Open Educational Resources and Openness in Education
Introduction
MDDE 622 Openness in Education was run in the fall of 2012 and I participated as an Athabasca student in the tuition course for a grade, and in the 'open' course, no grade.
In the tuition course, I created an Open Educational Resource (OER), along with other course assignments. In the open course, I participated by writing and sharing my diigo bookmarks and online journal, reflecting on the course readings, the practice of open education and the growth of massive open online courses or MOOCs and their impact on distance learning.
The learning assets associated with this artefact represent turning points or 'a-ha' moments for me as this course tested my thinking of what 'openness in learning' represents. As a result, it widened my lens beyond corporate training into the history and 'philosophy of open' and trends and research of open education. Lately, through developing this portfolio and reviewing the learning assets created, I am reminded of the challenges of incorporating OERs into one's course materials. But I am also hopeful that the discipline of open education is maturing, and we will see more research and examples of open education in corporate learning settings.
Openness in education: My starting point
The first assignment was to personally reflect on a definition of openness based on the initial course readings. My starting point with the concept of openness was that it could mean 'open first to people' (The Open University, 2012) with a relaxed or open admission policy to allow easier entry to education. Yet the concept could also mean open to ideas and knowledge, with educational content being freely available, with no or minimal costs and 'as few restrictions as possible' on its use (Yuan, MacNeill, & Kraan, 2008). I offered that 'open is as open does,' that is, institutions, organizations, and individuals, all with different perspectives, implement and rationalize policies and practices of openness depending on their requirements, environment or context. Finally, openness in education doesn't build itself; it needs people, supporting systems and structures (Siemens, 2008) and practices (Yuan et al., 2008; Ehlers, 2011) to promote and sustain it.
Building an Open Educational Resource (OER)
After reflecting on what openness in education means to me, a follow-on assignment was to design and deliver an open educational resource or OER developed from open resources, using OER repositories and other 'fair' or common resources.
I settled on a topic related to collaborative writing based on the idea of the 'book sprint,' a very social, collaborative and 'open' way to produce a book. A colleague was taking on a documentation project I had originally produced, and this topic sparked for me an interest in how book sprints could be used by technical writers and developers to collaboratively get the work done under tight deadlines. I wanted to connect the idea of 'agile' approaches to documentation, such as wiki-based documentation and doc sprints.
My topic changed several times as I navigated through many resources that didn't quite fit, either because of licensing or quality. I developed my own content on 'agile' for technical writers and made this content accessible through slideshare. My conclusion at the time, and today still, is that creating and repurposing OERs from existing (and non-existing) resources is not a straight-forward and clear process. It requires the educational community to work better together to make freely licensed content interoperable, more understandable and 'easier to do rights'.
Learning Asset 1
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Download MDE622_Reflection on Openness.pdf
MDE622_Reflection on Openness.pdf Details
- Friday, 03 April 2015 [122.8KB]Defining and detailing openness: A personal reflection paper.
Learning Asset 2
OER-based learning module developed from open resources
I created "Collaborative Technical Writing Practices" comprised entirely of open educational resources.
To access the module, see: http://tecwrtrcollab.wikispaces.com/Home
Learning Asset 3
Personal tumblr blog related to open education
Entries in my personal learning blog related to 'open education': http://cognitiveoverdose-blog.tumblr.com/tagged/open education
Journey of openness
Learning Asset 4
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Download Open Education Concept Map.pdf
Open Education Concept Map.pdf Details
- Friday, 03 April 2015 [34KB]
Competencies Applied
1. Problem Solving, Analysis, and Decision Making
- 1.4 Find and access information.
2. Instructional Design and Development
- 2.7 Apply instructional design principles and models in distance education, in your workplace, or in other instructional contexts.
3. Communication Technologies and Networking
- 3.1 Use a variety of communication and document sharing tools to create, reflect, and communicate with others.
- 3.2 Analyze and evaluate the various applications and implications of these technologies.
- 3.5 Apply these technologies in distance education and in real-life instructional contexts.
4. Communication and Interpersonal Skills
- 4.1 Write clearly and in a style appropriate for purpose (e.g. assignments, essays, published documents, and theses).
- 4.2 Construct cohere arguments and articulate ideas clearly to a range of audiences, formally and informally, through a variety of techniques.
5. Research
- 5.4 Critically review literature both broadly and in-depth.
