Topic 2: Open Learning – Sharing and Openness - Reflections by Chamara

 Topic 2: Open Learning – Sharing and Openness

This was also an eye-opening week for me. Stepped on to a topic which I my self has used while I was doing my PhD studies, but never thought about it too much. After listening to the Ted talk by David Wiley and reading through the article by Maha Bali et al. I was able to broaden up my view that I had on open learning. For me, open learning is getting access to education irrespective of wealth, gender, religion,  citizenship etc. But at the end of the  2 weeks working on this, I was able to see that open learning is not only about getting free access to educational resources at any time from anywhere in the world. It also about openness in the pedagogical aspect of it. After reading the blog post on the topic of What is Open Pedagogy? by David Wiley, I realized that most of my educational efforts were on creating Disposable Assignments. This was eye-opening for me. I am sure that I try my best to avoid these type of assignments in my courses and rather engage actively students to create the course material and tutorials. This way the teaching will also be more learner-centric. 

However, some questions started to puzzle me during this topic. There is nothing called a "FREE" lunch. In an ideal world, we could achieve the true definition of open learning. However, we are living not in an ideal world. One of the highlighted part of openness in open learning was getting access to education without any COST. At a first look, this seems to be OK since we already have platforms like Edex, Coursera that to a certain degree provide access to education without any cost. But there is a hidden cost to it. I got to know that to university to join these platforms, they have to pay a considerable amount of money. Also, time money and recourses have to be spent on creating and maintaining course on these platforms. Even to maintain the website with all the content, someone has to pay a fee. So even though from the learners perspective it's free, someone is paying the cost for it elsewhere. Countries like Sweden and Finland have free education at least the citizens of those countries can get access to. But the cost to make it free is covered by the tax money each person pays. But there is a good side to it also. If everyone in the country could get access to education without any cost, it is highly likely that in the end, it benefits society as a whole. But still quality has to maintain in education, otherwise, it will not add value to society as expected. 

Another thing is done taking a free course in a platform like Edex, Coursera satisfy the objective and outcomes when you do the similar course at a University. If yes, and imagine that all the courses that are in a certain degree program are available in Coursera. Then if a person completes all the course in Coursera, he or she is at the same level as the student completing a degree at a university (on-campus or distance). So then why still the certificate that we get from a university is more recognized than the certificate than the course completing certificates that one gets from Coursera?. One thing that should be mentioned here that most of the free educational resources available online are mainly targeting covering the theoretical aspect of a subject. When it comes to education in medical and engineering, it is hard to convert a practical experimental part of the course to an online version. I believe that being able to access the information freely does not mean that you have learned the subject.

My final thought is that one could still use concepts from open learning/pedagogy even in a paid course. But then it will not fit the current definition of openness in open learning!.