What About Second Breakfast?

Had you ever heard of second breakfast prior to Lord of the Rings? Me neither, what an amusing term for an excuse to over indulge between breakfast and lunch. Something I’ve done many a times but labelled it as over eating or occasionally my hangover cure!

Just like that prior to undertaking this course, I had no concept of the term ‘Open Knowledge’. I just thought I was sharing information and would never had anticipated that such a simple concept could be so complex.

The Open knowledge foundation defines open knowledge as:

“any content, information or data that people are free to use, re-use and redistribute — without any legal, technological or social restriction”.

Unknowingly I have practised this abstraction, frequently through Facebook and Whats App Dental professional networking groups. Within a teaching capacity I have also shared my original teaching resources with no copyright restrictions. Since undertaking this course, I can see that ‘open knowledge’ is a controversial notion where the user has to mentally buy into this process and value it’s benefits. Ultimately the level of openness you choose is a personal choice and what is at stake will influence any restrictions you apply.

The First Hurdle

On a personal level initially I had restricted the knowledge I shared in the professional network groups in fear of being challenged on my dental beliefs. Often in the field of dentistry there is more than one way to carry out a treatment. The stake in this scenario was my reputation. However, I’ve found that by consistently sharing my knowledge and accepting that my way may not necessarily be the right way has helped me overcome this initial feeling of vulnerability.

These networking groups that I joined were established with a mutual understanding between all group members that we share our professional knowledge and support one another as part of a ‘public good’. On reflection I can see that initially society pressures did influence my choice to be unknowingly open. These groups are mutually promoting the sharing of knowledge and to join you have to be on board whether you like it or not.

Always open for business

Although I was apprehensive when joining these professional networking groups, I have continued to share my knowledge. Why I hear you ask? Well the truth is that I have a case of FOMO (Fear of missing out), if I don’t make time to keep up to date on the group I feel as though I may have missed out on some new found knowledge or that I could have potentially helped another fellow professional. I feel somewhat accountable to this professional community. This makes me sound inherently nerdy, however what can I say, I’m addicted! I’m passionate about what I do and I believe that this plays a huge part as to whether you can commit to being open.

The Social Media networking group in the main works very well and it is a good example of an Open Education Practice (OEP) initiative. The social media platform lends itself for educational resources to be shared freely, to be re-used and redistributed freely with limited restrictions. The main restriction being you need to have wifi and some sort of social media device! These professional networking group sites have shown me how effective OEP can be. The collaboration of knowledge and expertise from all over the world enhances the educational experience. From a personal perspective this has most definitely improved the quality of care I deliver to my patients and consequently my teaching at the University.

Institutionally Are We Open?

What I fail to understand is after working at Manchester University for 11 years why am I only coming across this notion of Open Knowledge now?

Particularly as the ethos for the teaching, learning and student Learning experience is to ensure there are no barriers to studying and to learning. How is this vision being institutionalised? Institutionally are we trained to be open? Surely if teaching staff are more open about their teaching practices and resources this will help in removing barriers to studying and learning.

But I Want To Be The Best

Internally within the faculty if teaching staff were to share their teaching practices and resources would that compromise their individual positions within the faculty? Given that ‘knowledge is power’ internally if we share our best practices within teaching will it prevent us from getting to the top?

In my early years of teaching admittedly I was very protective over my resources and wasn’t keen to share especially as I felt that I had invested so much time and effort researching and creating these resources. To then share it with another colleague freely felt very unfair. However, as times gone on and my colleagues have become more like friends, I actively have offered my teaching resources and shared. However on reflection I can see that this was not for the right reasons. Taking this course has enabled me to view the benefits of sharing teaching resources from a different perspective. Ewan Chamings discusses the challenges this presents in his article. ‘Time to promote an OER Policy at UoM?’.

Staff Training is Key

Being open is one thing but understanding why we should be open is the driving force to actively be open. This course has actively made me wanting to be open. I feel if we all undertook some type of open knowledge training it would encourage all members of staff to share their teaching practices and resources more freely and without resentment. Ehlers 2011 further discusses the potential benefits of OEP.

This course has actively encouraged me to discuss open knowledge amongst other professions. I recently spoke to a music school teacher who advised me of a website called TES. This was originally a free site, it is a global central database of all types of teaching resources for school teachers. Unfortunately following its popularity this website now charges for the resources. However, it got me thinking wouldn’t it be great if we had a central database for all teaching resources within our faculty. Where we could openly share our teaching resources and build on the existing resources available. Currently we use Blackboard as a platform to upload and share teaching resources for students, these resources are usually in PDF format and copyright restrictions apply. It could be a similar set up however where there are no copyright restrictions. I acknowledge there are free teaching resources which may be available online, however for me personally there is a trust issue. Do I trust that this information is factually correct? I would be more inclined to use resources that are shared from my peers as I know it will have come from a reputable source.

Delving deeper and deeper into blogs and articles has shown me that the benefits of open knowledge are limitless and if we were ever to achieve true openness within the higher education sector would be a massive accolade. I believe training of staff locally to think and behave openly is the way forward to reaching this future goal.