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Living in the digital era without even knowing it

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Living in the digital era without even knowing it

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As I listened to Alastair's webinar and read the comments, concerns, and ideas from colleagues posted here, it is inevitable to see that we are all moving towards a digital age that is faster than we know. Tailoring our education to fit our needs and acquire skills that makes us profitable in the market is something that we never thought about it, but it is here and now we are now able to pursue and promote it. At the same time, sharing of resources and re-usage of educational content is something that many of us are not comfortable with or feel a bit territorial about it , perhaps because of fear of being not longer considered useful by the employer, but we need to accept it and be open to this ideas because it is important to emphasize our role as educators and learners in this era and strive to promote knowledge thereby employing open sources so that we can disseminate education through online learning to larger audiences.
/Natalia

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Living in a massive digital era without even noticing

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Living in a massive digital era without even noticing

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As I listened to Alastair's webinar and read here the comments, concerns, and ideas from colleagues, it is inevitable to ignore that we are or are in the process of transitioning ourselves into a new level of communication and education, and this move is faster than we even know it. It is obvious that soon  we will be able to tailor our own education and be in charge of what we need or want to learn, the skills that we want to acquire and what is necessary to make us profitable. But all these at what cost? would our tailored training be globally recognized? Can it verified or validated? how one can become acknowledged by their tailor education?
As we are living in this era, it is also an advantage the re-usage of materials given that the fundamental principles do not change. This shall help to promote and advance further knowledge and reach bigger audiences.
/Natalia

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I agree that we are reinventing the wheel over and over again. As an example we are teaching the students to reference in a correct way when we should be spending time giving them feedback in relation to their learning instead (Ann-Helen).

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I agree that we are reinventing the wheel over and over again. As an example we are teaching the students to reference in a correct way when we should be spending time giving them feedback in relation to their learning instead (Ann-Helen).

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Very often sharing happens locally but lecturers are tentative about sharing openly for variety of reasons - unsure about quality, and copyright specifications are quite complex.

- Very true. However CC solves the copyright uncertainty I think. Why do we not trust the quality of our own work as professionals I wonder? (Alastair)

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A selection of quality reports and initiatives

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Even with the best laptop and local WiFi at KTH the webinar is seriously laggng and some of my respons is frozen and not published.

- Wifi is extremely unstable in terms of bandwidth and so all synchronous meetings suffer. Always bets with a wired connection. (Alastair)

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Will it not make many people in the teaching world redundant? Much less staff would be needed for teaching and organising courses if the resources are shared... Of coures this has also advantages, but it could also be disadvantagous for many of us who are woking at university in teaching related roles...

- I think we need teachers more than ever but more for leading discussions, inspiring, supporting etc rather than just creating content that someone else has already created. (Alastair)

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Open access is compatible with quality and peer-review

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Open access is compatible with quality and peer-review

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Open access does not necessarily mean less quality or control. Peer-reviewing could be included in the process. See for example the scientific journal eLiFe:
https://elifesciences.org/about

(Victoria Menendez)

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If there is no sharing, there is no learning

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If there is no sharing, there is no learning

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I think more students can be heard via webcourses than in classrooms

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How to secure the quality in Open learning? Does it have the same control that universities? Is the education worth as much as studies at the university? And the certificate?

- Usually it's the universities and the teachers who guarantee the quality. Many univs publish most of their teaching material as OER (eg MIT). OERuniversity (35 partner universities) offer real credentials for open studies. (Alastair)

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I was interested to see how the publishers felt about OER, as this would certainly 'undermine' their market.  In my mind, OER would be far more responsive to changing market trends which is what we need in today's fast paced environment (see Shift Happens (see video below or link here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emx92kBKads)
So I thought I would read up on the publishers vs OER debate, as I was sure there must be some literature out there on this.  I came across this statement (which sounds like a pure marketing communications statement): http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/IPA-position-on-OERs-100513.pdf
The questions that arise are pertinent to what we were asked to think about:
Quality assurance of OER, which publishers have to be responsible for. However, they cannot be as responsive (I think) as OER providers; Sustainability, which publishers for sure are able to provide; and Efficacy - publishers certainly have the manpower and resources to support this. Yet, they claim to be unbiased and to provide a balanced view...is that possible in a corporate environment?
However, we also need to consider that we are faced with an huge Infowhelm (Crockett, Jukes, Churches, 2011) and that without curated OER, will it not be difficult to make use of quality and crowd-approved OER?

