Here are some thoughts on Week 13 posts on the future of open education.
– Meg brings up some very good points about assessment. The idea of competency-based learning is very appealing, but the decisions on what is to be tested and how are difficult. The complexities of standards, curriculum, and assessment alignment are challenging and frequently get bogged down in politics. Take the current fiasco of K-12 education in the U.S. as a case study in how not to do things. The academic standards and accountability of No Child Left Behind sound like good ideas. The actual implementation has resulted in a educational environment that is detrimental to the learning of most children (or as Judge Alan Page recently said, is ensuring that all children are left behind).
Question: How can standards- or competency-based education be implemented without these problems? [Stian has some intriguing thoughts on this.]
– Jessie brings an interesting perspective on these issues from China. (As a sidenote, I just heard a presentation by educational technologist Alan November in which he staked out the position that U.S. primary and secondary schools are more restrictive than any others in the world including China where he recently visited. He is understandably vexed by the absence and even banning of tools like blogs, wikis, social networks, and cell phones here in the U.S.)
– Stian talks about the “inflation of degrees” and makes the point that perhaps a traditional university degree is not the most appropriate path for everyone despite the fact that we seem to be making that a goal. I couldn’t agree more. This makes me wonder if Open Education might someday evolve to be not just tools, content, and implementation resources, but a whole new educational model. Perhaps we need a way to learn that is radically non-traditional but still somehow still recognized as education. Move beyond competency-based systems — forget the whole existing model of formal education and create something new. (I’m suggesting this as an option to, not a replacement for, the traditional system.)
Question: Ideally, what could that look like? [Stian offers some intriguing ideas in later in his post.]
– Jennifer’s post last week drew from her presentation at the Open Ed conference and talked about how OER and “openness” could be blended within a traditional learning environment. I found that much of her discussion of “openness” in a broader context (as a learning environment and pedagogical approach) could be applied whether or not OERs are used.
Her reminder that education does not equal content is important. Many of the criticisms and concerns about OER could be alleviated by remembering this. Learning happens in a context that includes not only content, but instructor/facilitator input, learner interpretation, collaboration, and many other influences. Having good (open) content is a great start, but we shouldn’t be so arrogant as to think that it’s everything.