Tag Archives: openlearning

Open Participants, Syndicated

The Internet and Higher Education

This week in #openlearning18 we are pondering the question: What is the most important thing that learners should know about the internet and the World Wide Web.  I thing the most important thing to keep in mind is that they are simply tools.   However, as with any tool, there can be many ways to use them, both fun and wonderful as well as scary and dangerous.  With that said, I am (cautiously) optimistic about the future of the internet and the Web knowing that people will invent new ways to use these tools that are unimaginable today.

What leads me to be cautious is how quickly I have seen the internet and the web change our lives.  We need to slow down a little and think about how we, both individually and collectively, want to use these tools.  We have created this amazing sort of “4th place” that blends personal, educational and professional worlds and yet sometimes, it just does not quite feel like reality–as in curated posts on social media and avatars in gaming. Will we loose true conversation to 120 characters and personal interaction to liking and following? Will there be any separation between who we are as individuals and our work world?  Or will it all blur in this new 4th place? I do not have the answers, nor am I saying this is all essentially bad.  As a private person, I sometimes find this new digital shift personally invasive, other times I find it incredibly useful and educational.

As for the higher education arena, students in college today are digital natives and they have never known a world without the internet or the web. The digital world is interwoven into their existence and higher education needs to meet them in their own environment.  However, higher education can play a role in making students slow down and think about how they use these tools by setting the example and guiding them in positive ways. As a librarian in higher education, one example would be to show students how to break down Google search results to recognize advertisements and bias.  As a teaching librarian, I always try to incorporate some sort of hands-on, digital activity since this is a familiar environment to students.  I look forward to see how this new generation chooses to incorporate these tools in the new digital age.

 

Open Participants, Syndicated

Open Learning ’18: Week 1: All The Opens!

So, I was supposed to blog last Friday about how this week’s (last week’s now) materials relate to my own ideas about open education. I think that I struggled with this fairly simple prompt because I’m still not 100% clear what my ideas are. This got me thinking about my role as a librarian and what my goals are when working with students and faculty. The thing that kept coming back to me from Fifty Shades of Open by Pomerantz and Peek was “Open means enabling openness.”

Librarianship is often misunderstood. I typically get two responses when I tell people I’m a librarian: “I’d love a job where I could read all day,” or “Isn’t that what Google’s for?” The second response is the one that I’ll focus on today. Google is an amazing tool for connecting people to information. I use it every day, much like the rest of the world. But, how many people are using it as effectively as it can be used? How many people are able to effectively sift through the results to find the “truth”? How many people don’t have the necessary tools to access Google in the first place?

As a librarian, I think my biggest role is as an enabler of openness. We offer computers, internet, resources, instruction on how to use those resources. We help you figure out what you need to get where you want to go. And so, I guess I’m coming away from reading the above article thinking about how I can be an enabler of openness on my campus. How can I not only advocate for OER, but also enable faculty to integrate them into their courses? What tools are lacking that the library can provide?

Open Participants, Syndicated

Open Education and Learning

pexels-photo-631522.jpeg

One thing the readings this week made clear about Open Education was that we can have all the openness imaginable, but without knowing how to navigate and use these sources and tools, there really is no education.  If you give someone a car, it does not help them get to where they want to go unless we teach them how to drive.

I am viewing Open Education through the lens of a librarian.  I believe my professional colleagues find it their responsibility to connect and educate people about information.  Librarians have always advocated for access to information as well as promoted the skills to evaluate and use information.  Therefore, as discussed this week and stated by Franklin D. Roosevelt, libraries are essential to democracy.

However, what struck me this week was the idea of authority.  Jeffrey Pomerantz discusses how in this age of information overload, we must all take on an authority role when it comes to the evaluation of information.  The new Association of College and Academic Libraries Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education discusses how “authority is constructed and contextual” and an expert user of information is one that has become an expert in the critical evaluation of sources.  Learning will not occur through open education without this level of authority as a critical consumer of information.  I believe this is something librarians instinctively understand and why we need to make sure we continue to be involved in the Open Education movement.

