms of open education, since much of the open education movement has been conducted in contrast to institutional VLEs. Many of those in the open education movement prefer open technologies such as blogs, and see VLEs as a closed environment that stifles innovation (see for example The VLE is dead debate at the ALT-C Conference in 2009).

However, VLEs have been significant in open education for two main reasons. The first is that they created the baseline competence for elearning for both educators and learners. It would be difficult for any open education to flourish if users did not have a common experience to build upon. Much of what happens in open education may be defined in terms of contrast with this experience, or building upon it: having a base set of knowledge around using forums and content has meant that not every enterprise in open education has had to explain the basics. VLEs provided many educators with their first exposure to elearning, and from this they have gone on to explore other approaches.

In addition to this core set of competencies, VLEs have also provided a useful platform for hosting open education projects. In particular, the open source VLE Moodle has been widely used. The Open University’s OpenLearn project is delivered via Moodle for instance, and many of the early MOOCs used Moodle as their platform for asynchronous discussion and content hosting.

6.4.5 Other open technologies

We’ve suggested some technologies that have been significant in the development of open education. You may, or may not, agree with the list produced, and probably have your own suggestions for other technologies to include on the list. In the next activity you will be proposing one such additional technology.

Activity 22: An open education technology
Timing: Timing: 2 hours
  • Write a short blog post suggesting one additional technology that is important for open education, either from the role of a learner or a provider. The technology can be one that has been significant, or one that you feel is going to become increasingly relevant.

    What you include as a technology can be quite broad: for instance, it can be a general category (such as social networks), a specific service or a particular standard.

  • In your post briefly explain what the technology is, and then why you think it is (or will be) important for open education. The emphasis should be on open education in particular, and not just education in general.

If you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about your blog post using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity22.

6.5 Visitors and residents

Marc Prensky (2001) coined the term ‘digital natives’, arguing that the younger generation is immersed in technology when entering education; they have a different understanding and relationship with technology than the ‘digital immigrants’ who have to learn it. This was an appealing idea and gained much coverage. However, its claims did not withstand scrutiny, for example Bennett, Maton and Kervin (2008) found as much difference in technology use of the digital natives as there was between them and the digital immigrants, and that the technology skills of the digital natives were often limited.

David White has rephrased the idea more successfully as ‘digital residents’ and ‘visitors’. This describes a range of online behaviours and the same person can operate in resident or visitor mode for different tasks. White and Le Cornu (2011) define them as:

Visitors understand the web as akin to an untidy garden tool shed. They have defined a goal or task and go into the shed to select an appropriate tool which they use to attain their goal. Task over, the tool is returned to the shed.

Residents, on the other hand, see the web as a place, perhaps like a park or a building, in which there are clusters of friends and colleagues whom they can approach and with whom they can share information about their life and work. A proportion of their lives is actually lived out online.

Activity 23: Mapping visitors and residents

Timing: Timing: 5 hours

Read the introduction to Visitors and residents or watch this introductory video from Dave White.

The visitors and residents approach has been used to map individuals’ own engagement with different technologies using a grid. The horizontal axis represents a continuum from visitor use to resident use. The vertical axis can vary, but one commonly used labelling is personal to institutional. Watch Dave White’s explanation of a visitors and residents mapping exercise.

Create a visitors and residents map for yourself, considering the technologies you use (e.g. email, VLE, blog, Facebook, Skype, Google), using the personal/institutional axis as well as the visitors/resident one. There is not a definitive list of technologies; you should include any technologies you use regularly (for example, if you are a keen user of Flickr, add that). You can use a tool such as Word or PowerPoint to create the grid, or a drawing package if you have one.

Blog your map and describe the key points in brief. If you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about your blog post using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity23.

Did you find this a useful way of considering technologies and how you engage with them? Were your maps similar to other people’s? Were there difficulties in mapping some technologies?

6.6 Open learning literacies

Figure 18

There has been much talk of ‘digital literacies’, i.e. skills and competencies required to operate effectively in the digital, connected environment. These can be couched in terms of skills for learners, teachers or researchers. For example, Jenkins et al. (2009) suggest 11 ‘new skills’ for learners, arguing that, ‘Schools and afterschool programs must devote more attention to fostering what we call the new media literacies: a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape.’

The skills they list are:

  • Play – the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem solving.
  • Performance – the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery.
  • Simulation – the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes.
  • Appropriation – the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content.
  • Multitasking – the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
  • Distributed cognition – the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities.
  • Collective intelligence – the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal.
  • Judgement – the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources.
  • Transmedia navigation – the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities.
  • Networking – the ability to search for, synthesise and disseminate information.
  • Negotiation – the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.

The next activity asks you to read a JISC report from Helen Beetham, which provides a useful review of work in the digital literacies area.

Activity 24: Review of work in digital literacies

Digital literacies subsume many other types of literacy and skills, such as information literacies. It is possible to propose that a set of ‘open education literacies’ may exist also. At the ALT-C Conference in 2009 Terry Anderson gave a presentation on open scholarship in which some of the characteristics of an ‘open scholar’ were proposed. In the next activity you are going to suggest a set of open learner literacies.

Activity 25: Considering open learner literacies

Timing: Timing: 5 hours
  • Draw up a set of open learner literacies.

    These should be based on what you have experienced and researched so far in this course. They should cover the types of skill you feel are important for an individual to learn successfully in an open learning context (whether that is using OER, in a MOOC or through informal, lifelong learning).

    The level of detail is at your discretion: you may choose to operate at the abstract level, such as Jenkins’s list, or at a more detailed task level if you prefer.

