Now the Open education course arrives at the end, I try to put order in my understanding of this evolving concept. Compared to the activity 3‘s map at the very beginning, I notice that my final map is more plentiful and meaningful now 😉
You’ll find a dynamic explanation of this map in the following video :
NB : I recommend to watch the video in full screen as the texts are really small.
NB2 : Please excuse (at least) one spelling mistake (or is it a game in order to catch your attention during the presentation ? 😉
In this map, I propose my own definition of what Open education could mean today (you’ll notice that this definition is still evolving, as I want to write words differently each time I think about it) :
Open education is an approach of learning, teaching and knowledge that relies on values of openness and thus, aims at- decrease as much as possible all kinds of barriers to education (geographical, social, financial, hierarchical…),
- stimulate individuals to build new knowledge and own meaning within communities,
- share ideas and outputs so that they can be used by others.
This highlights what I found particularly interesting in what I discovered during this course :
- The meaning of the concept seems to me well more relevant now, at the age of digital culture. I’ve never understood quite well the meaning of the word « open » in the classical expression « open and distance learning ». Now, the idea of openness appears clearer for me; it’s the openness we find in the 2.0 practices : sharing one’s own ideas, creations, convictions… without barriers of statut, background, localisation etc.
- Digital age, modifying so deeply the entire society, implies new educational needs. We need a deep change in the way people learn and get skilled. Open education could be a relevant alternative to classical Higher Education.
- The core of the Open education concept relies on values. It is a state of mind, a conviction, rather than a scientific concept.
- This conviction is very far, maybe at the opposite, from the most frequent state of mind in Higher Education : it disrupts the ideas of « knowledge owner » (the professors, the institutions…), knowledge transmission, knowledge creation…; it challenges the notion of local teaching institutions.
- Between all changes already done (open educational resources, online learning, open courses…), institutional MOOCs are, from my point of view, the sign that something different is happening now : a lot of (not to say all) HE institutions, and especially the most prestigious ones, are now thinking, speaking… and even experiencing new forms of open education. It’s a change of scale : from small and local initiatives to an international buzz. Will this be the real start of Open education ?
francoisedocq 