Open Participants, Syndicated

Kal-toh, chess, and tic-tac-toe

This week we peeked into the world of open and flew into a worm hole.  There is sooo much that can be read into one word, and so many uses of the concept that it gets difficult for me to see the multidimensionality of it.  I have a tendency to stay on the surface because that’s what I understand.

On the surface, open education is teaching through a free means.  Open educational resources are the items used in the teaching that are also free.  I’m good here, this is easy to understand.  No cost to teachers or students for textbooks, articles, or any materials the instructor wants to use.

Chess
“Kal-toh is to chess as chess is to tic-tac-toe.” (Tuvok: VOY: “Alter Ego”)

But let’s talk about free.  Free starts to get complicated because free should just be that, but it isn’t.  Just like free from a library isn’t free if you can’t get to the library or you live outside the service area, free on the internet isn’t free if you can’t get onto the internet.  You need a computer and access to get to the free. So what exactly is free? and how do we provide it to ALL to create real openness?  Also, is free, free when we make students pay to be taught?  And here is when I stop playing kal-toh and go back to tic-tac-toe.

So how does this relate to my own idea of open education?  I’m not sure I have an idea about open education… yet.  I do know that  in my practice I want to save the student from having to purchase material to learn something when practical application and discussion can accomplish the same thing.  But the materials we use are the library databases that are not free since they are licensed via the library budget.  So even though they don’t have a textbook, their tuition pays for the subscriptions, so in all technicality that is not free or open.

Can I create assignments that are completely open?  The easy answer is yes, by using open access articles to do information literacy objectives, I could use all free materials. But again… this is not truly free for the student who doesn’t have a computer or the internet at home, because they would not be able to access the material anyway.  To further complicate this, they have already paid for my class.  I’m not sharing my expertise free of charge, which again technically would not be completely open or free.  I keep getting stuck in the free aspect of open.  Because really, nothing in our society is free.

I keep thinking about Star Trek.  The open society where you explore your passions for self-improvement, self-enrichment, and the betterment of all humanity. There is no money.  Everyone (supposedly) has the same opportunities for learning and working.  In this world open education is open and free.  In our world, there are too many facets to “open” and “free” to truly be either.

So until we can live in the Star Trek world, we do the best we can and cut cost to the student where it is feasible.  To me that means, finding ways to provide open educational resources to the faculty to use, finding ways to integrate what the library already owns into an easier medium for the faculty and student to use, and to explore whatever options present themselves to make the life of the student easier.  As a librarian, I am a facilitator of access.

Syndicated, Virginia Group

A Cautionary Tale about Expectations

I was talking the other day to a fairly senior administrator in academic affairs about OpenLearning18.  This administrator has been very supportive of our institution’s open initiative, and so I was just bringing him/her up to date on things open.

I made a comment about his/her boss only seeming interested in OER, but not the other “opens.” The admin looked chagrinned and said, “I’m not sure I understand any of the opens besides OER.”  I was, in a word, surprised.   I have been talking with this admin for years about the various aspects of open that I’ve been involved with, and I just assumed he/she understood what I was talking about.  Though in retrospect, I guess most of what I’d talked about in detail was OER.

I wonder how many academic leaders, that each of us interact with, do we think understand the various dimensions of open, but who really don’t.  Could that be a reason it’s been difficult to get traction?  How can we best address these wrong expectations, or more precisely, how can we better educate our leaders on the range of opens?

Something to think about!

Syndicated, Virginia Group

What I’m Looking Forward To in Open Learning ’18

What do you hope to get from Open Learning ’18? 
“Open Educational Resources” is a prevalent term in the library world, but many don’t realize what it actually means (myself included at times). I hope to gain a better understanding of open resources through participating in this course as well as learning how to advocate for open resources by gaining the knowledge to define them for others. 

What do you hope to contribute to Open Learning ’18?
In the abstract, I hope to contribute my own (albeit limited) knowledge of open resources and share thoughts with others about how to advocate for, use, and teach open educational resources in libraries and on college campuses. However, as I am unsure of the format of this course, I’m can’t say exactly how much I can contribute. I hope to learn a lot, and take it day by day. 
Open Participants, Syndicated

What I’m Looking Forward To in Open Learning ’18

In response to the pre-cMOOC week blogging opportunity (I know I’m a few days late!):

What do you hope to get from Open Learning ’18?

