The topic this week was open access and open educational resources. The first thing that struck me was Peter Suber’s response during his interview when he said that open access cannot solve all our problems because it is not universal access. The other problems that still remain are: filtering and censorship, language limitations, disability limitations and the fact that only 50% of human beings have internet access. Knowing about all these issues only makes open access options more logical to me. We all should start small by controlling the things that we can control. My small library is making a big effort to help inform faculty about open access and open educational resources. If they see the valuable options that exist out there, or that are needed, perhaps they will be more likely to use them and contribute their work to the public as open access publications.

The second thing that struck me was from the Suber reading on page 19 when he quotes the Budapest Open Access Initiative stating that technology, through the internet, has allowed for the public good of open access publishing. One of the most positive things about the internet is that information can get to people at their point of need. The story of Gardner Campbell meeting Claudia Ceraso because he asked a question into the Twittersphere reminds me of this as well. The internet has allowed us not only to phone a friend but to ask the world audience a question and they can respond instantly! Open learning and open access reflect this new way of thinking and working. It invites others to please come in, contribute and help build something better, together. Therefore, in today’s technology environment, it only makes sense to do what we can to encourage open access in order to enable wide spread collaboration which I believe will produce better research and better work products.

So this week’s open learning activities ran parallel to my personal start into investigation of a potential topic for my PhD (Needless to say, I am overwhelmed but academically so it is a good thing).  My ideas are running rampant and so is my anxiety haha but they tend to fuel one another so I cannot really complain.

As for this week’s topic, I am frustrated. I have much to learn and that is more than apparent. However, my frustration is … why does higher education cling to the remnants (and they are remnants – the way we do things are changing whether we like it or not) of past traditionalist research views and publishing methods. This whole “forward-thinking” side of me has only just developed on this end! I liked my old ways and I still do but they are becoming irrelevant and one thing I hate even more than change is being left behind and consequently irrelevant – so here I am! I’m extremely uncomfortable but I am more excited despite my discomfort. Now that I have educated myself on the way the digital age works and I better understand it, I feel like the guy in the Matrix when he took the pill – oh, the possibilities! The power of crowd and connectivity is incomprehensible! So, how do we get other people on board (without forcing or bribing them LOL)?

I leave you with this, we ran out of time with Peter Suber earlier this week but I am interested in what people have to say… I wanted to ask, “How do we encourage a move of higher education from conventional methods of publishing to OA? (not to mention a complete rework of the education framework of incentives, etc.) My question comes from reading Robert A. Reiser’s (2001) A History of Instructional Design and Technology (Part I & II). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02504506. He tells of the unfortunate inability of education to adopt and allow technologies to reach their full potential. Academia never seems to use them to their full potential and they eventually fall by the wayside. How can we circumvent this?

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#openlearning19

I am looking forward to taking part in the “open learning” cMOOC, mediated in part through http://openlearninghub.net/. It has been 2 years since my first participation in this project, in its 2017 iteration. (And, quite frankly, at that time, I was obligated to drop out about halfway through the semester-long process.)

It is a shorter and more intense iteration this time. I’m bringing different strengths and weaknesses to it this time around. But I’m hopeful that I’ll be a better and more productive participation this time.

One of the outcomes of that first, abortive, participation is that as a teacher and a scholar, I continue to think, almost continually, about “open”; I reflect on the many facets and dimensions that it implies. As part of my ongoing intellectual development, I will be more critical of openness, not in a counterproductive way, but by challenging and questioning some of the parameters, some of the promises and the, for lack of a better word, the closed-ness of openness. I come to the conversation a bit better armed with questions and with theoretical framings, with concrete and specific projects. My part in the conversation and what I will get out of it are likely to be richer, more conflicted and more nuanced than what my superficial and enthusiastic participation generated in January and February 2017.

So… I’m ready to go. Sort of. I’ll do my best to stay open-minded, even as I pose difficult questions, push back, present high levels of expectation relative to the general notion of openness.

So let me start right now with a few questions. What do we mean by “open”? It sounds great, suggesting open-mindedness, the opening of doors, the opening up of opportunities. But is open education all of those things? Is open access a real thing? Is open scholarship truly as free, as transparent, and as productive as the “open” label would seem to suggest? And, finally, and I’m not asking this only to be a hard-nosed contrarian, is open faculty development truly possible, truly sustainable, truly worthwhile? I think that the answer to those questions, if “yes,” must be a qualified affirmative at best.

Open education would seem to imply that the educational processes, the potential for learning, and the associated educational benefits can belong to anyone who is willing to take part and to work hard. Unfortunately, we know that that is not quite true. First, because of the digital divide, many folks cannot truly take part in these conversations, exchanges and other learning processes. Beyond that, not everyone is prepared for “open learning.” There are many whose digital literacy or whose literacy full stop is grossly inadequate. Those of us who are taking part in #openlearning19 are, I am certain, part of the “happy few.” We are a privileged, highly resourced, Western (mostly), and an intellectual élite attuned to a certain way of thinking about things. The ostensibly “open door of opportunity for learning” is not even visible to certain folks whose intelligence, whose native curiosity, and whose personal work ethic might otherwise make them good candidates for a learning experience along these lines.

Granted, this is a faculty development opportunity intended largely for folks associated with VCU and other institutions. But if it’s called “open” doesn’t that mean that it ought to be open to anyone and everyone? (To answer my own question: No, open does not necessarily mean open to everyone in the universe. That would be impossible! What a silly question.) So… coming to a synthesis with myself, I must ask just how “open” “open learning” happens to be? Obviously, no one who enrolls properly will be turned away or rejected. So in one sense, it’s completely open. But is it really? And when we talk about “open” whatever, shouldn’t we be worrying about this issue? Just how open are we? What are we doing to ensure that the underprivileged and the underserved of this world also have the opportunity to take part in such opportunities? Just how widely and welcomingly are we opening the door of learning opportunity?

