Open Education Practices

Why all the fuss?

I tend not to write very long posts, but this one promises to be the shortest one of all.  Why all the fuss about open education practices?  It seems to be my professional destiny to develop new courses and then hand them over for someone else to teach.  It's part of the job.  Over the years I have been lucky enough to have had colleagues from other institutes informally share their excellent assessments and resources, regardless of their institutes intellectual property policies.  The only problem with sharing your work is that awful nagging fear that it isn't good enough.

Open Education Practices

The most useful thing that I have learn't through my studies is that 'Content is not king!'.  There are times when new content needs to be developed to contextualise a point that you are trying to make, but let's be honest, someone has probably already done it, and dare I say it, done it better.  Therefore, I find the differentiation between 'open education resources' OER and 'open education practices' OEP to be both useful and focusing.

Open Education Resources are educational content that can be used freely by anyone to gain knowledge or skills, and may be copied, edited and shared by anyone.

Open Education Practices are much broader.  They are analogous with a course or lesson plan used in a traditional teaching environment.  OEP are how the open resources are used to guide the student through the process of gathering knowledge, gaining comprehension, and eventually achieving synthesis.  All this within an open environment.  Not much to ask really.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this may in fact be an advantage.  OEP will forces us to consider course design more carefully, and ensure that the best pedagogical practices are utilised.  There will be nowhere to hide.

Possible Strategies

I am not actually sure what strategies to use, there seems to be a long road of researching different platforms, and investigating different media.  I can understand the general wariness of using social media sites like facebook.  It is difficult to disconnect from the endless facile blitherings (note the irony), and actually think of it in a professional context.  Sarah Stewart's professional use of the platform was inspiring, but others are less enthusiastic; Dr Thom Cochrane interestingly commented on facebooks lack of openness.  Wikieducator is probably a good starting point, and I am at least fairly familiar with the work of the Open Education Resource Foundation and the Commonwealth of Learning.  I also believe that the Otago Polytechnic is developing it's own on-line presence - this may also be a useful strategy.  Other ideas include:

• Short video clips posted to youtube
• Use of slideshare
• Use of existing creative commons content and images
• Use of appropriate accessible software
• Use of smartphones - more people have phones than computers
• Use of blogs and wikis

The most important strategy, is the connections, the story that you tell, the journey that you take the students on.  The practice of education.

Challenges

The main challenge to open education is of course going to be time.  There is never enough of it, and although this may turn out to be very efficient in the end, at the beginning of the journey it will suck every hour you throw at it.  The other massive challenge is getting the copyright and referencing right.  I am happy to say that for the last few year all my images have been from wikimedia commons, but I am less happy to admit that I haven't checked the exact licenses or got the correct attributions.  What an enormous task to go through them all.

As for the challenges created by other peoples perceptions, those people who want to will.

Why are open teaching/learning philosophies important?

I can't really offer a discussion as to why this is important.  Why not?  The whole world is moving around us, if we don't move with it, we will just get dizzy.

If you want a cogent professional argument - we are ultimately employed to serve the needs of the industries that we love, and our students, who deserve the best that we can do.  We cannot do this with a closed mind.

Notes:

1. Yes, it is me.  Just because I said pedagogy, it doesn't mean the aliens stole my body.  Honest.