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 😊

_________

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/