Tag: open education

Open Badges – Week task

s1690803/ / Weekly task

After investigating and thanks to the collaboration with classmates we found some Open Badge projects, and I am going to focus on the Open Badge Passport.

I made this choice because I think one of the most important element to judge if a badge initiative can be considered open or not, and differentiated from a simple digital badge, is based on its transferable capacity. In that way, the Open Badge Passport is a good example to see a platform where users can find badges to earn, as well as having a virtual place to store and show them.

The main feature of this project is the Passport function, so the users can receive Open badges and share them when needed. In that sense, Open Badge Passport gives a clear and easy way to see the badge information.  On the Explore section, we find filters like by name, country or advanced search which facilitates the badge hunting. It is clear that they care about having a good search engine that shows you a new badge to earn and badges that can interest you.

Overall, I think the site gives a feeling of transparency and I appreciate it because I think it tackles some of the questions raised by Ahn et al. It helps learners to chose best options for them to get and gives credibility for futures employers, in theory.

However, I think all these good aspects only can become a real game-changer if the initiative is well known, has a good number of badges (relevant for the sectors and variety) and the platform is used by many learners/users. I don’t see this is the reality in this case. I see a platform that is full of good intentions, but it lacks the main important element that is having interesting badges and credential to get. I haven’t found any interesting badge for me to earn (I know that I am only one data point, but it’s the one I have). I actually found that the majority of the badges available were for specific events that have already happened or the badge is only for a specific community, like “students of the University of Southampton”.

An interesting pedagogical value of badges is the options for learns to create their own learning path and I believe that badges offer the opportunity to illustrate personal specifications. I think badges could help to show a more individualised CV for example, where someone who studied “Education science” can show in detail their particular knowledge and skills from another with the same degree. If I think in all my friends from university, our CV says that we own a bachelor in Pedagogy, but it is clear that after 10 years post finishing classes we all have a different set of skills. I miss more emphasis on this aspect.

I share all the motivation and optimism that the people behind the initiative mention here, but sadly I have to admit that I don’t find a tangible sense to have an account on Open Badge Passport. I think their design and infrastructure solve part of the questions raised on the Ahn et al article. I would say that they give an answer to the hypotheticals about Open production (if anyone can create a badge) and Open access (if badges are widely accessible and visible). However, I think the project doesn’t have enough recognition or community behind in order to solve what I consider the most important tension derived from the Open appropriation (if badges are open to divers interpretations by different stakeholders).

Probably these are the most difficult tensions to solve because I of the nature of the education system. Education is a very structured and hierarchy system, with their own inequalities associated, as well as the history and cultural component of badges. I think these factors make difficult the implementation of a real open badge system of co-creating.

Pre- thoughts about badges

s1690803/ / Ideas and thoughts, Who I am and what I think

I would say that I like badges, I actually use several apps that use badges in order to show improvement or just the fact that you have earnt what kind of achievement. However, when it comes to the use of badges in education I have some questions and doubts.

I am quite familiar with the use of badges for different contexts, I could say that I am a user/fan, and I don’t miss the chance to win one if I have the option. I see the effect they have on me and the satisfaction I have when I get one. I definitely see the engagement power they have.

One of my favourite ones, and probably the first one I started using is Swarm. I actually started using this app, a long time ago when all the company was under Foursquare. Now they are split into two different apps, Swarm kept the social and gamification aspect, earning badges, while Foursquare,  it become a rating app, similar to Yelp.

I confess that I have the secret routine of checking in places and earn coins and badges for my unlocked places, like you have been in 5 Thai restaurants, here you have the Thai restaurant badge!

Inspired in this app, in 2011 I worked designing and creating the education proposal Agora: Citizen participation activities. (Everything is in Catalan, sorry). I did the educational foundation and methodology for children aged 8 to 12 years old. I designed the methodology and some activities as an inspiration to the teachers who will use the guideline.  The main idea of the proposal was that students needed to create their own city using the elements and values they wanted. In order to do that they needed to pass some activities. For example, if they wanted to have a green area in their city, they needed to pass the “green area activity”, then they earned the proper badge, and they were allowed to build a green area. The idea was that they had the virtual and the physical city in their classroom. I didn’t have many resources and clearly, the badges handmade, you can check the website I did for this programme here.

All the proposal was website based, all the instructions and activities were placed in WordPress and basically, the kids just needed to read an do it, in real life. I think I created something blended without knowing… Also, my plan was that all the classes shared their results: how many badges they have earned, pictures of their cities and everyone would be able to see what others were doing, share ideas and get inspired by others. Everything with the Open spirit on.

It was quite sad because the proposal was not very successful. Many teachers found that kids were already spending too much time in front of the computer (at home!), and they didn’t want to encourage the use of the blog as a guideline of the activities… Surprising, right? Also, another complaint was the fact of earning badges. Many educators considered that this was not the best way to motivate students. They argued that they should learn and that is the real reward, learning! The majority of the professors considered that giving the badge or points was not a really good way to measure their motivation. I have to say that at that point I shared part of the arguments, and I knew the proposal was quite risky.

A year after that, I moved to San Francisco, and I started teaching Spanish to young children and teenagers. Teaching in a different country I had many shock cultural moments, but one that makes sense to mention is the fact that part of my kit tool class they gave me, was a lot of stickers and an ink buffer (star shaped). I was supposed to give stickers every day and at least use the ink buffer with a couple of kids… Many days I forgot, and when my manager noticed told me that I was not motivating enough the kids because I was not giving enough stickers. The stickers were the motivation? It is true that students were clearly into stickers, but I thought it was quite sad.

