Author Archives: chendric

A new open, online, edtech professional development opportunity for educators (modelled on ETMOOC)

OOE13 image, by Glenn Hervieux. Check out the OOE13 site at http://www.ooe13.org

In a few short weeks, a new open online course will begin, called #OOE13, Open Online Experience 2013(-2014). It is designed as a profession development experience in educational technology for educators, but it is open to anyone who would like to participate. It starts September 4, 2013.

I am one of the many, many people who have helped to shape this course, and who will be helping to run it. And I mean many! There are probably 50 or 60 people who have contributed in one way or another! It has been (and I expect will continue to be) a great experience in collaboration.

I’m writing this post, though, to encourage others to join #OOE13, by noting its similarity to a course I did in January-March 2013, and which had a profound impact on me professionally and personally. It’s not exaggerating to say it changed my life in many ways. Those of us who are working together to make #OOE13 happen are hoping that will be the case for many of the participants as well.

I’ll first describe a bit about ETMOOC and why I found this experience so valuable–the point here is that we have designed #OOE13 similarly, hoping that others will also have a great experience. So in describing ETMOOC, I’m also giving you a flavour of #OOE13.

So please read on and see if this sparks your interest, and if so, you can register for #OOE13 here!

ETMOOC

What I took in Jan-March 2013 was ETMOOC (Educational Technology and Media MOOC): http://etmooc.org

This was a connectivist-style MOOC (massively open online course) (see my post on what I think a “connectivist MOOC” means), run by a large group of people from many different professions and educational institutions. It lasted for ten weeks or so, and every two weeks there was a new theme relating to educational technology (Connected Learning, Digital Storytelling, Digital Literacy, The Open Movement, and Digital Citizenship). You can see more about each of these topics at the ETMOOC main site, which has posts explaining some aspects of each topic and giving resources, on the front page (just scroll down).

To be quite honest, I wasn’t sure about joining this course, because I wasn’t terribly interested in educational technology. But I had heard of “connected learning” and the “open” movement, and wanted to learn a bit more about those; plus, the structure of the course seemed interesting.  So I tried it.

Structure

Each week there would be one or more presentations on BlackBoard Collaborate that you could join live from anywhere in the world, or watch the recording later. We had guest speakers from various parts of the world on these topics (though all English-speaking). Then we had suggested other things to read/watch/do each week. We were highly encouraged to reflect on what we were seeing/reading/doing in our blogs, which were connected to a blog hub–so you could easily find blog posts from each person in the course. We also were encouraged to comment on each others’ blogs during the course, to get conversations going that way.

In addition, we had a one-hour chat on Twitter each week, on the #etmchat hashtag. I hadn’t used Twitter much before that, and didn’t realize how effective Twitter chats can actually be. You may think you can’t get much done in bursts of 140 characters, but I was surprised at how rich and effective the discussion was at times. Here is a record of our chat on digital literacies, and here is one on open education (best to scroll all the way down to the very beginning and start there, b/c it’s in backwards chronological order).

Freedom to participate how and when you want/can

One very nice thing about ETMOOC was that there was no pressure to continue through the whole course, or to do all the activities. It was clear there was an open door to come in and go out when you wanted, and to do as much as you wanted. This felt freeing, for the times when I just got too busy. And since the topics changed every two weeks, new people could start with a new topic and there wasn’t a sense that they needed to go back and “catch up” on anything.

What I did in ETMOOC

I’ve got a couple of records of what I did in ETMOOC, in case anyone is interested. First, I’ve got quite a few blog posts I wrote during ETMOOC, which can all be found by clicking on the “Etmooc” category on the right menu.

I also put together a more connected narrative of what I did in ETMOOC, which can be found here on my blog.

Why I found ETMOOC so valuable

[Update Aug. 22: Of course, I should say that I got quite a lot out of ETMOOC in terms of learning things about educational technology, connected learning, digital literacy, digital storytelling, and more, but honestly, the things that really struck me, that are most meaningful for me, are those mentioned below.]

1. Making Connections –that’s the best way for me to think of putting it, but it can sound more crassly self-interested than I mean. By making connections I mean that I found many people in different parts of the world who are interested in similar things as I am in terms of teaching and learning, and whom I can now talk to long after the course is done. This is great, because it means having a group of people you can engage in discussions with about, not just educational technology, but pedagogy generally.

For me, it’s like when I go to a teaching/learning professional development workshop and meet interesting people and talk to them about pedagogy and get great ideas…except when that happens it all ends when the workshop ends. Sure, we could meet up again, but we’re all busy and usually that doesn’t happen. But with an online course like this, the connections and discussions seem easier to keep up. I’m not sure why, but that’s been my experience. I can do it from home, on my own time, talking to people on Twitter, on blogs, on Google+, or other social networking sites. We don’t have to schedule a meeting to be somewhere face to face at the same time (though sometimes we try to schedule video or audio chats on Skype or Google Hangouts, because we do want to talk in real time; even then, it’s easier because we don’t have to get to the same location).

A number of us found these connections so valuable we started a “post-etmooc” group on Google+, in which we read blogs or online journals and discuss them. We also have Twitter chats. And this is all after the course is long finished!

Beyond that, I’ve “met” (through online means such as blogs, Twitter, Google+, Google Hangouts) many, many people whose work I continue to read on their blogs, who I continue to talk with on Twitter, and who share helpful links with me about pedagogical topics we’re interested in (and vice versa!).

What this means is I’ve developed an online Personal Learning Network––a network of people from whom I learn and who learn from me (here’s a nice, in-depth video explaining PLNs, and here’s a shorter one with people’s views of why they find them valuable). It’s a group that talks about things related to teaching and learning generally, and includes K-12 teachers, higher ed faculty, educational technology specialists, businesspeople, and more. We not only share links of interest, but we ask questions of each other, support each other when there difficulties, offer advice/suggestions, and more.  I have found this of immense value professionally–and personally! Over time some of these connections have developed into friendships, even before we have ever met in person.

And several of these connections have turned into professional collaborations on other projects, such as #OOE13 itself. A number of ETMOOC participants have gotten together to plan #OOE13, modeling it in large part on ETMOOC, and hoping to share what has been a great experience for us, with others.

2. Changing my professional activities

Since doing ETMOOC I’ve begun to focus my professional research and activities much more on things I had never even heard of before, such as open education, connectivist MOOCs, blending on-campus courses with an open online component, making digital audio and visual media for courses and having students make them as well, and more.

I decided a couple of months ago to create a mind map to show all the things I’ve begun to do as a result of ETMOOC, just to try to explain how much it has affected my professional life.  You can see it here. It’s pretty self-explanatory!