    The number of skills is up to you, although they should cover most of what you feel is important in being an effective open learner. Each literacy should be accompanied by some explanation and justification.

    You can use the box below to start making your list.

  • Blog your list of literacies. You should reflect upon the following:
    1. Are there literacies that are particularly related to the open element, or would your list apply to all learners?
    2. Did you find literacies suggested by others that you would like to add?
    3. If these are important literacies, how would you go about developing them for learners?

If you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about your blog post using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity25.

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6.7 Week 6 References

ALT-C Conference (2009) ‘The VLE is dead’, 9 September, video, added by e-Learning Stuff [online]. Available at http://elearningstuff.net/ 2009/ 09/ 09/ the-vle-is-dead-the-movie/ (accessed 24 May 2017).

Anderson, T. (2009) ALT-C Keynote [online]. Available at http://www.slideshare.net/ terrya/ terry-anderson-alt-c-final (accessed 24 May 2017).

Beetham, H. (2010) Review and Scoping Study for a Cross-JISC Learning and Digital Literacies Programme: Sept 2010, JISC [online]. Available at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/ media/ documents/ programmes/ elearning/ DigitalLiteraciesReview.pdf (accessed 24 May 2017).

Clayton, N. (2002) ‘SCOT’, Technology and Culture, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 351–60.

Dennen, V. P. (2009) ‘Constructing academic alter-egos: identity issues in a blog-based community’, Identity in the Information Society, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 23–38. Available at https://link.springer.com/ article/ 10.1007/ s12394-009-0020-8 (accessed 12 September 2017).

Graham, J. (2006) ‘Flickr of idea on a gaming project led to photo website’, USA Today, 27 February [online]. Available at http://www.usatoday.com/ tech/ products/ 2006-02-27-flickr_x.htm (accessed 24 May 2017).

Ingram, M. (2011) ‘Sure, RSS is dead - just like the web is dead’, GigaOM, 4 January [online]. Available at http://gigaom.com/ 2011/ 01/ 04/ sure-rss-is-dead-just-like-the-web-is-dead/ (accessed 24 May 2017).

Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robison, A. and Weigel, M. (2009) Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, Chicago, IL, The MacArthur Foundation. Also available online at https://www.macfound.org/ media/ article_pdfs/ JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF (accessed 15 November 2012).

Kling, R., McKim, G. and King, A. (2003) ‘A bit more to IT’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 46–67.

Pinch, T.J. and Bijker, W.E. (1984) ‘The social construction of facts and artefacts’, Social Studies of Science, vol. 14, pp. 399–441.

Weller, M. (2011) The Digital Scholar: How Technology is Transforming Academic Practice, London, Bloomsbury Academic. Also available online at http://oro.open.ac.uk/ 29664/ (accessed 15 November 2012).

White, D. S. and Le Cornu, A. (2011) ‘Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement’ [online]. Available at http://daveowhite.com/ vandr/ (accessed 12 September 2012).

White, D. (2013) ‘Just the mapping’ [online]. Available at https://youtu.be/ MSK1Iw1XtwQ (accessed 12 September 2012).

White, D. (2014) ‘Visitors and residents’ [online]. Available at https://youtu.be/ sPOG3iThmRI (accessed 12 September 2012).

7 Conclusion

Figure 19

You are now at the end of the Open Education open course. To pull it together and help you check your understanding of what you’ve learned, we suggest that open learners do the following activity.

What to expect this week

In this concluding week there are two activities to enable you to reflect on the course, and consider aspects of open education.

Activity 26: Reflecting on openness

Timing: Timing: 5 hours

In this activity you will create a video and share it via your blog, using YouTube, Vimeo or other video-sharing sites. If you prefer not to create a video then you can use audio or another tool or medium of your choice, but avoid just plain text in this instance if possible.

In your video reflect on what you have learned in this course, covering both of the following elements:

  • What aspect of openness in education interests you most (and why)?
  • What the future direction of open education will be in your opinion, justifying your answer.
  • Your experience of studying an open course versus traditional, formal education.

Post your video to your blog. If you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about your blog post using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity26.

Activity 27: Reflecting on your experience of an open course

Timing: Timing: 3 hours

Create an extended text blog post (in text, video, or audio form as you prefer) about your experience of studying this open course (and previous open courses you may have studied) versus your prior experiences of traditional, formal education. Try to gather your reflections over at least two separate study sessions, so that you have time to register your initial reactions, and then post your subsequent responses to your initial reactions and how your thinking may have changed after a little more time.

Post your reflection to your blog.

If you are content to use Twitter to share your thoughts, Tweet about your blog post using the hashtags #h817open and #Activity27.

This is the end of the open course. We hope you have found both the content and the experience useful.

Openness in education is undergoing a period of rapid change, with different forms of openness being proposed in all areas of higher education. Sometimes this doesn’t turn out the way the initial proponents of openness hoped that it would, and we are seeing many discussions arising around what constitutes openness.

The intention of this open course has been to provide you with sufficient experience and knowledge to engage in these debates and discussions as the field progresses.

If you wish to explore Open Education further, take a look at The Open University’s Master’s in Online and Distance Education. Another recommended free course related to education, openness and technology is The digital scholar.

Acknowledgements

This course was written by Martin Weller and updated by Simon Ball and Tim Coughlan.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.    

The material acknowledged below is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this course:

Adapted by Martin Weller from Wikiversity logo for Open Educational Resources.

‘Who the hell is Brian Lamb?’ Brian Lamb speaking at WCET Catalyst Camp October 23, 2009. © Brian Lamb

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