Just published as part of the Unitwin Network on Open Education 23 good reasons… to adopt Open Education
Defend freedom in teaching and learning by Jeremy Kidwell
Jeremy describes himself as an interdisciplinary scholar, trained in ethics and constructive theology based in the School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham. He is also a member of EUniWell.
We live in mixed up times. On the one hand, as EdTech evangelists are keen to remind us – we have access to a range of technologies which can open up learning and scholarly resources to a marvellously wide, potentially even universal audience. However, at the same time, public institutions are being deprived of funding and increasingly pressed to generate additional revenue, which has had the effect of Universities putting access to learning and scholarship behind for-profit firewalls and developing expensive tuition models which depart from older meritocratic systems and limit access in radical ways. If we are unable to continue democratic access to knowledge and education, the negative impacts will echo across generations.
Open education offers a model for holding open and preserving what we increasingly realise is a fragile knowledge commons. Two interwoven efforts are essential to ensure this. We will need to (1) create institutional infrastructure which can ensure access to knowledge, whether print or digital. This is a crucial starting point for increasing access and openness around the development of learning design. But it is not always the case that “if you build it they will come,” as the internet is full of the results of projects which have gone unused in spite of the inspiration which drove and the time invested in building a website. With this in mind, we also need to (2) consider ways to get learners to the knowledge they seek. Given the increasing background noise of information scattered across the internet, especially those schemes backed by commercial enterprises, this is not guaranteed. There is a need to engage in effective marketing and outreach, and to use metadata and UX in ways that will help learners to find the things they are looking for. There are also issues at the level of design and content. Learners are (rightly) increasingly uninterested in passive models, and want to pursue learning that is relevant to their lives and contexts. It becomes increasingly important for us to find ways to help learners take agency and control over their learning, coming not as passive consumers of information, but as active shapers of their own learning experience. Achieving this in the context of open education will require us to think carefully not just about crafting beautiful and engaging content, but also about how we can decolonise our minds as well as our Universities.
Past digital communities have been an important space for liberation, but these values remain fragile, especially as education shifts increasingly from public into commercial enclosure. Technologists and educators need to engage with technologies and structures which enshrine the values of freedom in learning, such as the turn to transparency in funding of projects (e.g. projects like Open Collective ), local control over hosting, and server federation, highlighted in projects like IndieWeb . This also rests on respect for expertise and the craft of learning design, rather than constantly chasing whatever shiny new thing comes along. OER offers an exciting movement and body of policy design which can support these values and preserve our learning institutions as spaces where research and teaching can bring the best of our innovation to the people who want and need it.
Link: https://euniwell-open-education.univ-nantes.fr/defend-freedom-in-teaching-and-learning/