#OOE13

We’ve designed OOE13 with the same basic structure as ETMOOC, and, as you can see from the list of topics (scroll down on this page), a similar content focus. We’ll have guest speakers doing synchronous presentations (which will be recorded for later viewing), Twitter chats, a Google+ group, and we’ll encourage people to post on their blogs and comment on those of others.

Time: September to May

The main difference is that we’ve designed #OOE13 so that teachers and faculty could participate more easily during busy teaching terms. This means spreading the course out over an entire academic year (September to May) rather than having it be 10-12 weeks.

The reason we did this is so that people have more time to watch recorded presentations if they couldn’t be there live, and to write blog posts/comment on posts from others. If there is a lot to do from week to week and people feel like they can’t keep up because they are busy, they may be less motivated to continue–even though we will stress, like ETMOOC did, that you don’t have to do everything, and it’s fine to move in and out! So instead of new topics every two weeks, we’ll have new topics each month.

Flexible

You can join in anytime and leave anytime, whatever suits you. I found I got a lot out of ETMOOC by being pretty active for most of the time, but that may not suit your schedule. If you want to just watch some presentations, that’s fine! If you want to blog about them too and comment on others’ blogs, that’s great–and you may make connections in the process! If you want to join in the Tweet chats, go ahead…even if you’re not doing anything else in the course.

Drop in to the topics that interest you…leave for awhile and come back…it’s up to you.

Badges

Some schools connected to #OOE13 have programs where they will earn professional development credit for doing the course, but for others who don’t have that option (and for any participant, actually), we’re creating badges you could earn. We’ve got a few already, but will be adding to this set as the course goes along.

 

There really is little to lose and potentially a lot to be gained, so why not give #OOE13 a try? Take another look at the website, and if you’re interested, sign up here!

Hope to see you there…

 

 

 

An embed of my ETMOOC Storify story

I tried to put this story into my blog without having it linked so intimately with Storify, here, and explained here. But that one is annoying at the moment because it opens up the post starting at the end and I don’t know why. Until I can fix it, here’s an embedded version.

click “more” to see it! It’s very long, so I don’t want people to have to scroll through this on the front page.

Continue reading →

Getting my ETMOOC Storify story into WordPress

Update, hours later: see below for what happened after I posted this…and do NOT do what I did, below, unless you know a lot more about html and css than I do (which doesn’t take much, b/c I know so little)

———————————————————————————-

I participated in ETMOOC, Educational Technology and Media MOOC (http://etmooc.org) from January to April 2013. During that time I decided to keep a record of things that stood out for me in the course–tweets, videos, blog posts–and reflect on them in one space (rather than spread out across blog posts).

I used Storify for this, as it was a really easy tool to pull all these different things together in, and to write text between the elements to tell a story. Here’s how it looks on Storify.

The problem was that I figured Storify wouldn’t last forever (these sorts of things come and go), and I didn’t want my reflections to get lost. You can export them as a PDF if you get a paid account, but I didn’t want to have to pay just for this.

Here’s what I did instead: went to my story page in Storify, clicked on “Distribute,” then on “Export” (rather than embed). Embed basically puts an active link in your blog back to the Storify site, like embedding a YouTube or Vimeo video–you can watch it in the blog, but it’s still hosted elsewhere. That wasn’t good enough for what I wanted; what if Storify goes away? Then the embed is useless.

But if you export the file into some other format, that seems to me like it will be more permanent. I tried exporting it to WordPress, but that didn’t work with this blog. I thought about exporting it to my Tumblr, but that’s only for ds106. I could have created a new tumblr just for this, but that doesn’t make sense.

Instead, I exported as html, which gave me the story on a webpage. Then, in Firefox, I right-clicked (or control-click, on a mac) on the page and got a dialogue that let me view page source. That opened up a new window with html code for the page. I copied all of that and opened up a new WP post (this one), went to “text” instead of “visual,” and pasted the code in there. Voila!

Here’s the html-export of the story in a WordPress post. Problem: it jumps to the end of the post when you open it! Why? No clue. So until I figure that out, I also created an embedded version, which works fine.

I think that the html-exported version doesn’t rely on Storify existing–even if Storify went away, I might still have my info. Which, I think, is not true of the embedded version.

Maybe I’m deluded about that, as the code in the html exported version still refers quite a bit to Storify. Hmmmm. If not, then maybe there’s little point to exporting in hmtl vs. embedding. 

Can anyone answer the question of whether what I’ve done by exporting to html is different in the sense of it possibly relying less on the existence of Storify than embedding?

One of the main reasons I did this, though, was because the story is quite long, and I want to be able to break it up into a few pieces. I couldn’t do that easily with Storify itself, but I thought I could do it with the html, maybe. Maybe not, though…I think I can’t just take half of it and cut and paste, because I think it relies a lot on some stuff in the beginning of the code that I don’t understand. So that may be moot as well.

I also wanted to do this so you don’t get that annoying “read next page” bar when you reach a certain point in the embedded version. I realize this makes the post really long, but it bugs me somehow.

Lesson learned: If you don’t want your Storify to be really, really long, break it up while you’re doing it, rather than trying to do it later. Or, if someone knows how to do this that I am not seeing, please let me know!

I tried my hand at messing with the html to get rid of the annoying social share buttons that often pop up (I left a few in at the html-exported story so you see what I’m talking about; they’re all over the embedded story). Seemed to work, though I messed up the formatting of the first text box. Just deleted this from html wherever I found it:

<div class=”s-share-dropdown”>
<ul class=”s-actions-share” data-url=”http://storify.com/clhendricksbc/favourite-tweets-from-etmooc-2013/elements/e61a5e776a8965605f8c5abf”>
<li><a title=”Share on Facebook” href=”#” rel=”facebook”>Share on Facebook</a></li>
<li><a title=”Share on Twitter” href=”#” rel=”twitter”>Share on Twitter</a></li>
<li><a title=”Share on Google+” href=”#” rel=”googleplus”>Share on Google+</a></li>
<li><a title=”Share on Linkedin” href=”#” rel=”linkedin”>Share on Linkedin</a></li>
<li><a title=”Share by email” href=”#” rel=”email”>Share by email</a></li>
</ul>
</div>

Note: a mind-numbing task that I thought would never end: “find,” delete, “find next,” delete, and over and over and over and over…

But hey, it worked! For the most part. There’s still some weirdness in the code in some places that leads to funky formatting, but I’ve reached the limit of how much I’m willing to mess around with html when I really don’t know what I’m doing.

————————————————————

Update, hours later: Well, all this seemed to work okay, except for two things:

1. When I opened the html export post, it would always open at the very bottom of the post rather than the top

2. That post also broke the ETMOOC blog hub. Okay, well, not “broke,” but made it look very weird. I went to that blog hub while preparing another post and saw that it looked very strange–all the content was squished up into one column on the far right of the page. I tweeted to Alan Levine asking him if he could (at some point) find out what was wrong (no rush), and he wrote back that my last post messed it up–the html export one. Oops. Lots of strange code at the beginning of it messed with the formatting.

