UPDATE: Introduction to Openness in Education, Winter 2012

For Winter 2012 I’m scheduled to teach a graduate current issues seminar here at BYU. Rather than teach the same Introduction to Open Education I’ve taught in the past, I’m going to expand out and teach “Introduction to Openness in Education.” While I’m going to include much more than just OER, I am going to restrict the topics covered to things directly applicable to education. This broader set of topics is what, to me, really constitutes Open Education. However, because people have somehow managed to conflate Open Education with OER, I’m going to try this new title.

Currently I’m planning to include the following topics (at least one week each) in the course:

  • Open Licensing
  • Open Source
  • Open Content
  • OpenCourseWare
  • Open Educational Resources
  • Open Access
  • Open Data
  • Open Science
  • Open Teaching
  • Open Business Models
  • Open Policy

Is there another open _________ directly relevant to education that I should be including in the course? Have I left something out?

I’m going to (1) focus on seminal readings (or videos) from leaders in each area and (2) focus discussion on how the meaning of “open” changes across these closely related, yet different, contexts. I’ll create one assignment per topic, but following the Reverend’s great example with #DS106, will also open these assignments to crowdsourcing.

Of course I’ll be practicing open teaching and inviting anyone who wants to participate to do so. There will be three options for receiving recognition for participating in the course:

  1. People who enroll for credit at BYU will receive BYU credits
  2. People are free to enroll in an Independent Study course at another institution. These students will need to identify a cooperating faculty member who will accept a grade from me at the end of the term by email, which they will record. This way you can earn credits for the course at your home institution.
  3. Assuming the infrastructure has stabilized sufficiently, other participants will be eligible to receive a badge via the Mozilla Open Badges Infrastructure for the course.

As always, I’m open to and hoping for your feedback and ideas about how to improve the course. Looking forward to seeing many of you online next semester!

12 thoughts on “UPDATE: Introduction to Openness in Education, Winter 2012”

  1. One area missing is Open ??? where your students identify areas of interest to expand the Open Movement. I already have mine: Open Placement & Diagnostic Testing).

  2. Chadron State College will offer option #2 of Dr. Wiley’s course on campus for the Spring 2012 semester under the Cooperating Professor Joel Hyer, Ph.D, Dean of Curriculum and Academic Advancement.

  3. Maybe “free”/ open culture could be handy (?) What I’d really appreciate is some reference to background context (artistic, historical, philosophical, sociological) to avoid reinventing the wheel & reinforcing critical interdisciplinary thinking. I realise Derrida or Deleuze may be perceived as a bore đŸ™‚ but they do play a role, and Arts may well have been the openness avant-garde. This could then provide the grounds for open research… Thanks for asking & keeping up!

  4. Hi David: The area that stands out as “missing” is ethics in open “x” environments. This may be where you were thinking of taking ‘open policy’, and certainly should be related to open licensing, though sadly it’s usually not. One of the consequences of the transparency that accompanies being open is how do we behave when gifts are given? I’d suggest the book the Gift Economy as a starting point and in particular the author Lewis Hyde (1983), The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, ISBN 0-394-71519-5 Especially part I, “A Theory of Gifts”, part of which was originally published as “The Gift Must Always Move” in Co-Evolution Quarterly No. 35, Fall 1982. (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy

    These are incredibly important foundational ideas. I’d love to take your course or in some way be engaged.

    All the best from the anitpodes,
    Phil

  5. Perhaps you could also look at “Open Spaces” and its bottom up collaborative technologies like World Cafe, Unconferences, Birds of a Feather, TeachMeet, and their folksonomic ilk.

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