This second Reimagining Open at the Crossroads activity invites you to interactively participate in imagining fresh possibilities for open education using What if? questions and answers. Everyone is welcome to participate in this activity whether you are attending the OEGlobal 2024 conference or not.
I invite you to submit one to three What if? questions that reimagine open education in some way. For example What if? questions I might ask include:
What if students were leading the open education movement?
What if open was a culturally embedded norm in education?
What if open education was the key to attaining Sustainable Development Goals?
Simply Reply to this post with your What if? questions.
What if questions generate hypothetical scenarios and prompt “what would you do if” responses.
The second part to this activity invites you to reply to a submitted What if? question with an answer. State the What if? and then start your answer with “Then” and enter your answer to that hypothetical scenario. Multiple answers to the same What if? question are welcome.
Discussion about the feasibility of What if? scenarios and their associated answers is encouraged. In discussing feasibility please answer the question “What could we do to make this happen?”
Ah the Big question, you did well, Paul to warm us up with a music recommendation!
Not sure it helps, but last month I participated in the Open Texas 2024 conference where this was part of a question in their breakout rooms for a “Town Hall” style activity “What is your big dream for the future of Open Education in Texas” with responses and more available in a padlet. Responses are quite varied!
My response was in the vein of your second bullet point about openness being a culturally embedded norm, or something like “What if open education was something most had experienced so we did not have to spend as much time up front explaining or making a case for, and we just proceeded doing?” – pretty much the same question.
I acknowledge imagining “What if?” scenarios can be hard. But we do have some good songs posted in Activity 1 that provide the necessary theme music.
I’m totally on board with your What if?, imagining open education focused less on making a case for itself and more on doing. And it very much relates to my what if? scenario imagining open education as a culturally embedded norm. I had a good look through the padlet responses to "What is your big dream for the future of Open Education in Texas”. I’d say most of those responses are also seeking to see open education become a normal expected practice.
So let me try out the second part to this activity by responding to your “What if?” with a “Then”.
“What if open education was something most had experienced so we did not have to spend as much time up front explaining or making a case for, and we just proceeded doing?”
Then,
the values that underpin open education are norms
open competencies associated with open practice are commonplace
the practice of open education has become widespread with majority participation
open education is pervasive with saturation across an institution and beyond, into society as a whole
the doing results in growth, collaboration, and radical collaboration between institutions
the social good, knowledge equity, and democratization of power inherent in open education contribute to making education more socially relevant
Hmmm, I’m starting to like this future.
What other “then” statements could be added?
Other “What if?” imagined scenarios are also welcome.
Yup.
It might seem impossible to imagine open being the norm and closed being the outlier.
But things can change dramatically- one of my favourite examples is smoking. Look at this advert for example - More Doctors Smoke Camels Than Any Other Cigarette (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCMzjJjuxQI). It makes for hilarious viewing today, but it was deadly serious and completely normal in 1949 when it was made. That is less than a century ago.
The change in the perception/acceptance of smoking is useful, and I might say it was even over a shorter span. I think I lived this growing up in the 1970s, where smoking was advertised, allowed on planes. My mom and friends smoked in our house. Some colleagues who went to university in the early 1970s talked about seminars where students smoked as they talked.
It did that flip almost in my own generation’s time. The “but” might be was that it was enabled by health awareness of the cancer danger, legislation, laws limiting smoking in public spaces, package labeling, right? Might be fun to think of what warning labels might be put on closed content!
We are showing our age ! I remember all this too. There is much to learn from all the advocacy work that eventually forced change especially as there was no agreement that smoking was unhealthy. Big tobacco companies had deep pockets, just as big tech companies have deep pockets and a wider armory today. In many ways, it seems that much of the challenge today is persuading decision makers in education that there is a problem at all…
