This document discusses the concept of 'open education' and the role of digital technologies in facilitating connections and communities among learners and educators. Key questions explore the nature of openness in education, the enactment of digital identities, and the negotiation of power dynamics in online spaces. It emphasizes the need for institutions to support the development of productive identities through collaborative practices within networked environments.

1. Open and Online:
connections,
community & reality
Catherine Cronin
@catherinecronin
&
Sheila McNeill
@sheilmcn
#openeducationwk
University of Sussex
14th March 2014
CCBY-SA2.0cogdog

2. Who’s here?
Are you...
a - Lecturer
b - Learning technologist
c - Librarian
d - Student support
e - Researcher
f - Other / bit of everything

3. Key questions:
• What makes education ‘open’?
• How are digital identities enacted in open vs.
bounded online spaces?
• How are power relationships between educators
and students negotiated in different online spaces?
• How might we close the gap between the ideals
and the messy realities of being networked
learners, educators and researchers?

4. “I don’t think education is
about centralized
instruction anymore; rather,
it is the process [of]
establishing oneself as a
node in a broad network of
distributed creativity.”
– Joi Ito @joi
Quote: Joi Ito Image: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 yobink

5. about.me/catherinecronin

6. How open are you?
Extensive use of digital technologies
Limited use of digital technologies
Closed
“lone academic”
Open
“digital scholar”
Source: Jenny Mackness #FSLT13

7. At its best openness is an ethos
not a license. It's an approach to
teaching and learning that
builds a community of learners
online and off.
- Jim Groom

8. Social
Networks
Internet
Mobile
Networked Individualism

9. Source: Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, 2005-2013
2005 2013

10. Image CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Alec Couros
Networked Teacher

11. Networked Students too…
Student
Based on image CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Alec Couros

12. Networked
Educators
Networked
Students

13. Networked
Educators
Networked
Students
Classroom
Bounded
Online
Spaces
Open
Online
Spaces

14. Flickr CC images: cdessums, infidelic, sholeh!

15. Individuals with abundant access to ICTs
who have habits of effective use of these
technologies in information-seeking and
problem-solving activities are unable to
make effective use of these technologies
in higher education settings.
David Wiley & John Hilton III (2009)
The Daily Divide

16. Networked
Educators
Networked
Students
Classroom
Bounded
Online
Spaces
Open
Online
Spaces

17. Networked
Students
Classroom
Bounded
Online
Spaces
Open
Online
Spaces
Networked
Educators

18. #icollab
TAGSExplorer
(thanks
to
@mhawksey)
153
nodes
756
edges
@CT231 IT Professional Skills
#ct231 ct231.wordpress.com
#icollab icollab.wordpress.com

19. “If institutions of learning are going to help
learners with the real challenges they face...
[they] will have to shift their focus from
imparting curriculum to supporting the
negotiation of productive identities
through landscapes of practices.”
CC BY-NC-SA
2.0 choconancy1
Etienne Wenger (2010)

20. http://storify.com/sheilmcn/am-i-an-open-practitioner

21. http://hawksey.info/tagsexplorer/?
key=tOpUYKlcSYOY6BPQATeOyvA&sheet=oaw

24. “ I wonder about Amazon, Google, the NSA and my University both
influencing our interactions with each other through technology and
mining the data to control markets, society even education. I
believe that education is the key to understanding what these
organisations are doing to us, but there is a worry for me around
the content and the feedback being delivered through an
organisation or infrastructure that influence the message.”
David Sherlock : http://paddytherabbit.com/open-education/
The medium and the message:
networks and control of data

25. How do I visualise my institutional network?
https://www.stanford.edu/dept/DLCL/networks/
http://www.hastac.org/blogs/michael-widner/2013/05/24/visualizing-networks-faculty

26. Learners need to practice and experiment with different ways
of enacting their identities, and adopt subject positions
through different social technologies and media.
These opportunities can only be supported by academic
staff who are themselves engaged in digital practices and
questioning their own relationship with knowledge.
- Keri Facer & Neil Selwyn (2010)

27. We’d love to hear
your thoughts & questions.

28. Thank you!
Catherine Cronin
@catherinecronin
about.me/catherinecronin
&
Sheila McNeill
@sheilmcn
about.me/sheilmcn