Long story short, I asked a friend who knows a heck of a lot more than I do about coding and html and css to help, and he fixed the code for me pretty darn quickly. Stripped off the weird stuff at the beginning and added a css line to make the formatting look right (b/c when I took that weird stuff off, the formatting got all nasty). THANK YOU PAT LOCKLEY!

So don’t try this at home, unless you know what you’re doing. Or have a very nice friend who does know, and who is willing to help you with a project that probably isn’t even entirely necessary.

Open and free

For week two of the Why Open? course I’m helping to facilitate, one of the things we asked participants to read and think about is similarities and differences between “open” and “free,” as these terms are currently used in discussions about openness. Of course, this just adds to the complexity, for now we have two terms that are used differently by different communities, and whose meanings are disputed.

One problem with the word “free” is that it can have many meanings (well, same problem with “open,” of course). Among them, there is “free” in the sense of no cost, or “gratis,” versus free in the sense of freedom, or “libre.”

 

Gratis with or without libre

Wifi Gratis, flickr photo shared by Daniel Lobo, licensed CC-BY.

An example of something that is “open” mostly in the sense of “gratis” is at least some ways of thinking of open access publishing of research articles and books. Most of what one hears about in terms of fighting for open access for scholarly research has to do with being able to read, download, and distribute articles and books without cost–hence the emphasis on “access.” Here’s a quick and clear overview of what “open access” means, that focuses only on access.

But there are also arguments for making open access works at least somewhat libre, in the sense of allowing derivatives to be made. See, for example, the Bethesda and Berlin statements on what counts as open access works (I found these from this overview of open access by Peter Suber). An editorial in PLoS Biology by Catriona J. MacCallum entitled “When is Open Access Not Open Access?” delineates between free access to scholarly articles (without cost) and open access (derivatives are allowed). Why would allowing derivative works be important for scholarly articles? At least to allow unrestricted translation into other languages without gaining permission, but also things like using diagrams and figures in other works.

There is also the “How open is it?” guide put out by SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), PLoS (Public Library of Science) and OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association), which describes a spectrum of open access for research in terms of reading rights, reuse rights, copyright, authors’ posting rights, and more. This combines gratis (free access to read) with some elements of libre (such as posting on other sites besides the journals’ website, allowing derivative works). So proponents of open access for research need not be focused on gratis only.

Libre with or without gratis

“Libre” often denotes an ability to reuse, modify, remix things: the four R’s in the definition of open content by David Wiley, for example, might count as a description of “libre.” Chris Sakkas describes a “libre” work as one that can be shared and adapted by anyone in the world, possibly subject to some limitations, such as attribution of the original source and copyleft, or share-alike provisions. The Free Software Foundation defines free software as having four freedoms that fit “libre” rather than “gratis” (note that the four freedoms of the FSF and of Wiley’s “open content” are very similar; it’s just that Wiley makes a separate category for “remix,” or putting content together with other content to make something new, and the FSF separates distribution of the original and of revised versions into two categories). The definition of free cultural works by freedomdefined.org is very similar to the FSF’s definition of free software, but applied to works other than software.

In these discussions of “libre,” there is no requirement that works be free as in “no cost.” Indeed, the FSF definition of free software explicitly states that free software must be allowed to be revised and the original and revision distributed, with or without charging a fee for such. The FSF has a page explicitly explaining that and why it’s okay to sell free software, and also explaining that software given away without cost may or may not be “free software,” depending on what freedoms users have once they have it. So “libre,” at least in some discussions of it, seems to have little to do with “gratis.”

Which is interesting, because in our survey of meanings of open for this course, quite a few people mentioned that openness has to do in part with accessibility without barriers, including cost barriers. And it seems to me that the ability to reuse, revise, redistribute something depends fundamentally on the ability to access it in the first place, so if something is libre but not gratis it may allow for quite a bit of freedom, but not for everyone (though, of course, the definition of free software says it must allow users to distribute the original or derivatives, gratis or for a cost, so gratis versions may be available…or not).  And even going beyond cost, there are of course other kinds of access barriers, such as technological ones, that make the “libre” freedoms unusable by some.

Some definitions of “free” and “open” and how they approach access

The FSF does address the issue of access to some degree in its definition of free software, by pointing out that

In order for freedoms 1 and 3 (the freedom to make changes and the freedom to publish the changed versions) to be meaningful, you must have access to the source code of the program. Therefore, accessibility of source code is a necessary condition for free software. Obfuscated “source code” is not real source code and does not count as source code.

Presentation: Free Content for a Free Societey! 7/12

“Presentation: Free Content for a Free Societey! 7/12” by Matthias Mehldau, licensed CC-BY

So even if a software program can be sold, the source code (if it is to count as free software) must be accessible. It’s not clear from the definition of free software page whether or not the source code must be accessible as in gratis, or if it can be accessible for a cost. I had to go searching a bit to find out. The last section of the article on why it’s okay to sell free software from the FSF says that nevertheless, there should be a limit on how much one can charge for the source code, or else one could say the source code is available in theory, but practically it may not be. So the GNU General Public License does include restrictions on how you can provide the source code (see section 6). This section of the GNU GPL FAQs was helpful too. From these documents I think the situation is this: for free software, at least for the GNU GPL license, you have to make the source code available to those to whom you distribute the software. So if they pay for the software, they get a copy of the source code along with that, for no extra cost. If you distribute it without cost, then you must also distribute the source code for no cost. So let’s say one person pays for a copy of the software and gets the source code. If they then distribute it for free on a network, they must also provide the source code in one of several possible ways, for free. So either way, the source code must be made available, without (extra) cost, to people who have a copy of the software.

This means that the four freedoms of free software may or may not be available without cost, because the source code may or may not be available without cost–that is, if I’m understanding all this correctly. Of course even if the source code costs nothing, some of the freedoms are still only available to some people–to those who can actually understand and edit the source code–but there will likely always be some restrictions in place in terms of use and adaption of “free” or “open” works.

The definition of free cultural works also includes something similar to availability of source code, for other kinds of works:

Availability of source data: Where a final work has been obtained through the compilation or processing of a source file or multiple source files, all underlying source data should be available alongside the work itself under the same conditions. This can be the score of a musical composition, the models used in a 3D scene, the data of a scientific publication, the source code of a computer application, or any other such information.

So according to the definition of free cultural works,  the sources used to create a free work must themselves be free/libre in the same way as the works themselves are required to be. There isn’t much clarity here on how this should work (unlike for free software and the GNU GPL license), but perhaps it means that works can be sold but still be free as in libre, and the source files and data must be given to the recipient along with the final work (similar to source code for software, above). So whether you pay for it or can access it without cost, you must have access to the source data as well (for an extra price okay? included in the price of the original work?).

