ONL 192 - Topic 2: On Openness & Sharing

What does openness mean for me personally and for my professional practice? Certainly, I share ideas/thoughts regularly with colleagues and friends. This usually happens in meetings or spontaneously, when getting somewhere together, and mostly in a personal, face-to-face setting. Professionally and constantly exchanging ideas even via social media (twitter, blogging, etc.) was - up to now - not on my agenda. Here you see me blogging…

Why avoiding openness & sharing up to now?

Starting with topic 2 on ONL192, I watched the video “Open education and the Future” from David Wiley. His main message at the end of the video is: be more open, be generous, share your materials & resources, or spend your time for feedbacking other people’s ideas/thoughts. This video is from 2010 and I was wondering why the idea of openness & sharing always stopped on a superficial level and never was worth for deeper /serious discussion in any of my professional environments in and outside universities within the nearly last 10 years. One reason on the institutional side it definitely, that some organizations earn their money with study materials and providing access to a closed ‘exclusive’ learning group. Those organizations would have to rethink and restructure their entire business model. On the personal side it definitely feels scary to express opinions openly, could be combined with the fear, to be exposed and may be openly criticized.  

How to go on?

Standing on the above described point the ONL webinar on Openness & Sharing on Oct 18^th, 2019, offered some for me helpful thoughts how to get into and handle the openness & sharing theme in the future.

• It was mentioned and suggested, to see openness as a continuum with times, were you are more open, and times where we have to be more closed. Good idea to navigate on this continuum depending on context and topic!
• Being open can increase popularity, or your impact or awareness. Not always necessary to put so much effort in getting in the high ranked journals! 
•  At universities we are paid by tax, money comes from the society. What allows us to keep our work for us? No further comment necessary on this point!

What about openness & sharing in our PBL group?

Starting with ONL I was very interested as well as skeptical about problem-based learning. Each group member working on their own topics/interest? How and when will this go together and how will it be possible to produce a final group presentation?
What I have learned so far: It works! Everybody shares her/his findings and explains main points during our video meetings. Through the PBL group work I have the feeling to learn so much about a topic in the two weeks period. This would not be possible if I would learn by myself. Ok, one may not get a 100% understanding of every topic in this two-week time, but is this really necessary? If one wants to know more, plenty of resources for further readings are suggested.

To sum up, sharing ideas/thoughts/resources functions REALLY good in our PBL group. I am extremely interested how we can manage to learn more intensively together. A sneak preview in Topic 3 shows: This is on our agenda for the next two weeks! How glad am I to have the co-lead for this topic 😊

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Resources:

David Wiley on TEDxNYED https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M

 

ONL192 Webinar on Sharing & Openness with Alastair Creelman/Kay Oddone  https://play.lnu.se/media/t/0_oshgd4j8/

ONL 192 - Topic 2: Always wondering, why ONL runs without LMS….

Since the beginning of ONL I was wondering, why there is no LMS (= Learning Management System) used in ONL? Online learning and teaching without  LMS? Not possible! There can be no better place to make sure, all students get all course information and access to all resources. And where else should student activities be monitored? 

Discussions about learning platforms already last decades. At my university we have worked on Blackboard, WebCT and some others, I do not remember... . Since a few years now, our students work on our self-developed LMS. Over the years we realize more and more, that running such a LMS needs lots of personal resources (IT department/student management) for supporting this system. Furthermore, we realize that some of our students do not use the tools integrated in the LMS. They use (often changing) tools, they are familiar with from private or professional contexts. 

  
Regarding the value of using a LMS, watching the video of Karin Watson was helpful for me in two points:

1. The video statements validate two trends that we determine as well: First, Students might like to use tools for learning, they are familiar with and second, institutions might have problems to afford ongoing development of the LMS (problems, big companies like google, Microsoft, etc. do not have)
2. I now understand the integrated approach in ONL: open web technologies like the main website, Blog, Twitter, etc. are combined with an area, were learners have to register/login (ONL community space), e.g. in order to submit parts of their work.

I think integrating more external open technologies, especially for communication/cooperation, could may be a useful development for our learning design. This enriched design might much better meet the needs of our professional part-time students. 

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Watson, K. (2014) Learning management system or the open web, Learning to teach online UNSW. https://www.coursera.org/lecture/teach-online/case-study-learning-management-system-or-the-open-web-optional-1EHsq

ONL 192 - Topic 1: Thinking on Online Participation, Digital Literacies and Identities

Starting with this topic on online participation, digital literacy and identities I first read about the seven elements of digital literacies. Some I knew, most not. Two elements got my attention: Communications & collaboration (1) and Career & identity management (2).
Here comes a brief insight in my research on those two topics and my reflection. 

