Open Access, Open Content, OER: Towards the future of scholarship and research

This week is the 'Open Access' week, a movement which has started few years ago to raise the importance of openness and free sharing of information and content. This is to highlight the significance and the potential of open/free educational resources in academia in different disciplines from science to humanities and for the global society on the whole. Open/free access promises for more democratic opportunities to “the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – and has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted” (OC page; http://www.openaccessweek.org/).

There are various activities and events this week to promote open access in a global level. Some of them are listed in the page above which is a network dedicated to enhance this movement. Of which there are some webinars by the Athabasca University in Canada that I am following:  October 24, 2011: Fun and Fear in Open Spaces, October 25, 2011: Post Secondary Leadership and the OER Movement , October 26, 2011: Making Sense of Complexity in Open Information Environments , October 27, 2011: Panel on Moving to Open Educational Resources at Athabasca University , October 28, 2011: OER's and Sustainable Innovation: Low Cost, Low Risk but High Impact.

David Wiley , an open educator who has been contributing a lot to the promotion of open content and openness in education had also lately a discussion week on this topic in the #change11 MOOC.

This week of #change11 MOOC is about OER facilitated by Rory McGreal , UNESCO/COL Chair in Open Educational Resources at the Athabasca University.

I found an interesting article of Wiley here in EDUCAUSE Review 2010: Openness as Catalyst for an Educational Reformation  which is worth reading.  It is part of the EDUCAUSE Review V. 45, N.4 on "openness".

Here is David Wiley's talk in TED2010 about open education and the future.

Discussion on Networked Learning: #NLC2012 online 'hot-seats'

This week I have been following and somehow contributing a little bit to the online discussion on networked learning  organized by  #NLC2012 ( networked learning conference 2012). There is a series of online discussions prior to the conference facilitated by some researchers and thinkers in the area of networked learning in this Ning group.

Various topics related to networked learning will be covered in theses hotseats by some key persons in networked learning and distance education like Peter Goodyear, David McConnell, Terry Anderson and Lone Dirckinck-Holmfeld.

There will be seven weeks total, each week on a topic hosted and facilitated by some people, started already on Oct.10th continued until March 2012 before the conference on April 2-4. The schedule, topics and the hosts are available in the group page. It is all free and everybody interested can join the discussion and all contents will be free and available in the Ning page.

This week the hotseat was with Peter Goodyear , one of first contributors and developers of networked learning, about the definition of the term, some key foundations, examples of leaning networks and researching the architecture of productive learning networks.  There was a good discussion on these topics and so far there were about 140 threads in the discussion. The main topic of the discussion perhaps was about the definition of the term  and what is meant by 'networked learning', also what are the main components of networked learning? How can we research on networked learning and what are the examples of networked learning practices.
Goodyear put some key variations of the definition of the term as follow:

• learning in which C&IT is used to promote connections: between one learner and other learners, between learners and tutors; between a learning community and its learning resources
• learning that involves people collaborating with the help of networked technologies in a shared enterprise of knowledge creation
• learning and teaching carried out largely via the Internet/Web which emphasizes collaborative and cooperative learning, learning through dialogue and group work together with interaction with online materials, and collaborative knowledge production
• learning and teaching carried out largely via the Internet/Web which emphasizes dialogical learning, collaborative and cooperative learning, group work, interaction with on-line materials, and knowledge production
• the use of Internet-based information and communication technologies to promote collaborative and co-operative connections: between one learner and other learners; between learners and tutors; between a learning community and its learning resources, so that participants can extend and develop their understanding and capabilities in ways that are important to them, and over which they have significant control

For me it has a been a question that could we define networked learning without relating it to technology as it was also discussed there, and  is networked learning equal just to learning in networks 'learning networks'? Or the other way around that learning networks are part of the networked learning? I think the latter! In my opinion, creating and developing connections is the main feature of networked learning which is connection between learner and other people, learner and resources and of course learner and communities and networks.

In one discussion thread McConnell introduced this book to come: Exploring the Theory, Pedagogy and Practice of Networked Learning, Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Lone; Hodgson, Vivien; McConnell , 2011, Springer

Open, Digital, Networked: The scholarship in the 21st century!

Image: http://tinyurl.com/338dja

#Change11 MOOC ( open online course) keeps going well with good discussions and facilitators each week but for me it’s an unfortunate, due to being very busy with my research, that I cannot participate in the activities and in many live sessions. However, I am trying to follow the weekly activities at least on Twitter, Facebook Group and live session as much as I can.

The week three of the course was with Martin Weller from the Open University UK about “Digital Scholarship”.  (Here is the recording of the session).

He has been researching and talking on this topic for years and recently he has published a book on it entitles: The Digital Scholar: how technology is transforming scholarly practices  

The argument is that how new emerging digital technologies have enabled us to form a kind of scholarship (learning, teaching, collaborating, creating contents, sharing …) which is open, digital and networked. I really like these three words: open, digital, networked. In my research I am also investigating open, digital and networked learning. That’s the reason this kind of learning and scholarship is my personal and professional convictions!  

Although, there is a debate on this that how these technologies have changed or could transform our academic practices and traditional teaching-studying-learning processes? How their impact on our today’s scholarship is really feasible? It was also debate on digital and traditional scholarship between Weller and Antonio Dias de Figueiredo in Ed-Media 2012 conference in Lisbon.  

Here in his blog Weller talks about how digital scholarship can also change the way we do research or at least has the potential to alter the way we conduct research and to add some new tools to the toolbox.