So what is a MOOC?
It is a Massive Open Online Course. It is an engaging, collaborative event, where work is shared. Content is distributed and it is highly participatory. It is lifelong learning in a web-based world. I am not sure how many people are needed for an open online course to become “massive”, but it appears to be hundreds to thousands of people who take them.
David Wiley’s keynote on open education focused on the changes that higher education must be aware of and adopt if they are to be able to meet the needs for learners in a digital world. Some of the key changes he listed were:
analog to digital
tethered to mobile
isolated to connected
generic to personal
consuming to creating
closed to open
He talked about the “Book-ification” of TV. It is not time constrained any longer. People can watch in their own terms. This is similar to a live lecture vs. podcast. He spoke of why people come to education. The need for content, support services, degrees, and a social life.
I am not sure if this is why they come or what they get by coming. Motivations can vary.
Wiley stated that credentials are now competing with degrees. The economy has hit business hard and some have been given bail outs to make it through. However, higher education has no bail out, just budget cuts. He speaks of how e-learning has helped us, but that it is not enough. It is digital and mobile but isolated, generic, consuming, and closed. He believes that openness is the key to the other changes. Connecting needs openness, you can't personalize if you don't have the rights to modify, and it is hard to create if you don't have a place for your creations.
He then asked, How might we open things?
Open 1.0 was MIT and opencourseware. It was inspirational but not sustainable (4 million a year). Focused on ''them" not “us".
Open 2.0 is opening for our own students, OER in the classroom etc.
Wiley gave some examples of what he has done. For instance using blogs as a space to submit homework. They write longer and better by doing this. He also talked about disaggregation in education using the example of competency based Western Governors University that only offer assessments and questions what is the value of integration? When you do just one thing you can do it really well.Being open is not a technology problem it is a policy problem.
I could not agree with this more. I have come to the same conclusion as I worked through all of the open topics. It is policy and paradigms shifting.
Wiley’s answer on how to open things up seems to be to use OER and engage in policy reform. He said If we can't meet the needs of students others will, but innovate for students not to save your job.
I found it very intriguing to read Wiley’s Open Teaching Chronicle article “David Wiley: Open Teaching Multiplies the Benefit but Not the Effort”. Wiley talks about the fact that open teaching does not take much additional effort, but I would also argue that it could and should be more. Teaching is more than providing content. There may be benefits to teaching openly, but informal participants may not get the same out of it. This course is a good example. I do not feel a teaching presence. Is it not as important for informal learning? We can have interaction with other participants and share our blogs; however I have found the course update feed to be ineffective. The fact that my blogs do not typically show up in the feed, but the blog from ds106 does, makes the disconnection I feel even worse. I believe that informal adult learning needs to be considered on its own and requires different techniques and a different type of effort and attention than learning for college credit. By going open we introduce our work to a new audience. Who is taking this course? Other educators? Is it for professional development or for fun? Open teaching is extremely exciting and fascinating. I have said this to my colleagues more than once-we are on the verge of a transformation in education. Just as online learning became a game changer, so will openness in education, but who will it benefit and how, is yet to be determined.
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