Open education
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# 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.

◄Contents►Next: 5.2 Week 5 Learning outcomes

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