Below is a video of a presentation from Dr. Christopher Long, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies in the College of the Liberal Arts At Penn State (and contributor to this blog). Dr. Long has used blogs in his teaching of philosophy for several years. The presentation relates to the topics we have been discussing in class: community and identity, social disruption, blurring of boundaries between teacher and learner, and open education, just to start the list. You can also say that the same pedagogical model is being used in this class.
While watching this video, I was struck with how the notion of open educational resource is not confined to the idea of free textbooks or recordings of lectures. Open education can be a living, breathing ongoing educational collaboration open to the world. For example, anyone in can participate to some degree in this class just by reading and engaging in the open discussion on this blog, taking part in shaping the educational experience.
I attempted to go into a little more detail on this topic last year over at my blog.
Here’s the video:
Christopher P. Long says
I saw your tweet on this and thought I would take you up on your invitation to comment!
Let me just add to the point you make in the post that I have tried to make the content of my courses and my teaching resources, like my blogging rubric (pdf) available to anyone who can make use of them.
For me, it is not about proprietary ownership, but about how to get educational resources in the hands of those who can use them to transform the lives of students.
Thanks, Brad, for embedding the video here and for opening up this thread of discussion. I look forward to hearing the thoughts of others.
Jackie Ritzko says
I saw Brad’s invite on Twitter to read or comment even if not in the class and it made a 20 year old memory resurface.
I once asked a prof if I could stop in his class since I was interested in the topic. He said absolutely not – attending his class was a privilege (and I guess I was not one of the “privileged”).
So the invite to participate in this blog has countered that long-standing philosophy and I knew I had to participate.
Next comment – without an iTouch and my Twitter account, I never would have done this! It is very early on a snowy Saturday. Too early to get up. Checked twitter – read this – could not resist. And I can probably count on one hand my life’s worth of blog posts
Moral of story – open access and invitations, disruptive technologies and mobile computing can take a closed, “privileged” environment to a level that truly reaches out to the masses in ways that never before were possible and certainly not encouraged!
DAVID R STONG says
If engagement is the end goal I can see how assessment is easily done. How is teaching/learning effectiveness assessed and compared to other techniques?