- 5.6 Summarize and synthesize information with a view of pursuing deeper understanding.
6. Management, Organization, and Leadership
- 6.1 Analyze the current and future climate of the distance education and distance learning industry, and formulate strategies to respond to that climate.
Critical Reflection
The course was an opportunity to learn about the history of openness, from open source software models, to copyright history, production models for open resources, funding and licensing models, and challenges in searching for quality open educational resources (5.4). The concept map (see Learning Asset #3) helped me put this 'review' into context. At first, I was dubious about the process of defining the attributes of openness in education as a compact visual. Part of the challenge in developing this asset was using a new tool, VUE, at the same time as processing and visualizing the relationships between concepts. But in distilling and synthesizing topics, themes, trends into key words, finding the linkages between them, and suspending belief about what the output should look like, this activity much to my surprise became a meaningful and memorable learning experience.
Course assignments (4.1), and reflections on themes explored in my personal blog were conduits for me to analyze topics of open access and digital scholarship, and reflect on what openness in education means for universities in terms of future funding, enrollment and learning design (6.1). As outlined in my Welcome, my background is in corporate learning and development, so assessing impact and trends of openness in education gave me 'a perspective' which I did not even have before. When you learn inside the corporate firewall, you are not offered flexibility in your choice of technology to learn or share with others. Contrast for example, with more open course designs like Learning Analytics, where your preferred social networking and blog tools are encouraged for you to connect, share and co-construct knowledge with others. Audience, purpose, and technology are key drivers into learning design, and dictate what learning stays in, and what goes out.
I created an Open Educational Resource (OER) and through the process of planning, designing and delivering it (1.4 and 2.7), I evaluated intellectual property and copyright systems and learned first-hand about the challenges of making learning 'open' for an educational context (5.6). I selected the topic of collaborative writing based on the 'book sprint,' a very social and 'open' way to write and get work done under tight deadlines. I also wanted to connect to the idea of 'agile' approaches to documentation, and included wiki-based documentation. My OER therefore, is a combination of adaptation and reuse: I created the slideshare on agile, wrote the context for the book sprint and wiki-based documentation using wikispaces for delivery. Finding appropriate content was a challenge in my experience. To build my OER, I used informal learning channels such as Slideshare and Vimeo to source copyrighted content using Creative Commons or open licenses.
In addition to thinking aloud about the course topics and assignments through my personal blog (4.2), I shared web resources using diigo bookmarking (3.1). This was a tool I discovered half-way through the program after taking part in Learning Analytics (LAK2012). It was useful to track my reflections on course readings in preparation of assignments rather than as a way to connect and foster discussion with others.
After taking this course, I have had several opportunities to curate peer-developed resources in my workplace (3.5 and 2.7). "Top Tools" wiki is one mentioned in Artefact 1, and more recently, I have identified new open learning content to replace vendor-provided professional skills based learning for our pre-hire population. With learning content that represents 'few experts', you typically have a static point of view or voice neatly packaged for consumption. However, with a peer- or crowd-sourced model of learning content and its multiplicity of views, you may need to reconcile or curate your content. It also requires you to set a context of why this content is important with clear guidelines and expectations on the assigned resources or activity so the learner can decide whether your resource is worthy, usable, and of value.
Competencies applied are indicated in parentheses.
Lessons Learned
Creating open education requires ...
- Clear understanding of copyright (i.e., the 'how-to') and making open content easy to share and do. When it came to creating my OER, I found it confusing to know which content I could use or reuse and how to attribute. During the course, I wondered whether creative commons licensing would ever be understood and applied to support open education or open content by non-OER aficionados, i.e., other than academia, educators in K-12, university and open education advocates.
- Curation. If you are assembling a patchwork of learning content from different sources, you will need to stitch it together with a common thread. Curation is more than discovery of appropriate content; it requires interpreting other 'people's stuff' or sometimes creating your own to fill the gap stating your learning objectives, and presenting the content as a unified whole.
What I gained from this learning was the opportunity to ...
- Learn first-hand about the challenges in creating an open education resource, for example, lack of quality resources with the right content licenses or 'rights' and searching for 'open' resources.
- Develop a point of view through on the attributes of openness in education, with underlying roots in intellectual property and copyright systems, and influences by open scholarship and open publishing.
- Use new tools such as VUE for creating a concept map and get more comfortable with 'thinking aloud' on my blog for open critical reflection.