Assumptions, Challenges and Opening Up

My last few posts (Part One, Part Two, and Part Three) have devoted considerable attention to outlining what I see as a viable  (or at least potential) integrated model for online learning and sharing of materials that incorporates a web of distributed, publicly-visible learning systems.

Certainly this model isn’t an original idea of mine.  It is well and truly established in the open web already, with many educators, courses, and even cohorts of students taking to the Internet to engage and participate in an open fashion.  My point in exploring this model is to outline its capacity to fuel more sustainable architectures of sharing and reuse than those that seek to provide self-contained repositories, and which I therefore feel are more delineated from practice.

Dangerous Assumptions

In continuing to contemplate this idea further though I’ve realised there are areas that need to be resolved.  In particular, in the last section of my last post I indicated: “The point of this is that the model slots in with existing practice.”  The thought has since occurred to me that I’ve included a gaping assumption in that statement -  that instructors and students will already have decided to publish their course materials, reflections and assignments in spaces that are publicly visible and indeed under open licenses. Both factors are critical for this model; even if information is publicly visible, you can’t share or reuse it without it being accompanied by an open license.

Furthermore, not only is such an assumption unwise, it also runs inherently against the current publishing ethos and work-habits of much of academia – including attitudes about intellectual property, as well as what I consider to be a paranoid obsession about student protection (and school liability) that has lead to excessive controls over access to sites and services.  In effect, it isn’t existing practice.

Broad Implications, Fundamental Challenges

While the question of “Why should I share” is certainly a recurring obstacle to the release of materials, information and other sources of educational content, factors such as accessibility (in the broad sense), internet filters, constraints and boundaries on student learning freedoms, and a defacto view of learning management systems as the default framework of choice in online learning pose an even greater barrier to the implementation of such a model because they are founded in a fundamental belief system of what education is, and what it looks like.

So really, what is required before we can even begin to explore an open, distributed model is for the culture of education to begin to consider and except alternative models of learning and teaching – in effect, a fundamental rethinking of the roles of institutions, classrooms, teachers, students, and indeed the purpose of formal education itself.

Herein lay one of the criticisms I have with the approaches of the open courseware movement – they focus almost exclusively on opening up content, while holding virtually everything else equal – including models of instruction and the role of the student.  Not only do I think this is not as effective an approach as it could be; it also fails to push for any real reform to the educational system, nor challenge the traditional instructivist model of the classroom that places the teacher at the top.

Opening Up

In my view reuse and sharing of information; digital literacy and citizenship; freedom to learn, engage and participate; educational reform and cultural change must all be tightly interwoven within one another.  I simply do not see any way to successfully devolve the discussion into its constituent parts/topics in a lasting way.  In striving for openness in sharing and reuse we must also strive for openness and autonomy in learning, more opportunities for student exploration, and recognition of the fact that learning happens everywhere, not just within the physical boundaries of the classroom.