Here, too, the question about accessibility due to price could be mitigated by the fact that free cultural works (like free software) can be distributed by anyone who has a copy, to anyone else, with or without charging a fee. So it’s possible that there will be a copy available somewhere that can be accessed without cost. Or maybe not.

The Open Knowledge Foundation has a definition of open data and open content that includes a focus on access and price:

The work shall be available as a whole and at no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably downloading via the Internet without charge. The work must also be available in a convenient and modifiable form.

While not quite gratis, this allows for distribution of works to recoup (reasonable) costs for that distribution, which could make sense in the case of physical copies such as on paper or on digital media like a thumb drive. It does raise the question whether it makes sense to charge people who download from the internet a fee for hosting information on a site (hosting data on a server does cost some money!).

A theoretical tension

Interestingly, this raises a bit of a potential paradox, as can be seen from this part of the Open Knowledge definition of open content:

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the work either on its own or as part of a package made from works from many different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale or distribution.

The point here is that while a work that counts as open under this definition must not have a fee attached greater than a “reasonable reproduction cost,” that work must also permit users to sell the work for their own monetary gain.

I don’t have a problem with this provision, it’s just that it raises the issue that Stephen Downes has talked about quite a bit (see, e.g., here and here): views of openness that allow the user wide freedom to do whatever they wish with the open artifact can lead to that artifact being enclosed and no longer open (or free) in the sense of widely accessible. Downes argues here that we can think of freedom from the perspective of what the person who already has a work is free to do with it, and from the perspective of the person trying to access a work, and works that cost money may be free in the former but not the latter sense (because there may be quite a lot of people who can’t afford to access the work). 

Of course, the counter to that is that the original must remain open and low- or no-cost (and other copies can be distributed for free too), so there should be at least one available without cost. Whether that one can be effectively hidden in internet searches through Search Engine Optimization practices, however, is an important question–which Scott Leslie addresses with an example, here.

What I want to emphasize here is the theoretical tension going on: the wide freedom of those who possess and use a work or program to do with it as they will could (theoretically, at least, though the degree to which it has or could happen in practice is debated) lead to fewer people being able to access the work, and wide freedom to access could limit freedoms of the user/possessor to do with a work what they want (e.g., by not allowing works to be sold for a profit, or by requiring they be in formats accessible by many, among other things).

I understand that the free software and free cultural works and other views of “libre” attempt to strike a balance by requiring that works be allowed to be distributed freely, with or without cost, but this may not ensure wide accessibility (e.g., if few distribute for free or if free copies are buried in search results). And I understand that proponents of requiring only “non-commercial” uses of works (such as Downes) attempt to strike a balance by restricting user freedoms in favour of wider accessibility (since, for those without access, user freedoms are moot).

Which balance is best? Is there a better balance to be struck than the ones we’ve come up with so far? I do think this is a difficult issue, which I’ve wrestled with before, when talking about CC licenses in particular. So far I’ve decided in favour of the balance that focuses on user freedoms, but I’m curious what others think of this issue.

I wanted to include another section of this post, talking about the language: “free” vs “open”–what are the benefits/drawbacks to using one or the other of these terms? But it’s late and I’m tired, and so that will have to wait for another post.

Results of survey on meaning of “open”

Why Open Brainstorm, by Laila Le Guen, licensed CC-BY. This image was done by a participant in the Why Open? course, a brainstorm mixing her views on why openness is important with those gathered from the survey discussed in this post. Laila shared it on Twitter on the #whyopen tag.

As part of a Why Open? course I’m helping to facilitate, we sent out a survey to gather different people’s views of what they think “openness” means–we were hoping to get answers from people in various professions. As part of the course, we asked participants to respond to some of these definitions in the discussion area for week 1, at the bottom of this page. But my comments are going to be so long that I think they’ll be easier to read in a blog post! So I’ll post a link to this blog post in that discussion area.

We got 30 responses to the survey, which is quite a good number from something sent out for a couple of weeks on email lists, Twitter, and other social sites! You can see all the results of the survey in a couple of formats. Here you can see the answers to each question listed out under the question, and here is the spreadsheet where you can link question answers to the person who gave them (if they gave a name) and their profession.

There’s another, similar survey focused on teachers/faculty and what openness means in the context of research and teaching, here, done for another purpose. It also provides some interesting results, but I’ll focus here just on the survey we did.

I thought about trying to see if there were patterns amongst people with similar professions, but I’m not sure we have enough data to do that, really. There are quite a few different types of professions represented, so there aren’t that many people in each type of profession (except education and educational technology–there are a significant number of people in those fields).  So I decided to keep track of some common answers, and then comment on some of the uncommon ones that I hadn’t considered before or found interesting for some other reason.

 

Question on what people think “open” means, whether in general or in a particular field/practice/activity

Our first question was: What does “open” mean to you?

Common answers to the meaning of “open”

I did not do a super careful job of coding the answers, so others may come up with different numbers if they try to put answers together into similar categories! It was kind of a rough coding/categorization.

And I’m not attaching any great significance to these results–e.g., not suggesting that since these showed up quite often in our survey then it must be the case that most people who try to state their view of the meaning of “open” are going to have these in there. This was not at all a random sample. I include these just to give an idea of what one might often hear when people are talking about openness.

  • 17 of the 30 respondents said that open had to do with allowing things to be reused, revised, changed, remixed, and the like.
    • A number of people mentioned open licensing as a way to make this possible (I counted about 3-4)
  • 16 of the 30 said something about openness being related to accessibility, without barriers in the form of cost, bureaucratic hurdles, or other obstacles.
  • 13 said something about openness involving collaboration, ability for many people to participate in a practice or in creating a product.
    • E.g., government being open in part by allowing for public input, public decisionmaking in some aspects; students being involved in open education, being consulted in how courses go and being able to have their own goals, paths through courses.
    • A couple of people talked about institutions or practices being open to changing through feedback, and one noted that openness blurs the line between producers and consumers.
  • 8 people said it had to do with sharing work, products, activities or process–one said it was a different form of file transfer than that done legally when there’s copyright and pirating.
  • 8 people said something about transparency, or openness in communication, such as when governments are transparent about their processes, or that a practice is open if publicly documented.

 

 A couple of answers that were not common, but that I found particularly interesting

One person said that an important part of an open resource is that it makes clear that things are accessible, shareable, revisable, etc., and explains what those things mean in easy to understand terms (or links to a place that does so)–see dkernohan’s answer, here. Good point. Just because something is open and openly licensed for reuse and revision doesn’t mean people can easily find that information. I often see blogs that don’t clarify the license they have for their work, and without giving it an explicit license to the contrary, the default is copyright. If people want to share, they must be sure that a license and/or words stating so are prominent on their sites/artifacts.