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Apart from the examples in the presentation, at many institutions openness and sharing of content is not yet very established. Is a culture of sharing and openness developing in worlds higher education, and how will it look like in 5 or 10 years from now?

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I came to think about assessment in education, the exams and tests etc of our students are usually de-masked due to potential biases etc. It might be a problem if we are to use open resources instead of LMS?

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Are there any negative aspects of sharing that I/we need to be aware of? Misuse of shared material? If there is - how can it be handled.

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What is going on somewhere? What could we learn of the situation? Could MOOCS and journalists work together to develop citizenship?

Francisca

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Could quality be measured by participants of MOOCS

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Could quality be measured by participants of MOOCS

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If a MOOC is a double sided platform and courses only survive when students and labour market organizations give positive feedback on the quality of the course... like AIRBNB, is that possible?

Francisca

Most open courses and material allow user feedback and rating so that good material will be rewarded and poor material will be exposed. At least that's the idea. (Alastair)

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Sharing is learning and content is the king

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Sharing is learning and content is the king

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I do belive in the power of sharing and collaboration. And I am lucky to work at the university that supports openess. However our lecturers and students still complain about the lack of highly specialised, technical resources of good quality, that fit to the goals and aims set in the curricula. Perhaps this is a niche that can be - slowly - filled up with quality OERs, with the collaboration of various universities.
Thank you, Alastair, for a great lecture :)
Agnieszka

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If my institution is paying me for my employment which includes creating educational resources, either they hold the copyright or it is a shared-copyright. Does this mean that creating this becomes a pastime or altruistic act outside employment time? Even with that, does not it become a conflict of interest?

- If all work is published with a cc license the teacher has the copyright but agrees to share with anyone, including the university,  as long as they acknowledge the teacher as author and obey the CC license. Maybe materials developed with taxpayers' money should be publicly accessible.  (Alastair)

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Open source and open resources are sometimes not of the same quality as the one for which you pay. How can we ensure quality of resources produced and selected for use? Raheel

- there are already quality assurance systems and tools in operation and plenty research in the area. See for example http://is.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pages/EAP/documents/201405JRC88304.pdf (Alastair)

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Do you have to be connected to an institution to host a MOOC?

- Not always. Platforms such as Udemy allow individuals to offer online courses (Alastair)

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Used to be for free. Not anymore?

- Still free to take the course but a certificate costs money, so does tutoring. (Alastair)

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How can we assure quality in open learning? Universities today have several committees and such to make sure that teachers and course leaders do their job correctly to make the degree that the student gets at the end valuable. Of course this doesn't mean that all students that graduate from a program actually have met all course requirements, but it's still some kind of control. Do we want our physicians, lawyers or engineers to be trained using MOOCs only? And how can you check that the person you give the certificate to is the person that actually did the job if you never meet him/her in person?
As for open source journals, I was at an interesting panel discussion this summer about this. The summary of the discussion was: should you pay to publish or pay to read (unfortunately most open access journals in my field are quite expensive to publish in)? Also, the array of journals that send emails every day asking you to publish in them (if you pay a lot of money) are really making it difficult for the serious open access journals.
/Ellinor

- There is a lot of work and research going on into quality assurance for Open access, OER and MOOCs and several quality systems are available (see in particular http://is.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pages/EAP/documents/201405JRC88304.pdf). As with anything today there are plenty of less serious publishers and bluffs in this field and we all need to be better at source criticism even of publishers. Open Access is often free to publish and very well peer reviewed. But pirates and cowboys are hard to stop if they smell the chance to make some quick money! (Alastair)

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So does that mean that I can basically design my own study program and get a certificate for that? Will that have the same value as the classic university program?
Gizeh

- This already exists (see OERu.org). If employers recognize the new credentials then they will be valuable. (Alastair)

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Making knowledge free and open has many benefits but I can also see some issues with it in the current economic system where most things are commodified. Like someone else wrote in here, concerns about "how we are able to compete" arise. I'm sure that many corporations and others who benefits from keeping things more closed are negative towards this development. So I wonder, has there been any studies of how open learning or open source in general is affecting companies ability to profit? Could this be a game changer, and what changes can we expect?