As I mentioned in the Twitter chat on 2/8, I’ve been hearing about Open Educational Resources (OER) in the library world for awhile, but I’m hoping this cMOOC will get me to a better place to advocate for them on my campus. I’m also intrigued by this idea of “All the Opens.” I’ve only ever thought in terms of OER, but to be exposed to different ideas of open classrooms and learning is new to me. As a librarian, instruction is a key component to my job, so I look forward to learning how to make the classroom a more open space in terms of shared ideas and giving students more of a say (and hopefully, more buy-in) in the learning process.

What do you hope to contribute to Open Learning ’18?

I’m not sure yet! I really responded to Sue Erickson’s blog post, which was one of the pre-cMOOC readings. I set up a Twitter account specifically for this experience (and I’ve already participated in my first Twitter chat!). I’m blogging for the first time in over a year. I’m an expert lurker, so this idea of connecting is out of my comfort zone. I don’t feel like I’m going to become a Node during this cMOOC, but I hope to step out a bit and explore the possibilities. I’m just hoping that my participation will add to the conversations that will happen during this course.

 

Syndicated, Virginia Group

A Conceptual Framework?


I participated in OpenLearning17 and am back for OpenLearning18.  Why you ask?  Because I learned enough last year to articulate better questions this year.  Last year, I went in somewhat blind.  (There might be something we can learn as teachers here
about the experience of our students.) This year, I have a much better sense of what’s in store for me and how to get the most out of it.

To prepare for Week 1, I read the excerpts from Doug Englebart, “Augmenting Human Intellect“.  When I’ve read it before, I found it to be powerful but abstract.  This time around, though, I saw it as a conceptual framework for OpenLearning18.  Which is to say, my experience last year helped me understand what Englebart was saying in 1962.  And what Englebart said, has informed me about what we will be doing starting tomorrow.

Image Credit: Alex Handy from Oakland, Nmibia – Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart Uploaded by Edward

Syndicated, Virginia Group

OpenLearning18: Course and Metacourse

I’ve been to plenty of doctors in my life, but one stands out, even now, because of the way he narrated the examination. Let’s say I went to him with a sore left knee. The first thing he would do was to palpate the right knee. Luckily, I didn’t interrupt him and say, “Not that knee, doc.” Instead, I waited a second, and in that space I heard him say, “Medicine teaches us to examine the healthy part first, to get a personal baseline with which to compare the diseased part.” Suddenly I learned something important about medicine in addition to learning something (as I eventually did) about how to ease the pain in my left knee. That small moment of meta made all the difference. It gave me a framework with which to understand everything from medical education to ways in which I could better monitor my own health and better practice my self-care.

I haven’t been to nearly so many attorneys in my life as I have physicians, probably because lawyers do not administer vaccinations (though they may help one negotiate immunity in certain instances–sorry, I just couldn’t resist). Nevertheless, one attorney in recent experience stands out because of a remark he made in a long-ish answer to a very short question. I simply needed a yes or no–or so I thought. When I got the somewhat longer answer, however, I realized that in fact I needed more than the yes or no I was looking for … but that realization involved waiting for the answer, thinking about it, and doing my best to grok it. When I thanked the attorney for the fuller answer, he replied that he typically declined to give yes or no answers even to simple questions, because the fuller context not only helped the client to understand the answer but also helped the client understand his, the attorney’s, reasoning. (It probably didn’t hurt that this attorney had a B.A. in philosophy from Berkeley, either.)

You can probably see where I’m going with these stories in relation to Open Learning ’18. It is true that the course is arranged topically, with single aspects or subsets of “open” discussed most weeks during the cMOOC. Nothing wrong with that, certainly. And I suppose there’s nothing wrong with folks parachuting in for the one week they’re most interested in. But the best part of the course, and one we focus on this week as our introduction, is the opportunity to consider “all the opens, connected.” This bigger picture, this meta-view, is where information becomes knowledge–and where our shared learning experience may also foster wisdom.