One nice thing about Creative Commons licenses is that they have versions of the licenses that are in somewhat easy-to-read language (easier than the full legal code, anyway). So, for example, the CC-BY license that I use has a more “readable” version, with a link to the full legal version. Other licenses may have similar–I haven’t looked into many licenses.

I do think it’s important to not just say you’re using a license, but to link to it so people see the full terms, and if possible, to link to a version that explains it in somewhat clear language. And to make it prominent on your site. For those using CC licenses, this page is helpful for best practices in marking your work as CC-licensed.

A nice plugin I’m using for my blog, that you can use if you have a self-hosted WordPress blog (can’t add plugins on WordPress.com blogs, I think), is Open Attribute. It allows you to put a site-wide license on, as well as different license for different posts. There is also a web browser plugin called open attribute, that does something different–it puts an icon into your URL bar that allows you to easily cite information, images, videos from pages that have CC licenses (you can copy and paste in plain text or html).

 Another person said that openness has to do (in part) with a “hacker ethic” (see @wiltwhatman’s answer, here). Though this may not be what that person had it mind, to me, a “hacker ethic” means that things are open to change, to being remade. But it being an “ethic” means a bit more than that. To me, it means that the more things that are open to remaking, remixing, the more likely it is that more people may eventually move from passive consumers of information and knowledge to active makers and sharers themselves. It there are a lot of things open to changing, and inviting people to use and change them, then perhaps this could encourage those who didn’t participate in making things as much in the past to start doing so. Especially if it doing so is fairly easy.

For example, if an (open) educational resource like some slides from a presentation, or a digital animation that explains some process or concept is just available to reuse as is (so it’s open in that sense, but not in the sense of revision), then I can post it on a website for a course, or link to it, but I won’t be involved in adding or changing anything. And if most educational resources are like this, then I’ll be rather passive when dealing with things other people have made. But if there are a lot of OER’s that invite revision, remixing, then I may be inspired to change them so they fit my course better. And in this way I might make more things myself because while starting from scratch may be too much work, changing something someone else has created may not be. Again, depending on how easy it is to revise such things, and whether I have the right software knowledge, etc. It won’t be enough in itself to encourage more people to make things, but it might help.

 

Answers to why people participate in open culture, or why they think openness is valuable

We also asked people: “Why do you participate in open culture? Or, why do you think openness is important?”

Some common answers

  • 15 people said that openness is valuable because it allows for participation/collaboration, and that this is important for various reasons
    • e.g., 7 people said engaging in dialogue with others helps them work better in their fields, and create better things
    • a few people mentioned that collaborating is important because it helps build solidarity, altruism, teamworking skills
    • one pointed out that there are always more smart people outside your community/workplace than inside, so best to go outside these to share/discuss ideas
  • 7 people noted that openness can help create new and better knowledge, products; can help promote creativity and innovation
    • one said that we always build on the work of others when we create things, so the more work is closed off the less chance there is to build on it
    • one said that opening his/her work up may help to solve problems down the road that s/he isn’t even aware of it
    • a couple said that openness is helpful to bettering the world generally, solving common problems
  • 4 said openness can provide access to things that some people might not be able to afford otherwise, such as educational materials
  • Related to the above, 2 people mentioned that openness is part of promoting inclusivity, and one said that it spreads power and resources more widely
  • 4 talked about the value of transparency, that public institutions shouldn’t be able to hide what they’re doing, that it promotes accountability, publicizes and helps to prevent abuse

 

Some answers that weren’t common, but that I found particularly interesting

One person said, “I want to share to increase the expectation of others to share too” (see Timothy Vollmer’s answer, here). Good point. I hadn’t thought of that consciously, but sure…if I am sharing some things I do, some people might find value in them and then decide that what they do could be valuable to others as well, and maybe they’ll be willing to share. If the norms in one’s field or activity are to not share, then few will do it. But it seems that if some people start sharing, others might begin to think perhaps it’s a good idea. I know if I benefit from something someone else has done, it

Another person asked an interesting question: “I share because I believe it to be a good thing. Is sharing innately open? Not so sure.Not so sure” (see Pat’s answer, here). I guess I just assumed sharing is open, but it probably depends on what is shared and how. And on what “sharing” means. Because if, let’s say, offering a free version of an app is “sharing,” but it’s not open to revision, then that’s not terribly open. And also if the free version is there mainly to get you to try it and then buy the paid version. That may not be what this person meant, though. I’m curious–can you think of ways in which sharing might not be “open”? Please respond in the comments, if you’d like!

 

Links to open projects/sites

We also asked in the survey if people wanted to provide us with links to a project or site that exemplifies their views of “open.” It’s best just to go to the survey results themselves to see these, because some have nice explanations attached! Some great resources there.

Thank you to those who took the time to fill out our survey!

 

[Why Open?] What does “open” mean?

I made this animated GIF using a mobile phone and GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program. 

 

For the next five weeks, I’m helping to facilitate an open online course at the School of Open called Why Open? The course starts today, and we’ve asked participants to start by writing a blog post on the following:

What do you think “openness” is? Focusing on your own field or context (if you wish), describe what it means to do work openly, or to make one’s activity or artifacts open. Alternatively, you could talk about what you think “openness” means generally, what sort of definition might fit all open activities or works.

I thought that after having read quite a few things about openness, and helping to put together this course, I’d have a clearer idea of what openness means. But instead, I recognize just how complicated the issues are surrounding openness, and so I have a hard time coming up with a clean, neat definition.

I could write a blog post that links to a bunch of resources on openness and see what they have to say, then respond to that, but that would be jumping the gun at this point. We’re starting off giving our own views, so let me try to put together some of my various thoughts about openness, as they stand at the moment (recognizing that things will change by the end of this course experience!).

I’ll be focusing on openness in my profession, higher education and research (I teach Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver).

My earlier views on openness in education and research

A friend (Pat Lockley) recently did a survey of academics to find out their views of openness. The results, and a slideshow presentation on how he and a collaborator used these results, can be found in one of Pat’s blog posts. My response is #3 on this spreadsheet (I tried to copy and paste it here, but I don’t think I have permission to do that).

