[Open-education] Open Education: Condition Critical

Wed Nov 12 19:40:36 UTC 2014

Dear all,

I hope this event is of interest to many of you.

Best wishes,

Dr Daniel Villar-Onrubia
Online International Learning Programme Manager
Coventry University - Centre for Global Engagement
daniel.villaronrubia at coventry.ac.uk
https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielvillaronrubia

*The Centre for Disruptive Media presents:*

*Open Education: Condition Critical*

*A panel exploring opportunities to critically and creatively experiment*

* with different ideas of what the university and education can be*

*http://disruptivemedia.org.uk/* <http://disruptivemedia.org.uk/>

Thursday November 20th 4:30-6:30pm

Coventry University

Disruptive Media Learning Lab

3rd floor Frederick Lanchester Library

*Panellists:*

*Sean Dockray (The Public School)*

*Richard Hall (De Montfort University Leicester)*

*Shaun Hides (Coventry University)*

*Sharon Irish (University of Illinois/FemTechNet)*

*Pauline van Mourik Broekman (Mute)*

*Free entrance*

*Please register at: **http://criticalopeneducation.eventbrite.co.uk*
<http://criticalopeneducation.eventbrite.co.uk/>

What for decades could only be dreamt of is now almost within reach: the
widespread provision of free online education, regardless of a student’s
geographic location, financial status or ability to access conventional
institutions of learning. Yet for all the hype-cycle that has been entered
into over MOOCs, many experiments with Open Education (OE) do not appear to
be designed to challenge the *becoming business* of the university or alter
Higher Education in any really fundamental way. If anything, they seem more
likely to lead to a two-tier system, in which those who can’t afford to pay
(so much) to attend a traditional university, or belong to those groups who
prefer not to move away from home (e.g. lower-income families), have to
make do with a poor, online, second-rate alternative education produced by
a global corporation.

Open Education: Condition Critical will thus examine some of the
opportunities that exist for experimenting, critically and creatively, with
very different ideas of what the university and education can be in the
21st century. In doing so, rather than focusing on the 2012 batch of
extremely publicity-savvy xMOOCs (Edx, Udacity, FutureLearn etc.), it will
draw attention to a range of more radical developments in the Open
Education arena. They include The Public School, FemTechNet’s DOCCs
(Distributed Open Collaborative Courses), the self-organised ‘free
universities’ associated with the Occupy, anti-austerity and student
protests, and even so-called ‘pirate’ libraries such as libgen.org and
aaaaarg.org.

Open Education: Condition Critical has been organised to mark the
publication of *Open Education: A Study in Disruption* (London: Rowman and
Littlefield International, 2014), co-authored by Coventry University’s Open
Media Group and Mute Publishing as a critical experiment with both
collaborative, processual writing and concise, medium-length forms of
shared attention.
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