I have to admit that I didn’t find this week articles as much as interesting than the weeks before. Maybe because articles are quite old, and they didn’t offer a real new idea to me. I would say that the only bit I take with me this week, is the importance of having a critical perspective on the term “open”, and probably this is the most important element when we are talking about Open Education. As I said, nothing completely new, but it is good to have the reminding alert turned on. I would highlight ideas from the articles: Bayne, S., Knox, J., & Ross, J. (2015). Open education: the need for a critical approach. and Knox, J. (2013). The limitations of access alone: moving towards open processes in education where the importance of having a critical perspective is well-argued.
I have been an active user of open education for the last 10 years, I have done so many MOOCs, I have just enrolled to some of them, but in general, I finish the course and I have paid to get the certification for a few. My partner is a computer scientist pro-Linux and open source, and of course we use it at home, and I am not new to the conversations behind… So, I guess this makes me quite familiar and aware of the reality of what we understand and assume for “open”.
During my professional and personal background, I have been lucky to get familiar with the new paradigm that was Web 2.0. Web 2.0 as an umbrella of changes that created a new way of how content, information and knowledge travels and is created.
While open access to learning resources may be of significant value in education, this paper will ques- tion whether free admittance to information is enough to realise the goals of universal education and economic prosperity often promised by the open education movement (see Atkins, Brown & Hammond, 2007; Caswell et al., 2008; Daniel & Killion, 2012).
Knox (2013)
I am sure, that thanks to open education people who never had access to a certain context, now are able to enjoy a variety of programmes at any time, from anywhere without cost. If we think in a 0-10 scale to measure the accessibility to knowledge, I would say that someone that had 4 in a level of access to the information, with OER and MOOCS could rich a level of 7 or 8. Of course, this is not solving the big issue that is that we still have so many people at the level of 0-2 of access to knowledge.
Five years ago I lived in San Francisco, CA and I volunteered in some public Highschools helping students to improve their Spanish skills. I was amazed by how many activities and extracurricular projects students did in order to be competitive when applying for the university. I never saw that in Spain, being accepted in the university doesn’t work like that.
Anyhow, I knew some students were taking Coursera courses of coding and programming, some at a very high level. They wanted to be ready for university and show that in their applications, but the truth was that they would probably be more than ready before starting studying. Clearly, these students were able to do this where the most privileged ones, usually white guys. They have the time, the resources and the support from home*. The group of students I helped, had other kinds of problems, and their goals were others, nothing that could be improved by joining to a Coursera course and learn by themselves.
Learning autonomously it is not easy at all, and MOOCs and OER assume that everyone will have the ability to work and learn independently, which is not easy and it requires a specific set of skills. Also, having access to open education is not that easy, some people still struggling to have a computer and wi-fi at home. Sure, the options are there, but it doesn’t mean that all barriers are demolished.
I acknowledge all the limitations described by Knox, and I embrace the need for a constant critical eye. However, I would say that we cannot deny that for the first time in the history information (and the creation of content) is not owned for a small bunch of people. Of course, there are barriers and power hasn’t flipped as much as I would like, but technically there is an open canal of communication for communities and groups that never had the option to create content and publish it before.
I am not being naif here. I now that even we have the technology and resources to open the knowledge and the creation of content to everyone, the truth is that who rich that information still a privileged percentage of people. What do we have to do then? As I said at the beginning, I agree with this week authors when they point out the importance of being critical, but at the same time, I want to be optimistic, I think MOOCs and OER are not solving the biggest problem, but they are a good step to rich changes. In fact, I am not sure there is a possible solution for the bigger problem that can be tackled from education by itself.
(*)Around May of this year I finished a MOOC on Coursera, it was quite interesting, and I linked some thoughts from a video I saw in the course. You can check it here. The main idea I wanted to highlight is that after 40 years of different studies (In the US) have shown that the student’s success is more impacted by the reality at home and society than by the school. Even, we can create the perfect school, with the perfect teacher, with the perfect content, society and family environment will have a huge impact on a student’s life. And we cannot pretend to reform that from the education without pointing the issues of the world’s reality.
Bayne, S., Knox, J., & Ross, J. (2015). Open education: the need for a critical approach. Learning, Media and Technology, 40(3), pp. 247-250.
Hodgkinson-Williams, C. A., & Trotter, H. (2018). A Social Justice Framework for Understanding Open Educational Resources and Practices in the Global South. Journal of Learning for Development, 5(3), 204-224.
Knox, J. (2013). The limitations of access alone: moving towards open processes in education. Open Praxis, 5(1), pp. 21-29.
