Week 2 - Activity 5: Are OER both open and innovative?
Tuesday, 24 Feb 2015, 14:36
Visible to anyone in the world
A week late myself, but here we go and excuse me if this appears more of a summation than a collection of my own thoughts as, while I had been introduced to the concept of OER a couple of years ago now, I hadn’t done much reading into them in greater depth.
1. How would you judge OpenLearn in terms of your definition of innovation?
I suppose that prior to reading this, I’d never actually considered the definition of innovation. In the past, I’d have considered innovation to be something new with a specific use or something old applied in a different context that had a positive result. Wiki’s definition of ‘innovation’ is ‘‘Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments, and society. Innovation refers to the notion of doing something different (Lat. innovare: “to change”)’. I suppose that definition covers my initial thoughts in so much as it mentions new things and new ways of doing things and ideas. The module materials state that ‘The important point to take from this definition is the notion of change’ which I’d agree is at the heart of the matter. So does OpenLearn fit the notion of something new having been created or a new method of participation in an existing activity and ultimately does it change something?
I suppose if we look at the six stage description of possible work, we can perhaps look at what innovation would have been necessary against what had already been achieved in OER elsewhere:
1. Legal
2. Practical
3. Technical
4. Pedagogic
5. Economic
6. Transformative
As stated in the chapter, OpenLearn ‘built on’ existing work in adopting the Creative Commons licence and had been preceded in establishing a recognizable practice and identity for OER. Therefore, for the first two stages, I see little ‘innovation’ on the part of OpenLearn.
From a technical perspective, OpenLearn had again been superceded in the use of an open source platform in Moodle to provide an environment where the materials could be made available and learning and sense-making around them could take place. Pedagogically, OpenLearn followed the well-trodden path of distance learning as a basis initially though that developed subsequently into the materials being considered as ‘Learning Objects’ offered via structured authoring and learning design, as a result of the work of Rehak and Mason (2003) and McAndrew and Weller (2005). Therefore, again, this does not constitute my definition of innovation.
Neither did it in economic terms, potential sources of revenue in which to foster sustainability were identified but, as the text discusses, there is nothing new in a product becoming financially viable.
However, can innovation be reflected in the coming together of those constituent parts in the context that it was applied? As a part of the Open University’s existing practices, it has been an agent of change and therefore, while the preceding five constituent parts of what made up OpenLearn were not innovations, perhaps their use, together, in the OU’s context mad its transformational aspect innovative.
2. What key challenges facing the OER movement can be dealt with more quickly than others?
I think gauging this from what is essentially a layman’s perspective in relation to a number of the challenges, I would be making assumptions on a number of them. However, a few of the comments above have been invaluable in my making sense of what is being done and what has been done, particularly in relation to copyright and licensing which has apparently been overcome to some degree. Institutional policy also appears to be something that could, in an admittedly ideal world, be affected in a day, though I’d imagine the cumulative concerns of all the other factors would come to play as well as factors of resistance to change from advocates of more traditional instruction or simply those that just don’t like change. We’ve all experienced that.
At the other end of the spectrum, I would say that ‘Technologies and Infrastructure’ and improving ‘Access’ to OER are to some degree beyond the scope, remit, and influence of educators themselves and would be tied into matters globally of such complex and intricate technological, political, cultural, and any number of other ‘als’ as to be impossible to fathom. This inability for advocates of OER to influence these areas would indicate that these could potentially be the greatest challenges to overcome as we would have to wait on the necessary set of circumstances to transpire independently. However, one could apply ‘Universal Design’ principles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Design_for_Learning to content creation, adaptation, and the facilitation of its provision as to at least make it as accessible as possible to those with issues based on factors such as disabilities, low-bandwidths, and unsophisticated hardware.
3. How do open educational resources challenge conventional assumptions about paying for higher education modules?
Finally, here I’ll talk about this from a personal perspective, it challenges my assumptions, or rather what my assumptions previously were, in regards to how someone might acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and expertise in a field of study to master it. I had always considered the acquisition of these resultant in a qualification as strictly the purview of educational institutions such as colleges and universities. However, the (potential) accessibility now of all materials necessary to acquire specialism in a field is available to all that have the necessary hardware, bandwidth, and requisite understanding of the methods of accessing them. I think this has the dual effects of taking learning out of the hands of providers and putting it into the hands of the learners, to in effect, democratize the learning process that could lead to, increasing people’s job prospects and effectiveness in their chosen fields.
Would it be there is also perhaps the possibility that this would have an effect on the provision and import of actually gaining the qualifications themselves? Isn’t a qualification generally simply proof that you have undergone the process of study. With such things as a radically changing world economy and austerity in many places, might not the simple demonstration of knowledge and skills be sufficient for more and more employers? However, many would need greater and more decisive proof so the existing models of MOOCs followed by paid examinable components might come to prevalence. Also, as mentioned, it seems that there needs to be some structure as guidance and quality assurance to ensure an effective use of these potentially disparate learning objects and that what is being used is of the requisite academic level and accuracy.
