Agitate, educate, organise — an eLearning Technologist gets rebellious
Agitate(d)
A piece of valuable feedback I received from my last submission is that I was not using my own voice in the blog post submission. This came as a surprise to me as I have always considered myself an outspoken and somewhat rebellious agitator.
In taking up the challenge explore and demonstrate both my awareness of and my love for openness I selected a title for this blog post inspired by the words of George Bernard Shaw because like Dr Chrissi Nerantzi I believe education is political and that the change needed to encourage more openness will not come with inaction.
The assignment brief is to demonstrate a critical understanding of opennness in practice informed by what I have heard and read. Since I have practical experience of openness, I decided to write from that perspective, in addition to what I have heard and read.
My attempt to weave it all together has an intentional end goal, not just to complete the assignment by critically analysing the subject but using it to inform and improve my own practice and actively contribute to the community of openneness.
A paragraph in Char Booth’s critical blog post on information privilege, which initially seemed somewhat irrelevant to the work I do caught my eye. It did so because it mirrors my insecurity and the feeling I have had that these conversations on openness happen above my head and that I have no power or influence.
‘learners in higher education are typically asked to create isolated products meant not to inform but to mimic a scholarly conversation going on somewhere just above their heads.’
She also asks the question I now ask myself
‘how do I approach access and authority in my practice?..What can I do to develop a more open sense of access? (Char Booth)
In exploring the definition of open educational resources in the article Why Openness in Education? I decided to investigate both my practice and the constraints and expectations around my role as an eLearning technologist, a role defined by fellow eLearning technologist Cath Wasiuk as
‘people who are actively involved in supporting and enabling learning with the use of learning technology” in her post Cath Wasiuk: Open Practice and Me.
Reading about the work Cath has done I lamented how little open educational practice I have been involved in, despite it being something that I embrace in all other areas of my life: principles of openness, sharing and solidarity. I enquired, is this because of the structures and constraints I am obliged to work within or is it a lack of will and creativity? Do I lack courage? What is possible? How does my idealism and the idealism of openness and sharing in Higher Education align with the real world?
The logical conclusion then was to ask myself what I could immediately start changing in my daily practice and where I could look for support. Also what would be tolerated in a climate where, in HE, we seem to be sharing less than ever in an attempt to make more profit.
CPD for example at the UoM, with the exception of the excellent OER work done by fellow eLT Cath Wasiuk , is frequently not freely shared but instead monetised. HuffPost talks about it in the provocative Creeping Capitalist Takeover of education. It describes the educational climate in America but there are definite parallels in the UK.
The article ‘The new political economy of higher education: between distributional conflicts and discursive stratification’ talks about empirical shifts and new phenomenon of ‘varieties of academic capitalism, the discursive construction of inequality, and the transformation of hierarchies in competitive settings’.
These new new phenomenon seem more aligned with the reality of my job than the seemingly idealistic notion of cooperation, openness and sharing.
The agitation I feel about the conflict between what is required of me and I what I think is important compels me to delve into the aforementioned article Why Openness in Education? I decided to go through the bullet points and see what openness I could salvage from my work history.
‘Open educational resources are educational materials (e.g., course textbooks, research articles, videos, assessments, simulations, etc.) that are either (a) licensed under an open copyright license (e.g., Creative Commons1) or (b) in the public domain. In both cases, every person in the world enjoys free (no cost) access to the OER and free (no cost) permission to engage in the “4R” activities when using the OER’ Why Openness in Education?
My first MOOC
In 2013 I was invited to work as part of the initial development teams building one of the first large scale MOOCs for the University of Manchester (UoM) a unit on Global Public Health. The MOOC though openly taught, was in fact not really open, though it was free.
This fact is eloquently argued in the blog post entitled Schrodingers MOOC.
