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The Open Education Experience

Wednesday 18 March 2020 at 05:13

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Edited by Henry James Robinson, Wednesday 25 March 2020 at 12:41

Hi Everyone!

I want to tell you about m experience with Open Education. So, settle down put yo feet up... blah blah blah.

My experience with open education has been quite short in my view. I wanted to add to the knowledge I'd gained as a master's student of applied linguistics in 2000 because I surmised the field had changed a lot since then. I was planning to do a Ph.D. course at UoB at the time. I joined the Future Learn corpus linguistics course by Lancaster Uni. It was just at an introductory level but I'd never studied in that field before. However, what I'd already learned about the field was much more advanced than the course material, so my contact with other participants was very minimal. I used it just to browse some of the content, not to be seriously involved. Still, it was useful for learning more about the terms and concepts and it led to me joining subsequent courses where I was much more involved and it has culminated in where I am now - familiar with how working collaboratively and independently online with the help and guidance of a tutor and other course members.

I've done the H880 course - it was my full induction into working with others, I even had a few full-on disagreements and even arguments that dragged in the OU staff and my tutor - I think that's real evidence of my involvement in the community aspect. I think that really helped seal my initiation because I went on to join the course Whatsapp group and made some really fruitful formal and informal connections with some who I am still in touch with. Looking back, it was great!

I've studied several MOOCs on Blended Learning, Online, and Open, including with Leeds and Auckland; I've used some open resources as part of my assignments but I've never engaged fully with open access publications. It sounds like something I should do if I want to have a proper online presence as a contributor. I would like that I can set up a blog and popularise it based on the fact that my professional and technical experience has reached a point where people are interested in what I have to say and offer. That would be good too.

Just like for Sophie Washington, for me, the flexibility of OE is the main thing. I do like interacting with people and having contacts that stimulate or benefit my career and I think OE does that too. In some ways, it's more motivating than f2f because contact with others (and learning to a large extent) depends on your completion of assignments and of course you want to be original and to be in the loop early so you get noticed more.

Tags: open education, moocs, experience, online, open

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