1. Enacting the Value
of Openness
by Sharing
by Helen Crump
OER19, Galway, Ireland, 10th & 11th April, 2019
Networked Participatory Scholarship

2. Openness
Photo : Hanneke Laaning on Unsplash
In practice: selfOER (Koseoglu & Bali, 2016)
- beyond content
- ‘process and products’ as OER (connections,
…relationships and resources)
- individuals and the learning community are an
…important resource
- openness as a ‘worldview’, or as a ‘way of being’

3. Openness
Photo : Hanneke Laaning on Unsplash
As a ‘way of being’ or a ‘worldview’
Sheila MacNeill: human element; sharing
Maeve (anon): sharing; generosity; kindness
Rebecca Hogue: sharing
Pearl (anon): participating; sharing; helping
Gabi Witthaus: licensing; open access; sharing
Jeff Merrell: identity; authenticity
Martina Emke: attitude; a way of living
Tita Beaven: being open to others; connecting people
Laura Gogia: practicing open practices;
showing/documenting your processes; it’s about life
Libby (anon): personal practice and philosophy;
fundamental relationship between openness and freedom
Judy (anon): deep identity; I find myself strongly aligned
to his philosophy (Stephen Downes)

4. As an entangled phenomenon (Barad, 2007)
- no predetermined boundaries between the self,
…resources and technology
- material-discursive (agential)
- entanglement of meaning and matter
- a doing; a happening; a process enacted in practice
Openness
Photo : Hanneke Laaning on Unsplash

5. Human OER?
- can a guest lecturer be an OER?
…“any resource that supports education is, at this point,
…under consideration” (Downes, 2006)
- “I am a human OER” (Funes, 2014)
- “I am an OER” (MacNeill, 2015) at OER15
- “We are all an OER” (Sallah, 2018) at OER18
Big and little OER Little OER (Weller, 2010 via Hoyle, 2009)
- individually produced, low cost resources (e.g. blogs,
…Slideshare, Flickr etc.)
- produced by anyone, shared through third party sites
- without explicit educational aims or learning outcomes
- small granularity, low level of intentionality
- unpredictable use, in unpredicted contexts
- ‘little’ OER enables a continuum of OER
Big and little OER

6. Big and little and human(?) OER
Human OER?
- can a guest lecturer be an OER?
…“any resource that supports education is, at this point,
…under consideration” (Downes, 2006)
- “I am a human OER” (Funes, 2014)
- “I am an OER” (MacNeill, 2015) at OER15
- “We are all an OER” (Sallah, 2018) at OER18

7. Boundaries of sharing in networked culture
(Kennedy, 2016)
- fraught with ambiguity
- (i) means many different things (polysemy)
- (ii) social and economic motives often counterpoised
- three distinct perspectives in the literature
- (i) economy driven by social capital (reputation)
- (ii) a mode of scaled distribution
- (iii) site of social intensification
- explained/subsumed under gift exchange theory and
..as distinct from commodity exchange
Photo Ander Burdain on Unsplash
Sharing

8. Sharing as a demand, not a gift (Widlok, 2017)
- not adequately explained by gift exchange theory
- not first and foremost reciprocal
- economic mode of transfer (one way, multidirectional)
- provides access to what’s needed, is of intrinsic value
- a demand, can be a silent demand
- based on recognition of the ‘other’ and sharing ‘life’
- established through co-presence (embodied),
…communication and relationality
- influenced by physical space/materiality (the Internet
…as a sharing technology)
- ‘sharing out’ of physical resources and ‘sharing in’ of
…life’s experiences
- about opportunities rather than the obligation of gift
…exchange
Photo Ander Burdain on Unsplash
Sharing

9. Sharing in open practices
Sharing life:
- Jeff Merrell: narrates his course design decisions
- Sheila MacNeill: blogs about her “struggles” with
…openness
-- Rebecca Hogue: shares her breast cancer story
…and her research in this area
- Laura Gogia: openly documents her working
…processes /narrates aspects of professional practice
…and personal life
Creating opportunities:
“It’s partially controlled, it’s partially serendipitous,
it’s very active, but also it’s creating opportunities for
yourself.” Laura Gogia
Sharing in open practices
As a demand:
“I ask for help.” “Me myself, […] I’ve needed help from
other people, so I’ve been relying on others’ self as
OER to help me.” Pearl (anon)
As a response to silent demand:
“Maybe one sentence I’ve said somewhere in the blog
will be useful to someone somewhere in the world.”
Gabi Witthaus
“I’m quite conscious is this going to be of use to
somebody else.” Judy (anon).
“Who else could it be interesting for, and I’m not just
talking about other human beings, but hashtags as
well.” Martina Emke
?
Photo Ander Burdain on Unsplash
Sharing

