As I embark on the learning journey on open learning, here 's some of my take-aways from the topic 2 webinar on sharing and openness where the guest speaker Bali Maha shared with us her experiences and thought-provoking insights.
1. Cupcake Story - Maha shared the cupcake story in which her daughter' went to her best friend's birthday party and was served with cupcakes that had used her creative work - a set of customized pictures that she had created based on a popular game. Her daughter was upset not because her friend had not sought her permission, but because she was not acknowledged for her work. What I learned here is openness is more than just sharing or getting permission to share. It's also important for us to know how creators intend for their work to be used or reused.
2. Water and Air - Maha shared a quote from an Egyptian educator and author Taha Hussein - "Knowledge is like water and air." The following lists some of the perspectives shared by the participation on the similarities between "open education" and "water and air.": It's free, dynamic, transparent, ubiquitous, vital to growth and life, reusable, accessible, and should be accessible by all". I couldn't agree more.
3. Free Digital Materials and Experiences - I especially like the quote by Sarah Lambert shared by Maha on the definition of open education - “Open Education is the development of free digitally enabled learning materials and experiences primarily by and for the benefit and empowerment of non-privileged learners who may be under- represented in education systems or marginalised in their global context.”. Here, I find myself intrigued with some key thoughts around "free digital materials", "experiences", "marginalised learners". As we think about open learning, we tend to be focused on the current campus student experience and approach open learning based on the needs by our campus students, how they learn and what challenges they face. This is not enough. We need to also think about the online students, or learners who may be marginalized, those who are underserved or sidelined. We can take a more intentional approach to design our open learning for our online learners which will help them feel valued and have more motivation to engage and learn.
I entered my comment before but it disappeared, so here is another try :-)
ReplyDeleteI liked your reflections on the concept of knowledge, that it is like air, available to all. Sometimes we want to claim ideas that they are ours, but they are often developed based on what we heard, and sometimes we take ideas from someone else. So it is interesting to remember about that, and be humble about our expertise.
- Leysan
As a professional within the education of social work, I am also appreciative to the idea of open education as a way of reaching less privileged people, the early idea of internet as well. To make information available for people to prosper and learn from. Well, that is not necessarily the case as the flow is both skewed by unreliable information and restricted by parties not interested in a well-informed public. Thus, it seems as if we need to step up and share things for people to digest, develop and use to make the world a better place to live in.
ReplyDelete/Lars
Thanks for the post. In a perfect world, all materials should be free and can be shared to all learners. However, this is not always possible. More can be done by education institutions to promote open learning and share educational materials. I agree with you that we need to think more on how to help the marginalized learners to also benefit from open learning.
ReplyDelete