Hi, I have a question since a long time. I tried some free courses and books, and courses on edx and coursera, but non of them I enjoyed or can recommend. For example if I want to learn engineering mechanics at a university level, there are no courses available. I agree that universities should make their courses freely available, but the problem is also, that these courses are not good for learning online. Wouldn’t it be much more easy instead of trying to convince universities to make the courses open, to just create a good course by our self? I am working currently on one course which I want create with the help of moodle and make it open access. What you learn in university is already available on the internet and we just have to make a nice course out of it. What do you think?
Universities are following a business model. They only share limited glimpses in the course as open resources to market their university. That is a bitter reality, though many would not agree due to their close association with universities.
Best Wishes
Munir
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I think a crucial question is, how would those who engage in this important labor get compensated for their work?
Thank you, Martin for this provocative question from the learner side of the system. Yes as @Munirmoosa and @JudithSebesta above indicate, there are elements of needing some how economically to support an infrastructure that provides free and open courses.
But I think is more interesting to ponder the container of a “course” as the package of learning. In creating a course, the designers make decisions in an effort to make “one” course be relevant in a fixed form and applicable, on the right level for a wide range of learners. And as you describe, often what you find as an independent learner, the fit is not good.
There is also the idea behind the original inspiration for open courses, MIT’s OpenCourseWare was that “giving it away” was not a loss because an MIT course is not the experience of learning at MIT. The course is not the learning. I do find it useful to read some of the stories of people who learn from MIT courseware and are never enrolled as official students and tagging @shiras @cjnewton to add on to how this works out in the world.
Maybe It’s Not a Course You Should Be Making
I cheered at your question- that these courses that are “free” are not really ideal on their own for many/most (?) self-motivated learners.
But I wondered then, is the most useful thing for Martin to create the perfect mechanical engineering course for Martin that might miss the mark as much as you describe for Marion? I am not sure we need more fixed content courses (I have other musings about fixed OER).
What I think might be more useful than a “course” would be a notebook that you kept while learning a topic. It could include the sequence of key topics, the resources, readings you found most useful, and mostly, something like a workspace as you share how you worked out problems or researched. This would be Martin’s Path Through One Or More Courses (or more). If it were housed in a place where people could then download and remix – yes I am suggesting something like the intimidating and for some problematic due to its owners GitHub but there are other alternatives- the platform is not the answer. It could be a blog, A Ghost/Substack.
But let’s say there is a place to find all the different “notebooks” students have created to navigate their path through a topic, with maybe some kind of suggested structure, a final portfolio element – I am just making this up as a type.
I think also this could use a community space for people to connect/mingle/share as they are working through a notebook. I can see from the link in your profile, Martin, that you are exploring this already.
Okay, I think the idea of a student created learning path very interesting, but am not sure the packaging as a Moodle Course is really the best approach. What do you think of the Notebook concept?
The term open in OE is a debatable term! I recently published via my free forum as an open resource https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xmahdovDbVdSwubvzLB8FHZ6oZ0Gl8Je/view
Taking independent approach is much better in the field of open education than solely relying on institutions for infrastructure. Remember OE focuses on innovation and innovation is not confined to the boundaries of academic institutions.
Best Wishes
Munir
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| cogdog OEG Staff
April 24 |
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Thank you, Martin for this provocative question from the learner side of the system. Yes as @Munirmoosa and @JudithSebesta above indicate, there are elements of needing some how economically to support an infrastructure that provides free and open courses.
But I think is more interesting to ponder the container of a “course” as the package of learning. In creating a course, the designers make decisions in an effort to make “one” course be relevant in a fixed form and applicable, on the right level for a wide range of learners. And as you describe, often what you find as an independent learner, the fit is not good.
There is also the idea behind the original inspiration for open courses, MIT’s OpenCourseWare was that “giving it away” was not a loss because an MIT course is not the experience of learning at MIT. The course is not the learning. I do find it useful to read some of the stories of people who learn from MIT courseware and are never enrolled as official students and tagging @shiras @cjnewton to add on to how this works out in the world.
Maybe It’s Not a Course You Should Be Making
I cheered at your question- that these courses that are “free” are not really ideal on their own for many/most (?) self-motivated learners.
