Openness in education - article review

[Activity 2]

I read CNN-1333 Open Course (2012), The extended argument for openness in education.

The first thing that struck me was the different interpretation of "buy one, get one" (in the UK, normally "buy one, get one free" or "BOGOF"). An alternative interpretation is that as people (as taxpayers) have already paid for the research that has led to the publication of papers, access to those papers should be granted because effectively they've already been purchased. (You buy one, so you should get one...)

The main thrust of the article is that sharing knowledge is important, and it's what being an good educator is all about. I agree, and in general I'm more than happy to share my ideas and my materials with others when I'm working in Higher Education.

The article describes MOOCs and other open initiatives, and outlines various successes in this area. It concludes by acknowledging that the future of OER is still uncertain.

My thoughts...

The thing that is missing is a definition of learning and education. If I read the article with a definition in mind of current state-sponsored further education or higher education (in the UK, colleges or universities), it makes sense. But I do need to keep that context in mind. As soon as I deviate from it and think of "learning" in its wider sense (as in lifelong learning), I do start to come across the problem of "OK, so who is paying the wages of the people developing the materials?" or "Who is paying the wages of the person delivering the course?" In the corporate world, that is often the employer - either directly by employing people in a training and development role, or indirectly by sourcing external training.

We can't spend our whole lives acquiring one degree after another but instead continue to learn as we live our lives. "Education" (in my mind, at least) was traditionally linked to formal education resulting in an academic qualification. Potentially professional qualifications fall into this category too - others already in the profession subscribe to professional bodies that pay for research and materials, so effectively the "buy one, get one" philosophy works.

It does feel that the march is inexorable. So much is free on the internet that the assumption is often "well, it's online so we must be able to use it". Maybe. And maybe the concept of a professional being involved - creating the complex diagrams or editing and reviewing the text and being paid to do so - is outdated.

It's an interesting concept - that experts in the field are necessarily best placed to explain their findings to others. In my experience, that isn't always the case. They may be best placed to explain their findings to others who already know nearly a lot about the topic (doctors talking to doctors), but are woefully inadequate at trying to explain to novices (doctors talking to patients).

Finally, I'm all for learning what I feel I need to learn to do my job properly... but this is actually very rarely anything from the formal side of education. The problem is still: how can I convince a potential employer that I learnt sufficient of the 'right stuff' from an open course that someone had modified to be worth employing?