The University of Cape Town has, fittingly, become the first university to sign the Cape Town Open Education Declaration. Here’s to hoping that more universities will follow suit! More info on the Cape Town Open Education Declaration is available.
Tag Archive for 'cape town declaration'
A very brief post today. I’ve lately heard some people express regrets that that the Cape Town Declaration focuses exclusively on open educational resources. In fact, it doesn’t. The “Cape Town Open Education Declaration” talks about “Unlocking the promise of open educational resources,” saying explicitly that:
Open education is not limited to just open educational resources. It also draws upon open technologies that facilitate collaborative, flexible learning and the open sharing of teaching practices that empower educators to benefit from the best ideas of their colleagues. It may also grow to include new approaches to assessment, accreditation and collaborative learning. Understanding and embracing innovations like these is critical to the long term vision of this movement.
If you ask me – which I realize you didn’t – open education is comprised of at least three things:
- 1. open educational resources
- 2. open learning support
- 3. open credentialing
At a bare minimum, you need content (1) in the form of websites, podcasts, videos, simulations, and yes, even textbooks and lectures. You need help, answers, and explanations (2) from someone when the content is stumping you; it’s also quite useful if you have social interactions (2) with others to help contextualize and explore the local relevance of what you’re studying. Finally, you need assessments (3) that help you determine if you’re really “getting it” or “can do it” or not (studies of metacognitive abilities show that we’re actually awful at judging this ourselves), and you’d also like someone to attest to others that you actually “got it” and “can do it” (3).
Perhaps I’ll simply begin another flame war over terminology with this post, but that’s not the point. The point is that “education :: educational resources” as “open education :: open educational resources.” Content is not education, and of course open educational resources aren’t enough. But they’re a first step, and we need to continue pushing down this path while we also explore new models of open learning support and open credentialing.
The headline says it all. Desmond Tutu has signed the Cape Town Open Education Declaration. Over 1400 individuals and 100 organizations have signed to date. Have you?
Martin has a great post up about the debate between Stephen and I over the Cape Town Declaration written in terms of a comparison between Cato and Cicero. I enjoyed it; I expect Stephen did as well.
The Cape Town Open Education Declaration launched one week ago today and has already received over 1,000 individual signatures and over 80 institutional signatures. The CTD News page links to dozens and dozens of news and blog stories covering the Declaration, published everywhere from the US to Taiwan to Pakistan to the UK to Thailand to Guyana to Australia to South Africa. Even if you don’t agree with the specific wording of the declaration, you can’t deny that it has been a huge catalyst for getting the word out about open education…
