How generous can and should we be with our courses? I have taken a number of MOOCS over the last five years or so, and mostly enjoyed them. I also share my courses and the work I have put into them with my colleagues and students. Despite all this, I sometimes feel protective about my work, precisely because the time I have put into it, the hours I have spent developing courses, material and structures. I am not at all sure why I sometimes feel the latter, but I suspect it has to do with appreciation, or rather, the lack of it.

David Wiley argues persuasively that there is no education without openness, and of course that is correct, but what he does not take into account is the economics of knowledge (Wiley, 2010). If institutions of higher learning should continue to exist, if teachers should continue to get paid, a balance needs to be struck between adapting to the digital world and maintaining “core functions, structures and identities” (Weller & Anderson).

MOOCs have been only somewhat successful, it seems, and requires a lot of time and effort on behalf of the institutions and individuals, both. But other forms of sharing seem more accessible and more suitable for students who may struggle with the competences that MOOCs require (Weller & Anderson).

The Open University (OU) in the UK offers variations of distance learning. Thy open up parts of the course for free, which has proven to be “cost -neutral”, that is they make up for the cost as the free part attracts enough fee-paying students to cover it. This is an idea that makes perfect sense to me. It allows a teacher to share some of what they do, and is still profitable. MOOCS simply cannot compete with a teacher who is “there,” whether there is in a physical classroom or a digital version. Nor can MOOCs compensate for the close collaboration among students, who follow each other closely for a limited period of time, even if it is only online.

Another way in which sharing can take place is, of course, to make academic publication available for all and free of charge. Athabasca University in Canada is currently experimenting with this. Here, the problem I foresee is not financial (very few academic publications make any money), but the tenure-track system (either formal or informal) that exists within university systems across the world. As teachers, professionally we are out academic products/knowledge, and as long as traditional university presses continue to exist, the question of merit and status will continue to rule. At the moment, which publisher you publish with matters enormously, and unless open presses, such as Athabasca’s, can ensure that their publications are as rigorously vetted as the traditional ones, the former will simply not be equally attractive to scholars. But oh, what a wonderful world it would be if all that knowledge really was accessible to everyone and for free.

References:

Weller, M. & Anderson, T. Digital Resilience in Higher Education. European Journal of Open, Distance and E.learning. 16(1), 53.

Wiley, D. (2010) Open Education and the Future. TEDxNYEd. Retrieved here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M