Summarizing that, my view on openness in the context of teaching and research, at least when I answered this survey, was:

  • One part of openness is allowing something to be freely viewed, such as open access research and publications–anyone can see these without having to pay for viewing. Putting up one’s teaching materials on a freely-accessible website would count here too.
  • But that’s only one small part of doing academic work openly; to be more “open,” one would make one’s materials and research not only available for free viewing, but also for use by others, and for revision–adding to, subtracting from, mixing with other things, etc. So, for example, I could not just put up a syllabus or lecture notes or teaching video for others to view, but would give these things a license that would allow for reuse, revision, remixing (e.g., a CC-BY license). The same could go for research articles–it would be nice if parts of these, such as tables, diagrams and graphs, could be reproduced in other places, altered and posted elsewhere, etc. But a license allowing such use is helpful, as copyright doesn’t allow it without getting express permission from the author.
  • Another important thing to think about is the format in which you’re posting your materials. For example, PDFs aren’t easily editable by most people, so putting things up in PDF form makes them freely available, but not easily accessible for revision and reuse. I don’t know much about video or audio formats, but it’s possible that some are better than others for this sort of thing as well.
  •  Courses are “open” not only if they are free to participate in (like MOOCs), but also if the materials are available for reuse, revision, repurposing. Some MOOCs don’t allow anyone to use their materials for other purposes. Here is a quote from Coursera’s Terms of Use, for example:

Permission to Use Materials

All content or other materials available on the Sites, including but not limited to code, images, text, layouts, arrangements, displays, illustrations, audio and video clips, HTML files and other content are the property of Coursera and/or its affiliates or licensors and are protected by copyright, patent and/or other proprietary intellectual property rights under the United States and foreign laws. In consideration for your agreement to the terms and conditions contained here, Coursera grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access and use the Sites. You may download material from the Sites only for your own personal, non-commercial use. You may not otherwise copy, reproduce, retransmit, distribute, publish, commercially exploit or otherwise transfer any material, nor may you modify or create derivatives works of the material.

Udacity’s Terms of Use have a similar provision, as do those of FutureLearn. By contrast, the license on P2PU materials is CC-BY-SA.

Also in that survey I started trying to think about openness in education more broadly, and began to feel my way towards that by saying that we could open up education further if we didn’t just think of it in terms of formal institutions and courses. Learning happens in many different ways, every day, and if we could come up with some way to recognize and value that (rather than only giving credit to what people have learned at formal institutions), that might be a way to make education more “open.”

I think that’s a good thing to pursue, though I’m not yet sure how I’d fit it into a defintion of openness. Perhaps ensuring that education is more open in the sense of being more available/accessible to more people? If we restrict credit for learning to formal institutions, then only those who can get into and pay for those can get credit.

What I’d add now

 What I’ve focused on above are things like free and easily-available access/viewing, licensing so as to allow revision and reuse/reposting, and allowing many people to be able to take courses, as well as get credit for learning in more informal ways. That latter is like access to some degree, so so far: access, reuse, revision.

Now I’d also add something about transparency, mostly of process, but perhaps of other things as well. So in education, the process used to reach students’ marks should be transparent, for example.

I’m not sure if this fits “transparency,” exactly, but I’m trying to be more open about my processes of research, in the sense of blogging about research as I go along, from my first thoughts about research questions and possible methods, to finalized research projects, to results. I do this because it’s a good way to get feedback from others who are interested in similar things, and, since I’ll be taking notes anyway and they might be useful to others, why not put them up in public?

Similarly, I’ve started blogging in the past few years about my teaching (that’s why I started this blog in the first place)–talking about what I’m planning, what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and why. Again, I can get feedback from others, and my experiences can hopefully be useful to others as well.

I’m putting all of this sort of stuff under “transparency,” though perhaps there’s a better word for it.

Summary

So at this point, I’d say openness, at least in education and research, has to do with at least the following: free and easy access (including for reading/viewing/listening to works, as well as access in the sense of being able to attend courses or learn in other ways), ability to revise and reuse works created by others, and transparency (in the sense of letting others in on your process).

Now, I’m sure there are things I’ve left out here, and I’m also sure that this view will change. In addition, none of this is to say that these things are always beneficial, or that there are no potential problems associated with being open. We’ll discuss some of those later in the course!

I also want to point out that simply putting things online for free viewing and licensing them for revision and reuse doesn’t mean they are actually generally accessible. There are many people who do not have stable, fast internet access, and making materials available to them is not simply a matter of putting them on the internet. That’s an issue I haven’t looked into carefully enough. I too often think I’m being plenty open when I post things online and let others revise and reuse them. But it’s only a subset of people who can do so.

 

Let me know what you think…have I missed anything that you think is important about openness?

My first (but certainly not last) ds106 experience

A recent ds106 creation of mine, playing off of one by another participant, and off of an earlier assignment. See here for an explanation!

The title of this post is not entirely true. Before I took a synchronous version of ds106, I did some daily creates, which certainly counts as a ds106 experience!

But, I did have my first full, synchronous course experience with ds106 in May and June of 2013, when it was being given as a summer course at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia (USA). This particular iteration had a “Twilight Zone” theme, focused around the US television series of that name that ran from 1959-1964. Thus, it was called the “ds106zone.”

I wanted to write a post explaining a bit about this course and why I found it such a great experience. I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it justice, but I’ll try. Sometimes these things are hard to put into words, or explain to those who haven’t had the same experience.

If you don’t know anything about ds106 and want a few basics, you could take a look at the “about” page for ds106, and/or this blog post I wrote a few months ago, before doing ds106 myself. I was looking at it from a more outside perspective, trying to figure it out, and it gives a fairly decent overview of how it works. That’s important for understanding what follows, I think.

The basics–themes and instructions for each week

Here is the syllabus for the students enrolled for credit in Summer 2013. As an open online participant, not much of this applied to me!

This was a five-week course–a very compressed schedule, since usually it runs for about 12 weeks or so when students are taking it for credit (as they were during the summer course as well). So for the enrolled students, each week had a whole lot of things to do. For those of us who were open online students, of course, we could pick and choose what we wanted to do.

You can find links to each weeks’ instructions and assignments here, which provides a good sense of the kinds of things we did during the course. We began with visual projects, then moved to design, then audio, then video, and then mashups. For each week we were all to watch a set of 3-4 The Twilight Zone episodes, and, if we wanted, we could base some of our work on those (for the UMW students, a certain number of their projects had to be focused on the week’s Twilight Zone episodes.

You can see from each week that the students had to do a certain number of “stars” worth of assignments in a particular category from the assignment bank. So, for example, for week 2, UMW students were required to do 15 stars of design assignments, at least 8 of which had to be based around one or more of the Twilight Zone episodes for that week. These stars refer to the number of stars on each assignment in the ds106 assignment bank.

You can click on any category of assignments in the assignment bank and see all the possible assignments there, along with the number of stars attached. Where do these assignments come from? From the community of participants and instructors–more from the former than the latter. During each iteration of ds106 the students registered for credit have to submit new assignments for later students to choose from, and anyone is welcome to submit an assignment at any time, here. (linked at the bottom of the assignment bank page)

The stars refer to the perceived level of difficulty of the assignment, and they come from the person who created it. However, Jim Groom, who was the main instructor for the ds106zone, made it clear that students could argue for a particular assignment being worth more stars, with evidence showing what they did and how complicated it was.