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I love the idé of sharing all kind of information. But I also think it might be hard to evaluate the quality of the information. Nevertheless, together we can build a whole new education system with these

There are already good quality standards for OER and many projects and research in this area. (Alastair)

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Hi Alastair.

Thank you for putting ONL in perspective with regards to open learning and MOOCs.

I found it very interesting.
Regards from South Africa.

Janus

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I strongly believe in sharing as this is often how new and innovative ideas develop. Part of my learning journey is what I learn from others as they use what I initially developed.

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My understanding when MOOC's initially started was that they were meant to be offered free. If Universities and the like are now charging for issuing a certificate of completion, is that defeating the very purpose of this form of engagement?

- MOOCs need to find a return on investment quite simply. But there are still open courses that are free (like this one!) - Alastair

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If I make make lectures public, isn't there a risk that I get sacked? Could't my universty continue to give my courses, without having to pay me?

- Isn't your value as a teacher your ability to teach, guide, mentor and inspire rather than just creating content that in most cases already exists? (Alastair)

I hope so. But clearly it is easier to coach students thatn aquire the in-depth knowledge on which to base courses and lectures. And if others can use my material, my situation gets problematic. Also, in Sweden teachers own the coyright to what we produce. Is it not problematic giving up that?

Creative Commons allows you to share as well as keeping the copyright - everyone has to acknowledge you as the author. - Alastair

Sure. But my employer could - theoretically - let other teachers use my lectures...

- I don't see any problem. You still get the credit and your reputation grows. We are judged by our teaching not content creation.

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Why would anyone come to my university to take my courses if they can take them at other universities? Can't open resources be problematic when it comes to the competition between universities?

- Maybe we compete in terms of context rather than content. (Alastair)

Yes. In Malmö we do. And we would probably profit from being able to use material generated elsewhere. But competition is built-in to the system of higher education, and might clash with sharing.

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In the old days, we used to say that the best way to 'claim' an idea was to publish it as soon as possible. What is the impact of this today, with the immediacy of online publishing and the still slug paced formal publishing?

Today you can publish immediately via a blog or other e-publication tool. It undermines traditional publishing in some ways but it also demands that readers are much better at source criticism. - Alastair

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I wonder what are the reasons that we still have non-open source journals and their restrictive policies, and on the other hand, why it is so expensive to publish open source.

- Does have to be expensive to publish via open access. Many are actually free. I have published many times and never had to pay. (Alastair)

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I would like some more information about how to use and give credit with CC materials. (I also wanted to try the padlet ;-))

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The great advantage of this kind of openess is really the democratic access to information, tools and learning (limited by the premise of access to digital devices of course).  It is fantastic to hear that there are so many possibilities to use the concepts and creations of others.
Learning on internet brings a new dimension to networking, which bridges many traditional logistical difficulties. With all these tools and ideas and openly published material and resources already waiting for us to be used, there are no  excuses anymore for not bringing students and other learners from different competences and professions together and develop knowledge and science interdisciplinary. I like the idea of building pathways for people to crash their knowledge into other peoples knowledge from other fields. Without the boundaries of geography those pathways can change in the same way as do your steps in the game of Draughts (Dam) when you manage to get a "king", ie dramatically from different perspectives.

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OER and MOOC mobile applications, Open textbooks

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OER and MOOC mobile applications, Open textbooks

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How do you see the future of these going mobile? And open textbooks - this has huge potential in Africa

- It's already happening (Alastair)

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Just click below to view

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After you have watched Alastair's recorded presentation, please write any questions or thoughts in this space. These will be addressed in the webinar we will have on this topic 19 October 15.00 - 16.00