For me, it’s the most fascinating aspect of the result of digitization on education.
Week 2 - Activity 5: Are OER both open and innovative?
A week late myself, but here we go and excuse me if this appears more of a summation than a collection of my own thoughts as, while I had been introduced to the concept of OER a couple of years ago now, I hadn’t done much reading into them in greater depth.
1. How would you judge OpenLearn in terms of your definition of innovation?
I suppose that prior to reading this, I’d never actually considered the definition of innovation. In the past, I’d have considered innovation to be something new with a specific use or something old applied in a different context that had a positive result. Wiki’s definition of ‘innovation’ is ‘‘Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments, and society. Innovation refers to the notion of doing something different (Lat. innovare: “to change”)’. I suppose that definition covers my initial thoughts in so much as it mentions new things and new ways of doing things and ideas. The module materials state that ‘The important point to take from this definition is the notion of change’ which I’d agree is at the heart of the matter. So does OpenLearn fit the notion of something new having been created or a new method of participation in an existing activity and ultimately does it change something?
I suppose if we look at the six stage description of possible work, we can perhaps look at what innovation would have been necessary against what had already been achieved in OER elsewhere:
1. Legal
2. Practical
3. Technical
4. Pedagogic
5. Economic
6. Transformative
As stated in the chapter, OpenLearn ‘built on’ existing work in adopting the Creative Commons licence and had been preceded in establishing a recognizable practice and identity for OER. Therefore, for the first two stages, I see little ‘innovation’ on the part of OpenLearn.
From a technical perspective, OpenLearn had again been superceded in the use of an open source platform in Moodle to provide an environment where the materials could be made available and learning and sense-making around them could take place. Pedagogically, OpenLearn followed the well-trodden path of distance learning as a basis initially though that developed subsequently into the materials being considered as ‘Learning Objects’ offered via structured authoring and learning design, as a result of the work of Rehak and Mason (2003) and McAndrew and Weller (2005). Therefore, again, this does not constitute my definition of innovation.
Neither did it in economic terms, potential sources of revenue in which to foster sustainability were identified but, as the text discusses, there is nothing new in a product becoming financially viable.
However, can innovation be reflected in the coming together of those constituent parts in the context that it was applied? As a part of the Open University’s existing practices, it has been an agent of change and therefore, while the preceding five constituent parts of what made up OpenLearn were not innovations, perhaps their use, together, in the OU’s context mad its transformational aspect innovative.
2. What key challenges facing the OER movement can be dealt with more quickly than others?
I think gauging this from what is essentially a layman’s perspective in relation to a number of the challenges, I would be making assumptions on a number of them. However, a few of the comments above have been invaluable in my making sense of what is being done and what has been done, particularly in relation to copyright and licensing which has apparently been overcome to some degree. Institutional policy also appears to be something that could, in an admittedly ideal world, be affected in a day, though I’d imagine the cumulative concerns of all the other factors would come to play as well as factors of resistance to change from advocates of more traditional instruction or simply those that just don’t like change. We’ve all experienced that.
At the other end of the spectrum, I would say that ‘Technologies and Infrastructure’ and improving ‘Access’ to OER are to some degree beyond the scope, remit, and influence of educators themselves and would be tied into matters globally of such complex and intricate technological, political, cultural, and any number of other ‘als’ as to be impossible to fathom. This inability for advocates of OER to influence these areas would indicate that these could potentially be the greatest challenges to overcome as we would have to wait on the necessary set of circumstances to transpire independently. However, one could apply ‘Universal Design’ principles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Design_for_Learning to content creation, adaptation, and the facilitation of its provision as to at least make it as accessible as possible to those with issues based on factors such as disabilities, low-bandwidths, and unsophisticated hardware.
3. How do open educational resources challenge conventional assumptions about paying for higher education modules?
Finally, here I’ll talk about this from a personal perspective, it challenges my assumptions, or rather what my assumptions previously were, in regards to how someone might acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and expertise in a field of study to master it. I had always considered the acquisition of these resultant in a qualification as strictly the purview of educational institutions such as colleges and universities. However, the (potential) accessibility now of all materials necessary to acquire specialism in a field is available to all that have the necessary hardware, bandwidth, and requisite understanding of the methods of accessing them. I think this has the dual effects of taking learning out of the hands of providers and putting it into the hands of the learners, to in effect, democratize the learning process that could lead to, increasing people’s job prospects and effectiveness in their chosen fields.
Would it be there is also perhaps the possibility that this would have an effect on the provision and import of actually gaining the qualifications themselves? Isn’t a qualification generally simply proof that you have undergone the process of study. With such things as a radically changing world economy and austerity in many places, might not the simple demonstration of knowledge and skills be sufficient for more and more employers? However, many would need greater and more decisive proof so the existing models of MOOCs followed by paid examinable components might come to prevalence. Also, as mentioned, it seems that there needs to be some structure as guidance and quality assurance to ensure an effective use of these potentially disparate learning objects and that what is being used is of the requisite academic level and accuracy.
For me, it’s the most fascinating aspect of the result of digitization on education.