[Open-education] Friday Chat: The differences between open (as in access) or open (as in participatory & contribution)

Fri May 23 15:31:49 UTC 2014

As Pat has pointed out, there are many (7 in fact) definitions of what
constitutes open educational resources. There's also open-source,
open-access, and I'm probably missing another one. I think the conceptual
idea of open is a big-tent. It really has to be when there are things like
MOOCs, open textbooks, and repositories of OER distributed all over the
web.

Marieke really touched on something when she mentioned that there are
questions about the focus on being able to access resources rather than
contribute to them. In my experience people tend to fall into one category
or the other. While working on my thesis I found a few people who were
creating the resources and a few people who were using them. There didn't
seem to be a lot of cross-over, but there was a few instances. I believe
the tendency to participate in the creation of OER probably has to do with
familiarity about what they are. It's easy enough to find a free textbook
online and think 'cool, I will use this'. It takes a little more time to
understand the licensing, the repositories, and pedagogy that surround the
concept of open education. Perhaps then as the open education movement
matures we will see more people occupying a dual role of consumer and
developer of OER.

This reminds me a bit of the Heartbleed
bug<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/technology/heartbleed-highlights-a-contradiction-in-the-web.html?_r=0>which
occurred because everyone was using OpenSSL code, but no one was
checking the work. That is, I believe, a cautionary tale for OER.

Great topic though!

Danielle

On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 5:24 AM, Pat Lockley <patrick.lockley at googlemail.com
> wrote:

> I've mumbled about this before re open access as a geography (
> http://www.slideshare.net/Pgogy/open-as-in-oer-and-open-as-in-mooc). The
> analogy I use is in the UK we have footpaths, which the public are allowed
> to walk on - even if say they cut across your land. Whereas in the US you
> might have a national park, which is open but you have to get to it.
>
> Footpaths aren't big, parks are. Footpaths tend be nearer, parks tend to
> be further away.
>
> I think shifting the burden of accessing openness onto developers is
> problematic for two reasons
>
> 1) How could they know what to do? Are we talking a Berners-Lee like star
> system?
> 2) How could taking things to people not seem a bit Victorian Empire
> Missionary?
>
> I would say developing an accessible first (akin to mobile first) style of
> openness makes sense. So make transcripts available for MP3s as an example,
> but again, are we having better forms of open? And can we do this and not
> put people off being bad open?
>
> So you can be open, but at a point of moving your openness onto people, do
> you close things down? Or does it look a little spam like?
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 11:15 AM, Marieke Guy <marieke.guy at okfn.org>wrote:
>
>>  Hi Everyone,
>>
>> Sorry we missed our Friday chat last week - this was due to the Making it
>> Matter workshop (lots of good discussions<http://linkedup-project.eu/2014/05/21/what-we-learnt-at-making-it-matter/>there though!)
>>
>> So on the open design list there was an interesting conversation<https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/opendesign/2014-May/000390.html>about the differences between open (as in access) or open (as in
>> participatory & contribution)? They were trying to decide which is the most
>> important and if we have, in the past, focused too much on access?
>>
>> I was wondering how this ties in with open education. Are conversations
>> too centered on resources and fail to consider whether people can actually
>> participate. So here a couple of things come to mind:
>>
>>    - Being where people are at - do we often trying to force people to
>>    come to 'a place' rather than going to where they are?
>>    - Language - we continue to use a lot of jargon
>>    - Is open education elitist? e.g. material OER is WEIRD (Western,
>>    Educated, Rich, Democratic), much activity relies on infrastructure,
>>    learning & teaching practice approaches are often tied to cultures.
>>
>> Just a few thoughts.
>>
>> Marieke
>>  If you have an idea for a Friday chat add it to the etherpad<http://new.okfnpad.org/p/Open_Education_Working_Friday_Chats>
>> .
>>
>>
>> **
>>
>> Marieke Guy
>> LinkedUp <http://linkedup-project.eu/> Project Community Coordinator |
>> skype: mariekeguy | tel: 44 (0) 1285 885681 | @mariekeguy<http://twitter.com/mariekeguy>
>> The Open Knowledge <http://okfn.org/>
>> *Empowering through Open Knowledge*
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>
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