Learning reflection – Module 2

Learning blog / reflection

• What openness means for your own practice?

As an educator openness in education means sharing material, ideas or concepts between different countries, universities, institutions, colleagues, and students. As David Wiley ¹ expressed in a lecture, without sharing there is no education. With the digital era it has become easier to share, eg. sharing knowledge through the world wide web instead of sharing a book. Furthermore, it has also become more cheap and efficient sharing knowledge, as information can be gained faster. However, what are the downhills of open education? Can information be harmful without the right set of education or tools? Can information be incorrect interpreted? Should the voices of educators and scientists be controlled by digital platforms due to publicity and audience? Are we educators ready for this change? Maybe open education should be seen more as an approach and less like a fact ².

• How to find and use openly licensed resources?

With Creative Common ³ your work can get restricted or more open for use through simple settings and markings. This enables publishers to get credit for their work but still being able to share.

• advantages and disadvantages of open and closed technologies?

As explained by Weller & Anderson ⁴ there are different advantages with open technologies, i.e. discovery through creation of new knowledge, integrating inter-disciplinary work, and raising the profile of teaching. Furthermore, challenges of change are often shown in resilience of adaption. For example, the latitude of how much change can be accepted, or the resistance of how easy or difficult a change is. Most often, resistance are not viewed on an individual basis, more likely to be seen on a institutional level ⁴.  Another challenge of open technology is the creation of a safe and open environment, easily controlled and mitigating risk more effectively, which perhaps are more easily done with closed technologies. By that said, open technologies would therefor promote a wider audience of participation, and more controlled by the view of participatory work.

• implications of different open course and MOOC formats in relation to your learning experience on this course.

I am not that familiar with MOOC and I feel it has not completely been implemented in a Swedish context of Care Sciences yet. One aspect of not doing a MOOC is that there are often no credits (ECTS) which can accommodate with educational programs. However, as a PhD-student I have seen an increase of digital courses given out on both a national and international level. This has made it easier to find your course matching your research, but also learning och getting to know different researchers around the world within your field. I certainly think there are more possibility for MOOC, as it opens up ways to connect and collaborate while developing digital skills⁵. However, MOOC needs to be integrated with the University standards in accommodating credits.

References

1. TEDxNYED – David Wiley – 03/06/10 – YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M. Published 2010. Accessed April 20, 2021.
2. Weller M. What Sort of Open?; 2014. doi:10.5334/bam.b
3. Creative Commons Kiwi – Creative Commons. https://creativecommons.org/about/videos/creative-commons-kiwi/. Accessed April 19, 2021.
4. Weller M, Anderson T. Open Research Online. Choice Rev Online. 2014;51(06):51-2973-51-2973. doi:10.5860/choice.51-2973
5. What is a MOOC? – YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3gMGqcZQc. Accessed April 20, 2021.