The word cloud in Figure 1 illustrates some of the terms associated with ‘open’, e.g. education, access, research, source, data, science, publication and massive online courses.
There is some obvious common ground between these terms and teaching and learning activity. For example the link between open research and open learning draws together two areas of open academic practice. Open science and open research share common roots and both benefit from the potential to speed up and enrich processes of discovery by utilising crowdsourced data, a practice which can also be applied to open educational resource activity. Crowdsourcing is also associated with emerging open knowledge transfer practices within the workplace (Tapscott and Williams, 2007).
It is not only educational institutions who seek solutions to difficult problems by posting questions to a network of experts. The effectiveness of this model has been well demonstrated through open source programming. The exchange of ideas and analysis across and within sectors can be mediated and transformed in the open environment, particularly when utilising online social tools. The values and norms around copyright and sharing of public-funded work are being revisited from within education and beyond. The potential of open knowledge is becoming more widely recognised and evaluated.
Timing: 1 hour
On the H818 course that forms part of The Open University’s Masters in Online and Distance Education we encourage learners to develop a network on Twitter. This can be very useful in both crowdsourcing information (the ‘hive mind’) and in increasing the reach of your own ideas or research (for example if you need volunteers to undertake an online survey).
OpenLearn - Networked practitioner: open or closed practice? Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.