Personal Blogs

My decision to read Cormier’s article was, I admit, due to it’s title “What do you mean…open?”.  The very same question was rattling around in my brain and in my post-TMA stupor I couldn’t formulate and answer.  As I read Cormier I realised that this isn’t a question that lends itself to easy answers.

It was only when I made a word cloud from the my notes on Cormier that something jumped out at me….

…. value versus values

Cormier points out that open means more than free (and by free I mean no cost here).  Quoting Newbould, he describes four meanings to open – accessibility, opportunity, transparency and entry.  He argues that it is the values that motivate practitioners and learners that determine the orientation to openness.

When we are talking about values, nothing exemplifies this more than Wiley’s TED talk "Open education and the future".  It’s clear that he values the generosity of openness.  Although he talks about giving without giving away, the power still lies with the person who has something to share.  They can decide to withhold it or to share. 

I think openness in education is moving society from domestication to liberation (Wellington and Austin, 1996).  Learning which is domesticating supports the continuation of the dominant culture, supported by restrictive policy and punitive laws. It seeks to eliminate uncertainty and resist change.  Creative commons has allows us to overcome this legislative restraint, enabling us to realise the opportunities for sharing afforded by new technology (Green, 2012).  Education which liberates embraces ambiguity and has the potential to effect individual or cultural transformation (Hunt, 2009).  For example, The Open Access movement has brought a diverse range of people together with the shared values of securing unrestricted access to online research for the benefit of society (Creative Commons, 2011).  As a new social movement, it aims to effect socio-cultural change rather than political or economic action (Buechler, 1995).

[...I could digress here and discuss free versus freedom, but perhaps that’s for another day.....]

I agree with Wiley when he says “education is inherently an enterprise of openness”, a  perspective which, I think, fits most comfortably with my own values.  Getting something without paying is nice.  Giving something for free is better.

References

Buechler SM.  (1995) ‘New Social Movement Theories’ The Sociological Quarterly vol 36, no 3, pp 441-464.

Creative Commons. (2011) Creative Commons and Open Access [Online].  Available at https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_and_Open_Access (accessed 25 March 2016).

Green C. (2012) ‘2012 Paris OER Declaration’ Creative Commons 29 June [Blog].  Available at http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/33089 (accessed 25 March 2016).

Hunt, C. (2009) Seeking Integration: Spirituality in the Context of Lifelong Learning and Professional Reflective Practice in R.L.Lawrence (Ed)Proceedings of the 50^th Annual AERC Conference: Honoring our Past, Embracing our Future. National Louis University, Chicago, pp. 155-160.

Wellington, B. and Austin, P. (1996) ‘Orientations to reflective practice’. Educational Research, vol. 38, no.3, pp. 307-16.

The Evidence Hub  intiative, part of The Open learning Network (OLnet), aims to gather, collate and harness collective intelligence from and about the emerging field of OER, providing a structure for "debates around key questions from the OER movement" (McAndrew and Farrow, 2013, p.68).

One of the underlying challenges for OERs is the lack of a robust evidence base upon which to base policy and practice (McAndrew and Farrow, 2013).  On a deeper level, debates about underpinning learning theory (Nichols, 2003) contribute to the challenge, whilst the socio-cultural influences of technology on educational practice are generating a faster pace of change that few are familiar with.  It is this gap in both knowledge and "know how" (Cook and Brown, 1999) that the Evidence Hub sets out to address.

The openness of the Evidence Hub (in contrast to another OLnet project, Cloudworks) embraces the diversity and inclusivity of OER itself.  My concern about the Evidence Hub relates to my experience of using Cloudworks (in my case through course H800).  The utility of both depends on the motivations of the user group, requiring active, purposeful and mutually respectful contributions.  Without this the resource risks rapidly becoming redundant.

The success of the OER movement will be in its ability to embrace diversity and mobilise the social capital it holds towards a shared purpose, in the model of a New Social Movement (Muijs et al, 2010).  Along with other tools in the OLnet portfolio, the Evidence Hub may unintentionally become an enduring and stabilising cultural artefact of the movement itself.

References

• Cook, S.D.N and Brown, J.S. (1999) ‘Bridging epistemologies: the generative dance between organizational knowledge and organizational knowing’, Organization Science, vol 10, no 4, pp 381–400.

• McAndrew, P. and Farrow, R. (2013) ‘Open education research: from the practical to the theoretical’ in McGreal, R., Kinuthia, W. and Marshall, S. (eds) Open Educational Resources: Innovation, Research and Practice, Vancouver, Commonwealth of Learning and Athabasca University, pp. 65-78.
• Muijs, D., West, M. and Ainscow, M. (2010) 'Why network? Theoretical perspectives on networking', School Effectiveness and School Improvement: An International Journal of Research, Policy and Practice, vol 21, no 1, pp 5-26.
• Nichols, M. (2003) ‘A theory for elearning’, Educational Technology & Society, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 1–10.