Reflecting on the purpose of making an effort to open up education I came to think about another important aspect. Today more than ever, the quality of information and knowledge is key to a functional democratic society. Online there is an abundance of information. Information that has been created for various reasons. Lobbyists, political groups, interest groups, informal groupings and so on, create, support, and share information which may be more or less close to the truth. People making their own research from the couch should reasonable also meet accessible content created on scientific premises. Although I like the idea of the online education as the Coffee House Model (Ragupathi, 2020), I wonder if it really function this way in modern societies. One has to remember that the amount of information today is something completely different from all other epochs in history. Making information and knowledge available in material terms will only take us so far. I think learning is also about beliefs and culture. Beliefs about the value of being educated and a culture that supports and stimulates exploration of various educational domains.
Anja SC säger:
Hi,
interesting thought and I agree …its more important than ever to guide students to find and use trustable sources. Often we use good textbooks, which help students understanding basic concepts (of immunology in my case) and encourage students to update their knowledge and train critical thinking by reading original (per-reviewed) scientific publications on some of the topics, often with open access. Open access in this case does not necessarily mean lower quality…journal impact factor and citations can help to get a feeling for quality of content, but unfortunatelly it is still no garanti. Its always good to be critical when reading 🙂
april 13, 2022 — 9:26 e m
Lars Harrysson säger:
I agree that we as researchers should extend our ways of communication towards reaching a broader audience of knowledge seeking people. That would be well invested time. Still the competition for attention is fierce and our skills need to be developed. Perhaps it is necessary to critically assess what science does itself, for example the processes that increase the number of publications for the sole sake of numbers of published papers rather than extended knowledge.
Thus, the making of learning, seeking knowledge, as a cultural belief is rather tempting. I would love to read your extended version of that idea. How do we substitute an industrial process of education with learning as life itself?
/Lars
april 14, 2022 — 7:38 f m