10. Sharing in open practices
Sharing life:
- Jeff Merrell: narrates his course design decisions
- Sheila MacNeill: blogs about her “struggles” with
…openness
-- Rebecca Hogue: shares her breast cancer story
…and her research in this area
- Laura Gogia: openly documents her working
…processes /narrates aspects of professional practice
…and personal life
Creating opportunities:
“It’s partially controlled, it’s partially serendipitous,
it’s very active, but also it’s creating opportunities for
yourself.” Laura GogiaPhoto Ander Burdain on Unsplash
Sharing

11. literacies as social practices has
focused on the social and not taken
into account material aspects of
textual production; it has seen right
past the associated technologies
(Gourlay et al., 2014)
Value
Value (Wenger et al, 2011; Benkler, 2006; Bauwens, 2005;
Kennedy, 2016)
- in a community or network:
(i) immediate value: activities and interactions
(ii) potential value: knowledge capital
- personal assets (human capital)
- relationships & connections (social/reputational capital)
- non-market value = experiential value or use value
- market value = use value + exchange value of commodities
- promise of use value over exchange value and a
..partnership between peer economy and the market
- exchange of information data and immaterial labour of
..sharing is transformed into a commodity to be exchanged.
Photo Jonathan Saavedra on Unsplash

12. Value of open practices and labour market
“When I’ve been on short term contracts I also was able
to see the benefits of sharing practice so that people […]
could Google me and they could see that I was
motivated and interested.” Maeve (anon)
“I’ve managed to keep myself permanently employed in
a field that moves very very fast and is very very
precarious.” Libby (anon)
“Being an open scholar gives me an identity that’s not
tied to an institution and I’m very appreciative of that
because I can quite imagine a scenario if I’d been in a
very closed environment and then was suddenly without
an institutional home, I’d be feeling very isolated right
now.” Gabi Witthaus
literacies as social practices has
focused on the social and not taken
into account material aspects of
textual production; it has seen right
past the associated technologies
(Gourlay et al., 2014)
Value
Photo Jonathan Saavedra on Unsplash

13. A sociomaterial literacies perspective enables an interrogation, analysis and explanation of material
textual practice in terms of assemblages of texts, technologies and participants” (Goodfellow and
Lea, 2016, p. 429). Moreover, it allows consideration of not just texts and technologies, but bodies,
actions and objects as well (Fenwick and Edwards, 2010).
literacies as social practices has
focused on the social and not taken
into account material aspects of
textual production; it has seen right
past the associated technologies
(Gourlay et al., 2014)
Invisible free labour and biopower
Invisible labour
- emphasis on the product not the producer
- labour downplayed, labelled as creativity
Biopower (Foucault, 2008)
- power over life (bios)
- sharing as a form of biopower?
Biocracy (Fleming, 2013)
- productivity dependent on social and personal aspects
…of life for their value-creating qualities
- tacit workplace
Biocratic free labour (Fleming, 2013)
- formal labour process supported by unremunerated
..aspects of non-work:
(i) free time
(ii) free self-organisation
(iii) free self-development
Photo Annie Spratt on Unsplash

14. Total Capture?
(Hardt & Negri, 2000; Hanlon, 2012; Pais & Provasi, 2015)
- enclosure of social value, the ‘social factory’
- embodiment of capital (human capital)
- resocialisation of economic exchange as market
..becomes increasingly embedded in society
At stake: the social commons
Photo NICO BHLR on Unsplash

15. But as what kind of resource?
Yes, life is sharing, but to what extent is life capital?
That is the question.
To what extent is the self an open education resource,
or simply a human resource?
“I am the resource, ultimately.”
Maeve (anon)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/8188824613
Life is sharing
Photo Alan Levine on Flickr

16. References:
helen.crump@open.ac.uk
@crumphelen
helencrump.net
Thank you
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/8188824613
Life is sharing
Photo Alan Levine on Flickr

17. https://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/8188824613
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