Topic 2: Openness in education

When we refer to open education, we usually think about an education that is offered without requirements for academic admission and nowadays is primarily supported by digital technologies. An essential quality of open education is the removal of barriers for learning (1). Higher education can be regarded as limited to access, as prior qualifications and/or tuition fees are usually required for enrollment. Here, open higher education programs aid to give people a chance to gain knowledge without following a traditional campus-based university. However, they are often regarded as lacking the status and the recognition of a campus-based institution, as usually no prior requirements are necessary for enrollment.

One aspect of openness in education is the development and adoption of open education resources (OER). This term was first introduced in the early 2000s and was defined as “teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions” (2). In the same time, open licenses are critical for defining OER. Creative Commons (CC) licenses have emerged and been established during the past years aiding open education programs. Using CC, the creator, in our case the teacher, can allow their content to be copied, distributed, edited, remixed and build upon in any combination within the boundaries of copyright law (3). At the same time, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been developed as free online courses where anyone can enroll (4). In these online courses, a person can learn new skills, however a fee is required to acquire a certificate.

But how open are MOOCs? Browsing through available courses on MOOCs providers (such as EdX and Coursera), one can observe that although they support CC licenses, it is very often that teachers select to have all rights reserved. The courses are open for access but they cannot be used under CC. On the other hand, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have launched their own platform, named MITOpenCourseWare (OCW) were courses are available under CC (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license) (5). Thus, there are different levels of openness that depend strictly on the creator of the course.

Open education is very significant as its most fundamental principle is that knowledge can and should be free. Moreover, most teachers engage with OER as they would like to improve education systems and the learning opportunities (6). As technology is advancing rapidly, OER should be amenable for improvement and adaptation, thus the importance of CC is coming back to the table. Operating under CC can give the opportunity not only to share knowledge, but improve teaching material and save time and effort for teachers that can build upon and improve the content. However, a great risk is ensuring that there is no spread of misinformation and deterioration of the quality in education, which is usually something guaranteed in a closed technology.

As a teacher in higher education, the concept of openness revealed to me a new world of acquiring and sharing knowledge, communicate new advances with peer teachers, university students and all people that would like to learn something new. However, as technology is nowadays the primary driver for communicating and sharing, development or adoption of digital OEN can be a challenge for a teacher in a traditional university. Institutional support is often required in order to establish openness. Taking the decision to open up a course as a teacher is a matter with many different aspects: additional time and effort will be required to adapt a course, get familiar with, select and adopt OER to support it. Moreover, the teacher should decide the level of openness for their course and this is a great challenge as it is usually connected with a certain level of confidence and trust the teacher has. 

References:

1. Inamorato  dos  Santos,  A.,  Punie,  Y.,  Castaño-Muñoz,  J.  (2016).  Opening  up  Education:  A  Support Framework for Higher Education Institutions. JRC Science for Policy Report, EUR 27938 EN; doi:10.2791/293408, URL: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC101436/jrc101436.pdf
    
2.  “UNESCO promotes new initiative for free educational resources on the Internet” (2002) URL : http://www.unesco.org/education/news_en/080702_free_edu_ress.shtml
    
3. Kapitzke, C., Dezuanni, M., & Iyer, R. (2011). Copyrights and Creative Commons Licensing: Pedagogical Innovation in a Higher Education Media Literacy Classroom. E-Learning and Digital Media, 8(3), 271–282. https://doi.org/10.2304/elea.2011.8.3.271
    
4. Yuan, L., Powell, S. (2013). MOOCs and Open Education: Implications for Higher Education, URL: https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/619735/1/MOOCs-and-Open-Education.pdf
    
5. Abelson, H. (2008). The Creation of OpenCourseWare at MIT. Jounal of Science Education and Technology 17, 164–174. doi: 10.1007/s10956-007-9060-8
6. Tovar, E., Piedra, N. (2014). Open Educational Resources in Engineering Education: Various Perspectives Opening the Education of Engineers. IEEE Transactions on Education 57 (4), 213-219. URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6937240