In my experience, badge culture is something Anglo-Saxon. It is clear than the UK and US have more tradition on badging and there is a clear influence on other countries. Is it for the better or for the worst? Are there any viable or credible alternatives at the moment? Gamification it’s a very interesting approach, however, doesn’t undervalue what is really important (the learning for the pleasure of learning)? Or is that really important?

At the end of the day, we all go to work because we know that we will have a salary at the end of the month, and if we do good, even better than expected, we will be able to ask for more rewards…

Learning from informal conversations

s1690803/ / Ideas and thoughts, Trying tools, Who I am and what I think

This week I have discovered that there is a Whatsapp group of the IDEL cohort, as well as a Facebook group! I joined both of them and it has been nice to share thoughts and know people from the course beyond the University platform. This week I feel quite different than other weeks where I felt overwhelmed, intimidated and alone. being part of this informal context has allowed me to see that we are all in the same boat, struggling with the readings, time and blog post.

We have crossed the equator of the course and people are experiencing the pressure and tiredness. Probably because of that, we organised a Zoom call to comment on the MOOC task and share some ideas. I guess we all had the need to share and get ideas from others because our brains are starting to get dreined, I am sure we have been able to produce better individual ideas and blog post after that videocall.

 

In my opinion, I think we were being very critical with MOOCs, embracing the attitude learned from this week articles. At some point, I felt the need to take part in the positive side and here are some of my optimistic way of analysing open education.

  • We have to work with what we have. Reality is that the world is not fair, there are so inequalities, however, I believe that OER and MOOCs, in particular, are a good way to lower some high walls.
  • I think we were all having an education bias here when evaluating MOOCs, in general, everyone in the group comes from a similar professional background (working in education), and probably MOOCs don’t have a good offer here. However, I think they make a change when we are talking about technical skills like coding and programming. I have learned python and some coding thanks to Coursera and other platforms. That makes me positive considering the value of a MOOC and seeing the potential to improve my CV for example.
  • I don’t see MOOCs as the “fast food” of education, I think the conversation is more nuanced. Using the food metaphor I would say that MOOCs are the GMO products. It is not easy to take an extreme side when we are talking of GMO. Many people would argue that are bad because are genetically modified food, or maybe because there is a huge economic empire behind and it the food sovereignty is in danger. However, it cannot be denied the arguments that claim that GMO products are offering developing countries to sustain themselves and reduce worldwide hunger.

For me is difficult to have a strong opinion against MOOCs, because even though I am aware and acknowledge all the limitations and problems, I think they are not a bad idea per se. I think they can be a good ally to minimise the world inequalities.

 

Open. Equality. Reality

s1690803/ / Ideas and thoughts, Weekly task

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.

MOOC critical activity

s1690803/ / Trying tools, Weekly task, Who I am and what I think

First of all, I wanted to use some open-source programmes to do the video, I was playing a little with OpenShot and Kazam, sadly my laptop died finally this week, and I needed to find other ways to record last minute. You will see in the video that appears the name of my husband… Long story short, I used his work laptop and an internal tool to record and his name is everywhere… sorry about.

Click the image to go to the video
        Click the image to go to the video

Find here the summary of the main ideas of the video, and the questions I wanted to raise. I know that 16 minutes of a not very fluid video are difficult to swallow 🙂

Structure, design elements:

  • It has all the ingredients you can expect from a MOOC
  • Overall, the platform has all the requisites to make good usability, even though I found some elements that bothered me. Constant notifications are visible that I am not able to close.
  • It has a free and certification option, but I am disappointed by the fact that audit access expires. When I enrol to a MOOC is because I want to check the information, and kind of keep it, like a book, something that is in my “virtual library” and I am able to check it when needed.
  • Content is correct, there is a clear lineal structure and video content is clear enough.
  • I am missing more clear objectives and information about the topics that you will be focused on during the course.
  • Information about the teacher and staff + Requirements of the programme, very helpful before enrolling to the course.

 

Thoughts and questions:

  • What is the framework that institutions work with?
  • Different institutions have access to different frameworks? more resources are given by the platform?
  • Is the data collected really useful and used to design and create the course?
  • By definition MOOCs has a massive audience, building a community and social network is not something expected, isn’t it? This probably clashed with part of the philosophy behind “open”.
  • How and Who is marking the quality baseline? in big platforms like edX or Coursera, are the courses being tested/rated by someone before going online?
  • Ideas of why people enrol to a MOOC: have access to resources, information and materials? curiosity?, check options to find areas of interest?, first step to making a career change, find a community?
  • Value of the programme. In order to get a certification sometimes is enough paying by the course. There a diverse kind of evaluations, some courses offer a better way to check progress. True/False or more complex questionaries, Peer review or just click to checkmark. How can we be sure that someone that has taken the course has the knowledge? Is the credibility of the platform enough?

 

On the other hand, I found the post I wrote last year when I was attempting to do the course for the first time. Find the text here, in case you are interested, I realise now it was not a deep analysis…

Knox, J. (2013). The limitations of access alone: moving towards open processes in education. Open Praxis, 5(1), pp. 21-29.