We were also asked to blog about each assignment we did, explaining not only what we did and why (what sort of story we were trying to tell), but also how we did it–the particular process we engaged in to make it happen. For me, this was one of the most valuable parts of the course–I not only had to remember and document what I did, which made me pay more attention to what I was doing and why, but I learned so much from what others did and their explanations of how they did it.

My ds106 projects

I put a couple of my works on this blog, here and here, but most of them ended up on another blog on Tumblr, which is devoted only to my ds106 work.

My favourite parts of the course had to do with audio…I’m not sure why I was so excited about audio, but I really got into it. Perhaps it is because I used to be a college radio dj, and did a fair bit of audio editing in those days (e.g., creating station and event announcements, by cutting and taping actual, physical tape!). Here are a few of my audio assignments: a commercial for ds106, a ds106 radio “bumper,” and a “bird call” for a character from a Twlight Zone episode. My absolute favourite part was collaboratively writing, performing and editing a radio show with other open online participants, all within seven days! You can hear it here, as well as read a blog post about our process.

What I found especially intriguing about ds106

First of all, the course really gives a lot of space for students to guide their own learning. Yes, there are themes and certain kinds of assignments to do each week, but which of those assignments students do, and how, is really up to them. There is quite a bit of leeway in many of the assignments, which of course makes sense for a course that thrives on creativity. And the fact that students create the assignments themselves really adds to the student-driven nature of the course.

In fact, overall, I found and really loved how the course was community-centred. By that I mean that the instructor was not the main or only person driving the course forward. Sure, he provided the main structure in the sense of telling the for-credit students what they had to do each week, and he also had open office hours on Google Hangouts or Skype that anyone could join. Further, he provided a presentation each week that gave some tips and ideas for one or more of the assignments for that week (e.g., here is a broadcast by Jim Groom and Tim Owens about photo editing tools, and here is one where they talk about design).

I don’t want to suggest that Jim Groom’s presence wasn’t that important–far from it. I learned a lot from his presentations/tutorials, and what he created himself for the course. In addition, getting thumbs-up comments from him was extremely motivating. As I noted in the podcast linked towards the end of this post, he was a very, very supportive instructor, even when he was smack talking! Rather, I want to say that Jim was part of a great community that worked together to help make this course a success.

One thing that struck me as great in this regard was that Jim Groom was not only the instructor, he also did as many of the assignments as he could during each week. So he, too, was posting assignments on his blog and counting starts to get up to the requisite number. He thereby played a participant role as well as that of an instructor.

The course was also run in part by Scottlo, who, on his own, decided to start doing a daily podcast for the course, in which he gave some tips about various assignments and also played student audio work. You can hear his podcast, called the LoDown, on his radio blog (see archives from May and June 2013). Jim Groom made this daily podcast required listening for the UMW students, and I never missed an episode. I learned a lot about doing audio from Scottlo’s examples of different ways to do a podcast, and from his specific advice for doing audio and other assignments. In addition, it was so exciting when your own work gets showcased in a forum like this!

For various reasons, Scottlo had to stop doing the podcast before the course finished, and some of us wanted it to go on…so, in what to me really exemplifies ds106, we just continued it ourselves! Rochelle Lockridge (Rockylou) did a number of podcasts (e.g., here and here), Alan Levine did one (here, though he did one earlier in the course as well) Jim Groom did one (and also an earlier one too), and I did one in conversation with Rockylou. Editing that podcast was a really fun and valuable experience.

In addition, a character named Talky Tina showed up (though actually, she had had her own blog for months by then), and started to become a very big presence in the course. She helped immensely, partly by encouraging the UMW students to update their blogs with useful information like an “about” page, to Tweet out their blog posts/assignments, and more. She also created a storyline to the course itself, managing to get into fights with those who called her “creepy” (especially one Mr. Savvy, who went back and forth with her a few times on Twitter and on assignments, such as discussed here).

Her identity was (and remains) a mystery (though one or two claimed to know it fairly early on), so of course at one point several people claimed to be her (documented here). Alan Levine continued to claim to have been her, (and still might if you ask him) and then to have exorcised her from his mind, and thereafter would not acknowledge her tweets or allow her to comment on his blog (according to Talky Tina).

Things really came to a fantastic head when Tina started doing audio assignments, such as her “Tina Don’t Like the Mean Word“ song, which is brilliant, and her podcast calling out all pretender Tina’s and engaging them in a rumble (part 1 and part 2), which was over the top.

In the end, many of us ended up doing assignments about Talky Tina and her creepiness or lack thereof, such as here and here and here, among others. And many of us still do not know who is “playing” her! Further, she is continuing her storyline, having added a “puppetmaster” and a “brother” to the cast of characters. I expect she will continue to play a role in the upcoming Fall 2013 ds106 course (more on that below).

Not to mention the most important thing of all–all those participants who helped move the course along by creating great art, and playing off each others’ works, and encouraging each other with comments on blogs and Twitter, which kept us all excited and encouraged us to work even harder. The best part for me was when someone picked up on an assignment I did and tweaked it, did something new with it, such as when Vivien Rolfe added music to one of my first gifs! And this sort of “riffing” was encouraged and valued, and people often created things specifically for others to use and play with (as Brian Short did with a meme template, and as Andrew Forgrave did with ds106zone trading card templates).

I found in ds106 a group of extremely engaged, extremely supportive people who love to do this stuff and love to provide help and advice to others. All it takes is a Tweeted question on the #ds106 hashtag and someone will answer pretty darn quickly. Or a blog post asking for help. It’s amazing.

An acephalous ds106, Fall 2013

It is not surprising, then, that the Fall 2013 ds106 course will be “Headless,” meaning it will have no particular instructor, but will be run by a community of volunteers. As Jim Groom notes, this is quite fitting for how ds106 runs anyway. See an explanation of the Fall 2013 headless course here, a syllabus here, and a sign-up sheet for volunteers here. I am really, really excited about this, though sad that I won’t be able to participate this Fall as much as I could during the Spring, as I’ll be back to teaching full time (no longer on sabbatical!).

Why don’t you join us for this acephalous course starting in a few weeks? There is also a new Google+ group in addition to the #ds106 hashtag on Twitter, if you want to get announcements about it and meet some people before it starts. As with my other favourite online course experience, etmooc, the best part of ds106 has been the people involved. I got hooked on the creativity, the creations, and most especially the community.

I can’t quit ds106–I am still creating things whenever I can, including daily create assignments. I found it incredibly addictive and so, so much fun. I now understand how it’s #4life: not only do you continually learn more and more as you do these things, but it’s quite possible you’ll love it so much you’ll want to continue #4life. And the community will, I think, be there with you. My podcast discussion with Rockylou acts as a final reflective piece for my ds106 experience, in which I try to explain just why I loved it so much, even though it’s hard for me to see a direct link to my everyday teaching and learning in philosophy.