‘In 2007 (notably before the rise of MOOCs) David Wiley developed the 4 Rs of Reuse — according to Weller one potential tight definition of open. The 4 Rs are reuse, revise, remix, redistribute. He then added a 5th R — retain. Generally, none of these Rs will be present in the typical MOOC model.’ Schrodingers MOOC.
So my first OER bubble is well and truly burst.
The MOOC had felt open and rebellious. It was profound to offer such important work for free, especially to learners who would not have been able to afford the content. It felt this way because ‘Higher education institutions were traditionally built on the principles of scarcity and closure, such as restricted access to libraries, special knowledge that could only be passed on in the lecture theatre’ (Unesco 2014 Policy Brief) I was delighted to have been part of something that was not a scarce resource available to a select few.
Laura Bond-Sykes does however note that
But as is well known by now, uptake of the first wave of MOOCs in 2013 was by people who already had a degree (70%).
Work shaped by values
Dr Chrissi Nerantzi asks
‘Is encouraging openness and diverse networks really radical? After all, what are we all here for? Universities are here to create new knowledge and disseminate it for the social good, to make a difference.’
As a fellow immigrant, I felt inspired by Dr Chrissi Nerantzi’s empassioned talk on open rebellion in education around this issue.
She continues by saying
‘nothing we do in a University is neutral; our work is always shaped by values — whether ours or someone else’s; whether we are conscious we are upholding them or not.’(Source: Chrissi Nerantzi: A(n open) rebel)
This takes me back to why I decided to write this assignment questioning both my own values and those of the institution I work with.
I firmly stand behind Wiley and Green’s assertion that
‘Education is, first and foremost, an enterprise of sharing. In fact, sharing is the sole means by which education is effected. If an instructor is not sharing what he or she knows with students, there is no education happening.’
Which brings me to the next revelation on openness in my work practice.
ePortfolios as a shared practice an am I actual an Open Teacher after all?
An eLT learns to be a jack of all trades in higher education, often without being aware of the fact that they can fulfil the role of catalyst and consultant. I am frequently contacted by academic staff who are curious about how other academic staff are using systems, software and methods.
On a previous unit in this PGCert, I collaborated on a joint assignment with 3 academic staff spanning two UoM faculties: Humanties and my own Faculty of Biological, Medical and Human Sciences (FBMHS). We looked at ePortfolio software called Pebblepad and produced an exciting piece of work together.
After a decade of being asked how academics could simplify the processes of portfolio management for students, lecturers and administrative staff I submitted a business case to purchase ePorfolio software. We acquired the software and licenses for our faculty (FBMHS).
After a few small successes we negotiated a better deal, got more licenses and gave them away for free to the other faculties at UoM.
We shared the licenses, we shared our practice. We became a bridge and other academics from different faculties who had never before spoken to each other started dialogues, discovering that they had more in common that they realised and that sharing made everyone’s work easier.
Though the platform itself is not open, it has in fact, in a surreptious way encouraged openness and curiosity amongst academic staff and shared teaching practice.
As the aforementioned group assignment progressed we shared practice: a lecturer in Spanish and Portuguese language teaching, a pharmacist and a laboratory scientist found common ground. The process inspired creativity and sparked ideas to improve and streamline the necessary work of portflio reflection and evidencing for students and academic staff. As a group we created a workbook example showcasing 3 examples, all inspired by sharing. All of the examples could easily immediately have be integrated into course delivery.
This mirrored my real-life work practice. My job goes beyond explaining the technical side of a piece of software. I build my training on the work of portfolios already created, I contribute, borrow and share.
Each Pebblepad portfolio is created in colloboration between myself and an academic lead. Every staff member I train is eager to look at what has been created by peers, and when I share the work and practice, I am encouraging openness and sharing.
Experiencing some feelings of light relief for having indeed contributed to a handful of projects embracing some aspects of openness I wondered if I had worked on something truly open. I actually had. It was an example of amongst other things, an open teaching project. Before I explore that I had ensure that I really understood what Open Teaching is.
What is Open Teaching?
