This blog post will summarize my thoughts about topic two in this ONL-course; sharing and openness. I will describe my views on open education as they evolved from the group work in PBL 11. In the article by Catherine Cronin (2017), she uses the definition of open education as “resources, tools, and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide.”

Before joining the ONL course, I admit that I hadn’t reflected much on open education and its importance. However, reading the blog post about the “Coffee House Model” by Ragupathi, K. (2020) and our discussions on topic two made me think about what resources would be needed for educational access for a larger group than today. As Ragupathi, K. (2020) mentions, education is only offered to those who can afford it in many countries, which excludes large groups from the knowledge and higher education. 

I think that many other Swedes and I take higher education for granted. For example, it’s free to study at any university in Sweden. Therefore, with reasonably good grades, you can participate in higher education in open learning despite your financial situation and school proficiency. However, according to the resources we discovered in topic 2, there are challenges and barriers to reaching open education. A couple of them are language barriers and limited access to the internet.

The fact that language skills and the country’s infrastructure affect access to education online is a logical assumption, but being a teacher in Sweden hasn’t been in my thoughts. In Sweden, we learn English from a very young age, and even though I wouldn’t say that I was very comfortable speaking English in my profession before this course, I still understand and can make myself understood. The English language could therefore be a limitation for large groups to participate in open education and shouldn’t be taken for granted worldwide. However, despite barriers, our group’s findings show that the benefits of openness outweigh the obstacles. Overcoming the barriers benefits social justice, multiculturalism, innovation, etc. 

How would it be if all education were available online and for free? Of course, it wouldn’t take care of the language barriers or the lack of infrastructure in some parts of the world, but it would open up larger groups than today. So we must contribute to making education available for all, creating and sharing content for others to see—collaboration in your own country and professionals in other countries.

Open education won’t, in my opinion, replace traditional education, but open education can raise awareness and knowledge. That has to do with most students studying higher education to get a job. I think a future employer will still choose a candidate from an ivy league university instead of studying at an open university. If this is right or wrong is another blog post and will therefore end here.

References:

Cronin, C. (2017). Open Education, Open Questions. EDUCAUSE Review 52, no. 6 (November/December 2017)

Ragupathi, K. (2020). Being open: drawing parallels with the Coffee House model.