1. Communications & Collaboration

This element is described as participation in digital networks for learning and research. Wow! How many people do I know, who are active in this field? May be a few, but as far as I know most of them do not participate in any digital networks, me included. Usual are real networks of colleagues and/or friends. May be we have not yet reached the “Practices” level  in the digital literacy development model of Beetham and Sharpe? On this level participating in digital networks/learning communities and building up knowledge collaboratively seems to be usual. Maybe we are at the moment mainly on the “Skill” level: We can e.g. organize and manage information, can apply this information to problems and questions and use communication and presentation tools daily in our professional and private lives.
Why is the participation-part so relevant? Digital literacies or as Jenkins et al. call them “new literacies all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking”(p.4). The authors talk about a “participatory culture” in which community involvement will become more relevant than individual expression of opinions. 

Last week I took part in the DigCompEdu Check-In, a 22 questions-self-assessment-tool, to reflect on digital competence as an academic teaching in higher and further education. The feedback and tips I got point as well in the direction of participation and collaboration.

Online participation, communication and collaboration seem to be REALLY relevant, so it was a good idea for me getting started with ONL192 😊

2. Career & identity management

Another topic I did some research on was “Digital identity”. Remember what I wrote in the first topic: At the moment, I mainly act on the “Skill-Level”. “Digital Identity” can be found on the top level of the digital literacy development model.
Anyway, I was interessed  why people create and manage one or even more digital identities in the Web?
There are many good reasons for not having a digital identity, which White and Le Cornu describe in their visitors and residents typology: Issues of privacy and fear of identity theft as well as having a `real social life’ with a network of real friends. You just do not have to socialize online and be visible for others?

Are there also reasons for having and working with digital identities?

David Whites describes in his Visitors and Residents typology as well a continuum between personal and institutional. It might be helpful to look at this digital identity discussion from the personal and from the institutional/professional side.

2.1 Personal

Visibility and Belonging

The Web offers opportunities to express opinions and show the knowledge of people even before they finish their studies or becoming a well-known expert, who is able to publish in recognized journals. Knowing that employers search the web when looking for new stuff and looking at individual profiles, having an online visibility could be helpful for getting a job or for individual careers. Another point might be, that for some people it might be great to have the feeling of belonging to online communities in additional to their private or professional communities in real life.

Personal Learning Opportunities

Being part of an online community or network, may be a learning community, offers a great chance of learning with others. This might not be possible in real life due to restrictions at work or private obligations.
Following Jenkins et al. (p.28), the ability to adopt alternative identities, e.g. in games or simulations, “allows the player to strongly identify with the character and thus have an immersive experience within the game, and at the same time to use the character as a mirror to reflect on his or her own values and choices.”
Furthermore, Jenkins et al. (p. 31) give an example, in which games are used to “simulate the social context of a profession (say, urban planning), and by working through realistic but simulated problems, players learn the ways of acting, interacting, and interpreting that are necessary for participating in the professional community. In effect, rather than memorizing facts or formulas, through performances of being an urban planner, lawyer, doctor, engineer, carpenter, historian, teacher, or physicist the player learns the particular ways of thinking of these professions.” What a great experience!

2.2 Institutional

Being attractive to Customers, Potential Employees and Society

Institutions show credibility with the information they spread. Interesting profiles/identities of employees or students might be helpful for attracting potential customers, employees and society.  Blog post as well as other social media activities are more likely produced and promoted by individuals rather than institutions. Encouraging and supporting stuff professionally practice online to become more visible – for themselves and also for the institution – might be an additional way of marketing activities. 

Setting up fictional scenarios

Jenkins et al. (p.30) offer another example, in which designers “construct personae of would-be users, who can serve to illustrate different contexts of use or different interests in the product.” Putting these personas into fictional scenarios shows, how products may serve different needs. Such scenarios allow people to examine problems from multiple perspectives, learn and try out different approaches.

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Resources:

DigCompEdu Check-In: https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/DigCompEdu-H-En

Jenkins et al.: https://www.macfound.org/media/article_pdfs/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF

Seven Elements of digital literacies and digital literacy development model: see Jisc infoNet http://web.archive.org/web/20141011143516/http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/digital-literacies/

White and Le Cornu: https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3171/3049

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Note: One important thing I learned in this 1st topic is, that it might be a very good idea to post more than one blog post during the two weeks and keep them much shorter! 😵😀