But I wondered then, is the most useful thing for Martin to create the perfect mechanical engineering course for Martin that might miss the mark as much as you describe for Marion? I am not sure we need more fixed content courses (I have other musings about fixed OER).
What I think might be more useful than a “course” would be a notebook that you kept while learning a topic. It could include the sequence of key topics, the resources, readings you found most useful, and mostly, something like a workspace as you share how you worked out problems or researched. This would be Martin’s Path Through One Or More Courses (or more). If it were housed in a place where people could then download and remix – yes I am suggesting something like the intimidating and for some problematic due to its owners GitHub but there are other alternatives- the platform is not the answer. It could be a blog, A Ghost/Substack.
But let’s say there is a place to find all the different “notebooks” students have created to navigate their path through a topic, with maybe some kind of suggested structure, a final portfolio element – I am just making this up as a type.
I think also this could use a community space for people to connect/mingle/share as they are working through a notebook. I can see from the link in your profile, Martin, that you are exploring this already.
Okay, I think the idea of a student created learning path very interesting, but am not sure the packaging as a Moodle Course is really the best approach. What do you think of the Notebook concept?
I imagine collecting donations. I don’t think there is so much work to do to create a better course than the ones on coursera. And if it bring value to a lot of people than they are willing to donate. Do you think this can be sustainable? I know personally a few people who donated to things which were open, because they got value, including me. A good example is Khan Academy, and there the course is basically just a video with a blackboard. An other example is freeCodeCamp, which I find amazing 
Thank you for the input @cogdog . I agree, that learners are very different, so it is important to clearly define the target group of the course. I informed myself a lot in the past weeks on how to make good e-learning courses and I can see so much potential. The discipline is called “Instructional Design”. I think creating one good course is better than having many courses on the same topic that are not so good. That’s why I think the Notebook path is not so engaging and interesting, but I think creating a community around the course where people can learn together and share their experiences learning the topic is a great idea. I imagine coursera, but in the way it should have been as described by the founder in this ted talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6FvJ6jMGHU&list=LL&index=4&ab_channel=TED
But they decided to create a for profit company out of it and now there are thousands of courses on it, where the free ones are not good at all and the payed ones probably too.
The idea is not really a student created learning path, as I have already my masters degree in mechanical engineering and some experience working as a mechanical engineer, but rather creating an amazing course by experts and continuous improvement. I wrote a small blog post about it Why will Kaizen University have the best courses?
p.s. I do have to change the name, because I can not use “University” in it
Yes, that’s what I think too. An independent approach is necessary in my opinion, because you can not transfer traditional courses effortlessly to open access ones. It has to be created specifically for that purpose in order to be good.
I agree, Munir, that the meaning of “open” has become washed, polluted, commercialized in some places, and that there’s ore of interest/hope from individual efforts and initiatives.
Thanks for sharing the link to your collection of teacher stories organized through your forum with the title theme of the cord. I suggest others here take a look as it provides windows into individual teachers from many spots on the globe.
I would like to think most individual here are of this same mindset. I call to attention as well the questions organized by @catherinecronin following her OE24 co-keynote with Laura Czerniewicz on Open Education at the Crossroads as far as action steps:
The second question we posed, right at the end of our talk, was: “What could we, as this community – this conference group – do right now? ”. With just a few minutes to collect responses, it was encouraging to receive over 90 immediate suggestions. We have clustered these suggestions into the following eight themes, for ease of sharing:
- Take action, make plans
- Communicate and share
- Work together, especially across silos
- Expand the open education community
- Develop/influence strategy and policy
- Be open; advocate for open
- Challenge existing power structures; work towards justice
- How we work is as important as what we do
If we are at a crossroads, I see your stories, forums, as fitting in well here. What do we do next?
Fair enough, it’s good to have a mixing of ideas here! I am going to take your expression of “an amazing course by experts and continuous improvement” as experts meaning students!
I was inspired to by your post The Road Less Traveled: My Transition from University Frustration to Online Education Pioneer - I hope you keep this community informed of the progress of Kaizen (not University) - that metaphor is really fitting:
Embracing the Japanese Kaizen philosophy of continuous and never-ending improvement, we are on a mission to redefine education globally.