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March 2022
In March, education institutions around the globe celebrate the Open Education Movement. Many regional, national and global events are held to raise awareness of free and open sharing in education and the benefits they bring to learners and educators. Projects, resources, and ideas from around the world that demonstrate open education in practice are showcased on various platforms and in multiple forms.
According to SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), the open education movement aims to “reduce barriers, increase access and drive improvements in education through open sharing and digital formats” by providing “free and open access to platforms, tools and resources in education, including learning materials, course materials, videos, assessment tools, research, study groups, and textbooks, all available for free use and modification under an open license.”
Open education can be understood from the following aspects:
1. Open Education as Educational Philosophy
Advocates of open education argue that knowledge is common good and that its creation and access should be as open as possible. In practice, educators who share such a philosophy tend to provide opportunities for learners to access open educational resources, collaborate with others across a variety of boundaries, create knowledge openly, and integrate formal and informal learning practices. One of the driving principles of open education is that lifelong learning is a human right. By widening access to high quality educational resources and removing barriers to participation, we see free flow of education services across different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. This is in alignment with NPC’s value of Access, which aims to "minimize barriers to lifelong learning.”
2. Open Education as Enabler of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Open Education goes hand in hand with diversity, equity, and inclusion. It allows educators to freely develop, share and modify material for different learning environments, empower learners to take control over how they engage with and relate to their course content, and respect diverse perspectives. For example, the Open Textbooks for Rural Arizona Grant that NPC was awarded is a great opportunity to facilitate collaboration and professional development related to Open Educational Resources (OER), develop high-quality OER textbooks and expand the use of OER to reduce key barriers to degree completion by decreasing the cost of education, and utilize existing features of Learning Management Systems (LMS) for personalized learning and continuous improvement. Over the next three years, we hope the project will help promote awareness of open education and have a positive impact on student success by making learning more affordable and equitable.
3. Open Education as Technological and Pedagogical Innovation
Open education values openness, collaboration, flexibility, and connectivism, which often lead to innovations in teaching, learning and technology. These values are embedded in MOOCs, OERs, distance learning, flexible learning, personalized learning, and networked learning, which represent a non-linear approach to learning empowerment. As Dr. Robin DeRosa notes, open education is "about reducing barriers to education, empowering learners, and connecting the academy to the world that it serves." Because openness is a living thing, with technology advancements, we will continue to see the evolution of open pedagogy and open learning. It is also worth mentioning that higher education is embracing the open source movement and its open standards, which allows better collaboration and innovation.
For more resources about Open Education, visit: https://www.oeglobal.org/oe-resource/
Wei Ma, PhD
Dean of Instructional Innovation
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