Why not give it a try? You can do as much or as little as you’d like. Just start!

 

Hello, Why Open? course!

My name is Christina Hendricks, and I’m helping to facilitate this course at the School of Open called “Why Open?” in August, and I’m writing this post to introduce myself to the participants (and to get at least one post onto our shiny new blog hub we’re creating–will link to it when it’s ready).

A bit about me

I teach philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC (here’s my main website, and here’s my About.me page). I also teach in an interdisciplinary program for first-year students in the Faculty of Arts called Arts One. This is a team-taught, full year course for which students get 18 credits: 6 each in English, History and Philosophy. I think Arts One is a fantastic liberal arts program, and I dearly love teaching in it. We’ve recently started putting some of our lectures, student blogs, and Tweets online at “Arts One Digital,” which can give you a good sense of the sort of things we read and discuss in the course. If you want to read a bit more about my work in Arts One, you could click the “Arts One” tag on the right menu.

My first foray into doing work openly was this blog, which I started four or five years ago, but I only recently began to really blog on a regular basis (in large part because I had time to do so during a sabbatical in 2012-2013!). Over the course of the past six months, I’ve gotten more and more interested in “openness.” How did that happen?

How I got here

While on sabbatical last year, I decided to investigate these MOOC things, these Massive, Open, Online Courses. I looked into some from the major providers like Coursera and others, but ended up deciding to really get involved with one that was organized and facilitated by volunteers, entirely on the open web called “ETMOOC” (Educational Technology and Media MOOC). That course was run similarly to the Why Open? course (though it was 10 weeks long, if I remember correctly): we had synchronous sessions, plus suggested activities and blog posts, plus Twitter chats each week. There was a blog hub where we could easily see each others’ blog posts, and we were encouraged to comment on each others’ work to get conversations going and start making connections amongst us.

We were already engaging in open learning, through writing public blog posts and public comments on them, engaging in Twitter updates and Twitter chats publicly, and participating in synchronous sessions that were open for anyone to join and view later.

Still, we had a specific section of that course called “The Open Movement,” and I found myself especially excited about such things. I began doing some research on my own into openness, and found the School of Open! I also found another online course, specifically on open education, from the Open University, which I participated in. If you happen to be interested, all my blog posts for that course are under the “h817open” tag on the menu at right.

I had seen on the School of Open’s site that there were a list of courses that were being developed, or courses that people had expressed interest in having, and a call for volunteers. The “Why Open?” course was one of them, so I volunteered to help with it, along with the other organizers/facilitators. And here we are!

How I participate in openness

Well, so far it’s mostly just this blog:

  • I have opened up my research by writing about it step by step, taking notes on research articles and giving my comments to those, thinking out loud about how I might design research projects and asking others for suggestions (which has been very helpful!)
  • I have opened up my teaching by writing about planning courses, issues I run into while teaching courses, ideas for courses, and more

But I also have been trying to make a habit of reading numerous other blogs on things I’m interested in (mostly teaching and learning, plus openness generally) and commenting on them when I can. It’s a great way to learn through conversation!

In addition, I’ve become quite active on Twitter, sharing resources on teaching and learning or other topics through links to articles and blogs, asking questions and getting and giving advice. I have found that there is a great community of people in the world I can discuss teaching and learning with, in addition to my colleagues closer to home. It’s a fantastic way to expand my ideas and practices, by hearing from people I might never otherwise have talked to.

Finally, I am, starting now, beginning to help develop and facilitate open online courses. The “Why Open?” course is the first one I’m helping with, and I’m also part of the organizing team for another online course that is much longer–a 10-month, professional development course for teachers and faculty (K-12 and higher ed) in educational technology. Here’s our main site as it stands so far!

I hope to do more in the way of teaching openly online in the future, and to help develop the Arts One Digital site further. I may even open one of my on-campus courses to outside participants who could join for free (without earning credit, though). That’s an idea for the future that I haven’t worked out yet!

 

I look forward to meeting you all and discussing openness!

 

A short survey for a course called “Why Open?”

I haven’t been blogging recently, and that’s partly because I moved from Melbourne, Australia (where I was on sabbatical for a year) back to Vancouver, BC a couple of weeks ago, and have been settling back in.

It’s also because I’m in a bit of a mad rush, helping to organize and facilitate a new course at the School of Open at Peer to Peer University (https://p2pu.org/en/schools/school-of-open/). The course is called “Why Open?”, and it’s still in draft form for the next couple of days, but will be open for registration on Monday, August 22.

I’m writing this post in order to have a place to send people on Twitter and other social media to ask if they will help out with a short survey on the meaning of “open,” the results of which we’ll use in the course in part B.1. here.

We’re looking for people who have various backgrounds, expertise, professions, to give us their ideas on what “openness” means to them. Please see the text of an email I’ve posted to a couple of lists, below!

———————————————————————

Hi everyone:

I am one of the organizers/facilitators for a new course at the School of Open called “Why Open?”, which will start August 5. I’m writing to ask if you could fill out a very short survey (about 5 minutes) to help contribute some content to this course.

And/or, if you could forward this message to anyone you know whom you think would be willing to fill out the survey, we’d really appreciate it!

 

About the course and what we’re asking you to do

“Why Open?” is a 3-week long, facilitated course (meaning that participants and facilitators all go through it at the same time, rather than asynchronously) that is designed to help participants learn more about openness, recognize the benefits and challenges that can arise from opening up content or practices, and engage in some open practices themselves. It will run August 5-23, though participants will also complete a final project due around the end of August. You can see a draft of the course here: https://p2pu.org/en/courses/588/why-open/

In the first section of the course we ask participants to come with their own, preliminary understandings of what openness means. Then we will show them definitions by third parties and discuss the various meanings. We want to gather views from people with different expertise and backgrounds. One thing we will discuss is whether there are patterns in views of openness depending on profession or activity (e.g., do those in the sciences understand it differently than those in the technology fields, than those in arts or humanities, than those in business, etc.).

You can see the section in the draft course where these definitions will go, here: https://p2pu.org/en/courses/588/content/1143/

 

Survey

We have created a short survey (basically 2 questions, plus demographic info and request for links), and would love it if you could take a moment to fill it out. It should take you about five minutes.

The survey can be found here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1rxV_sdlyejuQT2_iJ-b6A5MZT91o3_oYi2QM8FIoV5M/viewform

We would like your response by midnight on Sunday August 4 (N. America time) at the latest.

 

Thank you for considering this request, and we do hope you will take the time to contribute to this course!

 

Sincerely,

Pete Forsyth, Christina Hendricks, Jeannette Lee, Simeon Oriko, Jane Park (organizers for Why Open? course)