Open teaching” began as a practice of using technology to open formal university courses for free, informal participation by individuals not officially enrolled in the course. In the university context, open teaching involves devising ways to expose the in-class experiences to those who are not in the class so that they can participate as fully as possible.
‘Be the Change’ developed by the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Team for every student at UoM is a set of active bystander educational resources that have been adapted from the evidence-based Intervention Initiative*. Offered in the Canvas VLE it is a free resource that does in fact allow for all of the below R’s Revise, Remix, Redistribute (Why Openness in Education?)
It was created with the intention of openness, to also be shared and promoted across other universities. It was written in portable bite-sized chunks and every academic lead involved could copy the core content and reuse it as they saw fit.
In reality that did happen. The next iteration will run again this year but managed by a different academic lead.
Upon further investigation as to what OERs are
‘any educational resources (including curriculum maps, course materials, textbooks, streaming videos, multimedia applications, podcasts, and any other materials that have been designed for use in teaching and learning) that are openly available for use by educators and students, without an accompanying need to pay royalties or licence fees’ (Butcher, 2011)
I discovered that, in fact as part of my work with the MSc in Deaf Education I had recorded and published several presentations and interviews with experts, to be widely and commonly shared, again on the Canvas VLE.
Cath Cronin states that ‘Open educational practices (OEP) is a broad descriptor of practices that include the creation, use, and reuse of open educational resources (OER) as well as open pedagogies and open sharing of teaching practices.’ It is at this point I realise that the open sharing of teaching practices is indeed something I have been facilitating in my job.
Before reading and studying the articles and blog posts on openness I had believed I had nothing to contribute or offer around openness in teaching practice since I do not formally teach. It has been a revelation to realise that I do practice and encourage openness in my role, it simply happens in a less formal and more organic manner.
Advocating and educating for openness
Why should I be advocating for opennness and how do I educate others around the need for them?
Aside from practicising what I preach and providing examples, I realised in order to better defend OERs I needed to educate myself first as to why they matter and to whom they matter.
I narrowed it down to a simple yet powerful quote because it would also apply to someone like me. When advocating for such things, it is powerful to draw on one’s own experience.
‘Open teaching provides individuals who might otherwise never have the opportunity to experience postsecondary learning a free and open chance to participate.’ Professor Martin Weller, the Open University in Open: on reaching ‘everyone, everywhere’
Knowing I will need to defend the idea that we are giving away precious content for free I look for arguments in defense.
Why do OERs make economic sense?
Many struggle to understand why there are those who would take the time and effort to craft educational materials only to give them away without capturing any monetary value from their work.’‘Why openness in Education?’ David Wiley and Cable Green, CC BY 3.0
Student satisfaction is a priority for UoM. Providing a taster of what is to come, perhaps showcasing a complimentary lecture by a respected academic seems like a common sense approach to marketing. Certainly one that the MSc in Deaf Education understood when choosing to invest staff time to provide complimentary seminar lectures of experts in the field.
Students can better choose their universities and universities their students (Unesco: How Openness Impacts Higher Education). The HuffPost article rightfuly asserts that students don’t generally get two bachelor degrees and transferring between institutions is difficult. It makes sense that students get a taster of what they are signing up for. In the end everyone benefits.
Wiley, Green, and Soares also argue convincingly in their article Dramatically Bringing down the Cost of Education with OER: How Open Education Resources Unlock the Door to Free Learning that the taxpayer is paying for the development in the form if the curriculum and that it should therefore be available to all.
Organise?
Realising I need to work more closely with other open education rebels I note Dr Chrissi Nerantzi is an organiser, that she works on cross-institutional initiatives. She mentions the power of networks and this makes sense.
Firstly there is a need to network within the UoM. To work cross-faculty and centrally and see what we have in common and how we can use the 4 R’s. We have made a start with open teaching, and with the serendipitously entitled Be the Change. It’s a good start.
