“Education” says David Wiley in a TEDX talk entitled Open Education and the Future, is “inherently an enterprise of openness, of sharing and generosity.”
Technology has certainly made possible the advantages he mentions – the ability to share our expertise, our knowledge and experience on an open platform and within a spirit of generosity where not costs but rather access can be main driver.
But if the knowledge and expertise is shared, is out there in the digital space – so freely and flexibly available – does it not render the original teacher defunct? Is it a case that “Education will become a matter of pressing the button”? And that “teachers will be relegated to the backwoods…, or perhaps shown in museums”?
If those were questions that seem to fit the digital era and the 21st century, guess again. They are extracts from a poem “Antiquated” written slightly less than a hundred years ago, in the 1920’s– and encapsulates a time when teachers feared being replaced by a radio. The whole poem by Virginia Church can be found at this link .( I am grateful to a fellow ONL’er for mentioning it on our introductory Padlet).
Teachers were not replaced by the radio, or by the television or even by the home computer. Yet that is not to say that technology and the openness it brings about is not without an impact.
As part of this topic, we also looked at MOOC’s – massive online open courses, which appear to hold a significant potential for impacting education.[1]Whilst there are different forms of MOOC’s, the main model exemplifies that characteristics Wiley had mentioned in relation to education- that of sharing – via participation and collaboration, of being open – in accessibility, in topic and in platform, and being generous – as it mostly free of costs to participate (though not always for certification.). But one of the main features of the MOOC model is also to “make online courses open to anyone and remove the costly human support factor.”[2]
It therefore seems to overcome the so- termed “iron triangle of higher education”[3] which summarizes the challenges higher education faces as threefold: namely access, quality, and costs; and is premised on the assumption that at any given time, not all three can be mastered; and that a shift in any of the three impacts the others. For example should you aim for access and costs as decisive, then the quality will be impacted; on the other hand, if you prioritize quality, then costs will increase, and access impacted. I’ve roughly depicted it on the triangle below.
But what is the impact for education if MOOC’s can provide quality in learning, be accessible and be rendered at a relatively low cost? Five years ago, Weller & Anderson in relation to the Open University, writes in a prescribed article, Digital Resilience in Higher Education, that “…, MOOCs represent both a challenge and an opportunity. As a purely distance education institution it is arguably more vulnerable to their threat. If learners can study for free, the argument goes, then why would they pay for an education that isn’t campus based?”
Fast forward and in 2018 there are concerns about the Open University’s survival with articles in the media reporting on drastic staff cuts, reduction in qualifications and degrees offered[4] and that the university will become no more than just a “digital content providers.” [5] Working in distance education and in private higher education, this made me feel quite vulnerable. But are the MOOC’s and openness to blame? And is it a precedent that universities and higher education institutions will shortly follow suit?
In my view, the answer is no. In looking at the Open University example and reading various articles about it as case study, one of the key reasons for the deterioration seems to be that the role of the educators had increasingly been reduced. Previously seen as one of the OU’S biggest accomplishment was its ability to combine “scale with personalisation”., and that “for many students … this personal relationship with an instructor is the key”. [6]
In our group we therefore focused on the transition of the role of the educator from being a traditional teacher to a facilitator. We needed to understand what our role will be in this era of openness. We therefore looked at the skills that will be required, what tools can be used to transition the knowledge, and how the efficacy of learning is affected by the class size and openness. We also looked at the benefits to be gained from openness. Our presentation is available on Microsoft’s Sway.
Earlier this year, I started (but did not complete) a very basic course in graphic design – and needless to say as can be told from my graph above, my skills remained rather rudimentary. But the course content did cover the concept of “negative spaces.” That is the space around an object (with the object being the positive space- I may be wrong) Often these are used in advertising and logo’s to focus, or to bring balance but sometimes also to create a shape in itself. On a personal level, openness for me is somewhat similar to this effect of negative spaces, so that by opening, we are creating spaces, adding to the balance, augmenting and re-focusing on the existing, and even in itself being a way of education.
[1] “MOOCs have been trumpeted as having the potential to instigate wide scale and disruptive change in higher education.” Per Weller, M., & Anderson, T. (2013). Digital resilience in higher education. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning, 16(1), 53.
[2] Weller, M. (2014). Battle for Open: How openness won and why it doesn’t feel like victory. London: Ubiquity Press at 6.
[3] “the vectors of access, quality and cost make an iron triangle because there are no possibilities of economies of scale. But the lecture bazaar is also constrained by the triangle, because with classroom teaching it is impossible to change the vector on one side without ill effects on either or both of the others…the iron triangle—the assumption that quality, exclusivity, and expense necessarily go together—has been the bugbear of education.” Per Daniel, J, Kanwar, A & Uvalić-TrumbićS (2009) Breaking Higher Education’s Iron Triangle: Access, Cost, and Quality, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 41:2, 30-35, DOI: 10.3200/CHNG.41.2.30-35
[4] Letters “ Worries grow about the survival of the open university” The Guardian, 25 March 2018, accessible at https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/mar/25/worries-grow-about-the-survival-of-the-open-university.
[5] Taylor, D “ Open University plans major cuts to the number of staff and courses” The Guardian, 21 March 2018, accessible at https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/mar/25/worries-grow-about-the-survival-of-the-open-university
[6] Letters ““ Worries grow about the survival of the open university” The Guardian, 25 March 2018, accessible at https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/mar/25/worries-grow-about-the-survival-of-the-open-university.