In the week of 18 to 31 October, we discuss the sharing and openness in open learning for the ONL 212. We started with the definition of the openness. There may be several definitions in the existing publication. It included ““It also draws upon open technologies that facilitate collaborative, flexible learning and the open sharing of teaching practices” (Bali & Koseoglu 2016)
There may be some difficulties in sharing some materials due to copyright issues. Searching the openly licensed resources may still be hard in my field. I share my recording lectures and materials in my classes via the Learning Management System (LMS). A few of the lectures are open to the public. I plan to involve the blog in my class in the coming years for open learning. Technology may help a lot for distribution of the learning materails and videos. However, there is still a restriction of open education for places with limited internet access. It need to be free to use. For science and physics topics, one of the resources may be the https://phet.colorado.edu/. There are many animations for teaching.
There are advantages for open learning, including easy accessability of the learning materials and activities, creation of a sociocultural perspective on learning. The cost of learning can be reduced. Open learning also strengthens social justice if implemented properly. However, there may be some potential drawbacks from open learning. The difference between cooperating and learning from each other and plagiarism may not be clearly identified. A negative social justice effect may also occur if it is inappropriate implemented.
MOOC is one of the examples of open learning. At the National University of Singapore (NUS), we join the network of EdX that provides a large number of online courses for staff and students. Faculty in the university can also have the opportunity to offer their courses on EdX. In addition, NUS students have an option to make their own courses using the EdX resources. There are many other examples for open learning, including open education resources (OER), Open textbooks, Open access publishing, Open data, Open source, etc.
I am still learning my ways to share and use the resources via the open education practices (OEP) and open education resources (OER). It looks good to talk and share my knowledge and collaborative learning from each other using the current technologies and networks. However, the validation of information from the internet may still be needed. Therefore, we hope there will be more reliable open resources for students and lecturers.
You shared many ideas in this blog post, thanks! It was interesting to read about the pros and cons of open learning. The point on negative social justice made me curious. What does it mean and what learning situations can trigger it?