(I might note that this is a question that I have posed regarding xMOOCs and the hype about access and offering “free” high-quality learning experiences to the globally underserved, which was part of the rhetoric used by Stanford, UPenn, Harvard and MIT in 2012 and afterward.)

Again, my tough questions are not intended to shut down conversation or to discourage anyone, but to pique the conscience of all and to get us to engage in a real conversation about the openness of openness. Is not saying no to anyone who knocks at the door sufficient to call an effort “open” in the broadest and best sense of that word?

I’ll ask a few other questions in coming days, but this first round of interrogation is confined the the question that I consider the most important one to ask of “open.” To wit: is it, in fact, truly, radically, sincerely, world-changingly “open”?

Well, this brings new meaning to adult education! I am currently endeavoring to add myself to a cMOOC hub and … “third time is a charm” or “try, try, try again!” haha. So here I go – *fingers crossed*

I’ve started into the world of blogging – late. But, better late than never! I have started a new journey as a PhD student. I ask myself, “What have I done?” constantly. However, when I take part in on-campus activities such as VT’s Open Education Symposium, I realize that I know exactly what I have done: Developed a blog and joined a cMOOC (a little crazy for me but, I “press” on!). Looking forward to engaging in the world of Open Learning 19!

[ 1023 words ]

After spending many months away from blogging during a period of many demands on my time (reentry into teaching and shared governance meetings after a year-long sabbatical; a self-imposed obligation to co-edit a volume that has been more problematic, more time-consuming, and more rewarding than anticipated; an overcommitment to conferences and to collaborative projects; new course development), I return.

This blog entry will address a project that I expect to pursue in the near future, perhaps in collaboration with my spouse. It is an OER site that will have two or three distinct functions. In essence, it will demonstrate the use of French television news for helping students develop language skills, critical thinking and increasing their intercultural understanding. Of course, the site will present open and free materials and modules that teachers of French can download and adapt for their own use. However, the site will also include demonstrations, guidelines and advice for those teachers, suggesting ways in which they might adapt the materials that we present as open and free resources, but also ways in which they might begin to develop their own activities, modules and materials based on readily available streams of news media.

In short, we would offer ready-to-use materials (OERs), but we would also seek to help teachers use our instructional strategies and develop their own news-media-based lessons and activities (teacher-training OERs). It might make sense to split our project into two parts, setting up one site for making news-based lessons and modules readily available, and a distinct site devoted to professional development, training teachers to create such materials and employ the instructional strategies that we have been using in our own courses. Indeed, there might even be room for a third site with a more theoretical and research-oriented focus.

Why am I only “considering” the project, rather than simply doing it? Why am I talking about it here, rather than actually implementing it elsewhere on the web? In part, it is because it the project is complicated and we are not sure how much time we can afford to invest. There are decisions to make that we do not feel fully capable of managing properly. We have not yet figured out the best way to arrange things or to present the material that we would like to make available.

At this point, I believe my spouse is going to work with folks at her own university to format and upload materials to someone else’s OER site. She will then invite teachers and higher education faculty in French to view and use the materials, then ask for feedback. That will give her a sense for how to proceed.

In my case, I expect to begin building the teacher-training site that will offer theoretical frameworks and other resources for helping teachers understand the implications and potential advantages and pitfalls to using the television-news-based approach to language learning. The site would also display demonstrations of the method and suggest ways in which the strategy might be adapted to a wider variety of levels and institutional circumstances.

Finally, let me point our why, in our pedagogical area, we believe that using television news to teach students at the intermediate, intermediate-high and advanced levels in a second language (in this case, French) is a good idea. First, television news reports are authentic documents, intended for consumption by native speakers, not by language students. Authentic documents are very helpful for making progress in understanding and using authentic, native-level language. Secondly, by inviting students to note those aspects of news reports or the reporting/editing/presentation conventions that surprise them, one can help students become more aware of particular cultural differences. By reflecting on those differences, students can develop better understandings of target-culture attitudes and thinking modalities. One can focus also on differences in news conventions and engage in reflection on their significance. Third, many news reports directly provide cultural information. Fourth, news videos can provide a variety of accents, expressions and ways of talking about real events. Fifth, the news helps students establish connections to real-world events and to understand the contemporary French-speaking world.

For this approach to work well, the new reports must be chosen well. For that reason, it is important to train teachers in how to discern the most appropriate and potentially productive streams of information and specific reports. Additionally, it is helpful to gives teachers a set of tools and strategies for transforming exposure to a news video into a meaningful experience for language learners. That is why we believe that it would be most helpful not only to provide Open Educational Resources in the form of well-chosen news videos and lessons or modules based on them, but also to help teachers discern for themselves those issues which arise when trying to capture and present to students portions of the news stream. Hence, the need for a second site that focuses on professional development around this instructional strategy.

It is a not uncomplicated project that we have been considering. But I think that, at this juncture, we need to take the next step. My spouse will figure how to present specific lessons, modules and materials. I will begin creating a site, keyed to her OER contributions, that will explain how the approach works and why it is worth pursuing.

We have our work cut out of us in the days and weeks to come. We are going to take the next step, partly to toot our own horns. (After all, we have been using television news quite successfully in the French language classroom for over a decade. Why not show off our approach and get some credit for it?) However, we are also doing it because we believe that this approach can be extremely helpful for developing critical thinking, cross-cultural understanding, intercultural communicative competence and global citizenship skills and predispositions. The world needs better, more open-minded, more “inter-culturally skilled” global citizens. Our project to create OER sites will be a modest contribution for moving toward those goals.