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.

Starting the academic year with two open courses!

I have been busy with some work on my research and data analysis in the summer and I haven't written something since July. However, I am not regularly blogging but I try to keep writing from time to time!

I am starting this fall with the open online courses (MOOCs) I am interested in following if not actively participating. I have been participating in some Moocs already and I don't think I have time in this very busy moments of my research to spend in MOOCs in spite of my willingness though.

Following the previous open courses by George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Dave Cormier, they have been planning after #CCK11 to offer a new course as an inclusive of all #MOOCs to discuss various issues relating to open and digital scholarship, networked learning, open education, PLE, and all stuff that has been covered in other courses. So, they came up with  #change11 MOOC; Change: Education, Learning and Technology to discuss all those important issues and to answer some crucial questions also about the future of education  as posed in the course page:
"- How does learning change when formal boundaries are reduced? 
- What is the future of learning? 
- What role with educators play in this future? 
- What types of institutions does society need to respond to hyper-growth of knowledge and rapid dissemination of information? 
- How do the roles of learners and educators change when knowledge is ubiquitous?" 

This is a 36-week course starting this week and lasts until May 2012. Each week with an innovative educator, researcher or scholar from different countries to discuss all of the above issues of present and future learning and create a global understanding and learning experience.  Here is the course schedule with the list of the topics and speakers.


Another open course is EC&I 831: Social Media & Open Education , #eci831, offered by Alec Couros from the University of Regina, Canada starting this week and lasts until December. I have attended last year this course and I liked the whole learning experience and interaction,s and I am going to take part again as much as my time allows . Especially because Alec is an inspiring open educator and creates such motivating learning environments in his courses.

The structure of these MOOCs are almost the same, distributed across the web, using various tools and platforms by the participants to collaborate, communicate and create learning reflections and artifacts in different forms on blogs, wikis, FB, twitter etc. augmented by a number of live weekly sessions which bring together people to discuss their ideas and negotiate different topics of interest which all make such a ubiquitous, rich, self-directed learning.

Online survey for the participants of MOOCs

After experiencing an overwhelming participation in two Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC); PLENK2010 and EC&I831  from September 2010 to December 2010, and getting more understanding into the nature of open, social and networked learning which helped me make my research focused I conducted an online survey ( and here)to the participants of these two courses.

My intention was to get more insights into the experiences and perceptions of the course participants of such open and unusual courses in terms of using different technologies and digital tools, involving in online learning networks, making their personal learning environments and getting sense of being a connected learner.

However, this survey is not a main data source for my research and nonetheless, not so many people responded to it but, it was useful for obtaining some preliminary information about the topics related to open and networked learning and PLE. It somehow revealed that which technologies and how much they have been using during the course, how they have been engaged in the course activities etc.  

 I used GoogleDocs for making the survey but for some weird reason it didn’t accept the responses and I had to use another online survey maker: www.surveygizmo.com  which was also good. The survey is still underway and participants of MOOCs can respond to it.

In the survey I asked the participant if they are willing to take part in an an online interview for further elaboration on the themes and topics of the survey. I am hoping to have at least 6 people for interviewing. 

PLENK2010; Fostering Open and Networked Learning!

 picture source: Global Education

    Formally, the PLENK2010 ( Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge) which was kind of massive open online course (MOOC) finished last week but, informally it will be continuing through the networks of the participants which have been created during the course across various latforms.                     

    PLENK2010 covered various topics and issues from learning theories (e.g. comparing connectivism with other learning theories such as constructivism and cognitivism), PLE & PLN, self-directed informal learning, the role of educator in open education, the issues concerning the learner’s autonomy in open learning and many more relevant topics. 

   There was a ground for all participants with different learning styles and preferences to find out their ways in the context of this course in which, how they can learn, how to interact with others; just to be a lurker and stalking what is happening there or being an active participant to benefit from collaboration with other people in the course, creating and sharing the contents and being engaged in various forms to enrich the learning experiences. 

    For me, the MOOCs I have attended this autumn ( PLENK2010 & eci831) were exciting and very insightful. I enjoyed them and learned a lot as a participant and I got so many insights for my research on open education and networked learning. It was a great opportunity to encourage and keep me motivated to create and develop my PLE, also joining so many open online learning networks (OLNs) which have great potential for enhancing connectivity and networking in today’s connected world. 

   The big issue which makes me pondering is that: what these kinds of open online course add to education and learning?  What are the values of open education and networked social learning which challenge the structure of formal learning? And how the conventional formal education systems could cope with the needs of self-directed informal learning? Undoubtedly, these challenges are resulted from the evolutionary advancement of new social media and collaborative technologies which provide the infrastructure for putting more value on open education and informal social learning. 

A 'Networked Student' in 21st Centruy, #PLENk2010

  In this video you can see how a 'connected student' in the 21st century learn and make his/her own learning networks. A student of 'Connectivism'  basically without a specific textbook or assigned lectur hours by teacher. Connectivist approach assumes that learning occures by making different social connections using tecgnology and tools and creating 'personal learning environment'. Using different social media and collaborative tools, a networked student is able to find relevant contents on the web, organize them in the way needed, reproduce and share them by social bookmarking tools like Delicious and Diigo and getting feedback from different people.