Ideally, we’ll emerge with a few powerful conceptual frameworks that help us make sense not only of “all the opens” out there right now, but all the opens that may emerge as we continue to experience the uncanny, sometimes liberatory, sometimes frightening aspects of the global, light-speed telecommunications network we call the Internet. That sense-making can then be fed back into the network in a truly virtuous cycle–a virtuous cycle that’s part of the optimism and energy within Open Learning ’17, Open Learning ’18, and beyond.

I hope this first week helps to make visible the crucial importance of this meta-perspective. We’ll touch on this meta-perspective throughout Open Learning ’18. And we’ll revisit it, full-on, when we get to the final week’s topic of Open Faculty Development.

Bonus for those who read to the end: a primary inspiration for this post is “The Why of Cooking,” an article that appeared last year in The Atlantic. In this wonderful essay I also learned of the extraordinary metacookbook called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. In both cases, the analogies with Open Learning ’18 were irresistble, and yummy. For example, from “The Why of Cooking”:

I was … surprised, after roughly a year of searching, to find that there are very few books that concisely articulate the concepts that underlie good cooking, in a way that neither patronizes nor overwhelms. One might call what I was looking for “a metacookbook”—a book not about a certain cuisine or style of cooking, but about cooking itself—and I found good ones to be surprisingly rare.

So welcome to Open Learning ’18, course and metacourse, cMOOC and meta-cMOOC. And welcome to the feast!

Cooking Class

Photo by Patrick Mueller CC-BY 2.0

Open Participants, Syndicated

Open for Blogging: Greetings, #openlearning18

There is a certain genre of blog post that is an apologetic acknowledgement of a lengthy lapse in blogging activity, coupled with a hopeful if perhaps uncertain commitment to “do better” going forward. So here you go … “bless me reader, for I have sinned, it’s been about nine months since my last blog post.”

I’m glad #openlearning18 is up and running and nudging me to write here again, in this place that I started for #openlearning17. And I’m doing so from a new place and position, as Director of Academic Technology and the Digital Liberal Arts Collaborative (DLAC) at Grinnell College, a small liberal arts college about an hour east of Des Moines, Iowa. Last year at this time I was at Austin College as a academic technologist, but the funding for the position came to an end last summer. I started the position at Grinnell on September 11, so these last few months have been occupied with transition and new beginnings. Getting the blog started again is one of those new beginnings that I’m excited about, especially as one of my roles at the college is precisely to encourage students and faculty to start up their own blog engines.

What do I hope to gain from #openlearning18? Are you asking about learning outcomes? (just kidding, Gardner). I hope to continue being part of a growing network of learners interested in promoting digital literacies and open practices in higher ed, so (re)connecting with old colleagues and new is a big part of it for me. Getting that nudge back into blogging is an incentive as well. In fact, I’m doubling up on social accountability here, as I’m writing this post at a Friday afternoon collaborative work session with a group of students here at Grinnell who are part of our Vivero Digital Scholarship Fellows program. We have what amounts to a co-working space every Friday afternoon. I think I’m more committed to getting my post written here than I would be by myself in my office.

I’m also hoping to learn more about this “faculty collaborative” model of faculty development to inform our programs at Grinnell. Now that I’m getting a bit more settled in here, we’re starting to think on a longer-term scale about what we want the digital liberal arts to look like at Grinnell. I think that vision will at a minimum involve three components—a framework for articulating desired student digital competencies and literacies (along the lines of the model developed at Bryn Mawr); the development of a digital portfolio practice and culture; and, supporting both of those, a more robust version of Domain of One’s Own. We currently have a web-hosting arrangement with Reclaim Hosting but, oddly, this is generally available only to faculty and not to students.

What do I hope to contribute to #openlearning18? Well, I hope to be a supportive colleague and friend, a good “node in the network,” and an active participant in the group. Maybe I can add some helpful resources and links to the mix and offer some perspective from where I stand. The great thing about these kind of networked opportunities is that you usually can’t predict in advance what you will learn or contribute. So I’m looking forward to unexpected joys and discoveries!

I have to add that is was really fun to meet (most of) the directors of #openlearning recently as they presented at the Educause Learning Initiative conference in New Orleans. Their session got me all excited again for what #openlearning17 was and what #openlearning18 will be. As Gardner Campbell said there,

So in that spirit, I’m glad to once again be a part of this network. Let’s deliver!