Open education focuses on sharing educational resources openly through tools like open licensing. There are two emerging models - one focuses on open educational resources like courses, software, and frameworks, while the other takes a more holistic view of open education as a culture emphasizing participation, networks, and freedom. Open education challenges existing systems by changing the roles of institutions, teachers, and students, and implications include issues around intellectual property, quality assurance, sustainability, and professional development. Open education advocates sharing knowledge as a public good enabled by technology.

1. Open Education
Mike Bogle
Educational Technologist
Learning & Teaching @ UNSW

2. Key Dates & Projects
● Gutenberg Project (1971) – established to
share books online; credited with eTexts
● MIT Open Courseware Initiative (2001) -
OCW announced in NYT; launched in 2002
● UNESCO Forum on the Impact of Open
Courseware for Higher Education in
Developing Countries (2002) – Coined
phrase “Open Educational Resources”
● Cape Town Open Ed. Declaration (2007)

3. Schools of Thought
No single cohesive definition seems to exist for
Open Education at present, however there is
anecdotal evidence of two emerging schools of
thought, as distinguished by their focal point.

4. Open Educational Resources
● Sharing, reuse, open licensing, resources,
courses, courseware, software, frameworks
“Open education “...is the simple and powerful
idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good
and that technology in general and the
Worldwide Web in particular provide an
extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share,
use, and reuse knowledge.”
– The Hewlett Foundation

5. Holistic View of Open Education
● OER seen as a critical aspect, but only one
factor in a wider landscape;
● Emphasis on wider, more holistic elements:
participation, culture, networks, freedom
● OER are essentially artifacts of participation in
Open Ed culture; symbols of cultural ideal
and identity
“Opening up content is only a starting point.”
- George Siemens (2009)

6. Examples of Openness
● Connectivism and Connective Knowledge
● Wikieducator, Wikiversity
● Social Media Classroom / Collaboratory
● Creative Commons
● UMW Blogs, New South Blogs
● Open High School of Utah
● “Amazing Stories of Openness”

7. Learning Webs
“A good educational system should have three
purposes: it should provide all who want to
learn with access to available resources at any
time in their lives; empower all who want to
share what they know to find those who want to
learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who
want to present an issue to the public with the
opportunity to make their challenge known.”
– Ivan Illich, “Deschooling Society” (1971)

8. Discussion Points
● Opportunities & possibilities? What are the benefits?
● What are criticisms / arguments against open ed?
● Is open education complementary or disruptive?
● Implications for existing systems & structures: IP, QA,
sustainability, support, professional development?
● How might the roles of institutions, schools, teachers
and students evolve in an open environment? What
about assessment, degrees, and curriculum?
● What cultural change factors would be required?

9. References
● Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
● MIT OCW: http://ocw.mit.edu/
● UNESCO Forum: http://www.wcet.info/resources/publications/unescofinalreport.pdf
● Cape Town Declaration: http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/
● Hewlett Foundation: http://www.hewlett.org/oer
● George Siemens “Here we are...there we are going”:
http://www.connectivism.ca/?p=151
● Connectivism & Connective Knowledge: http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/
● Social Media Classroom: http://socialmediaclassroom.com/
● Wikieducator: http://wikieducator.org/
● Wikiversity: http://en.wikiversity.org/
● Creative Commons - http://creativecommons.org
● Ivan Illich, Learning Webs, “Deschooling Society”:
http://www.preservenet.com/theory/Illich/Deschooling/chap6.html
● UMW Blogs: http://umwblogs.org/
● New South Blogs:http://newsouthblogs.org/
● Open High School of Utah: http://openhighschool.org/
● Alan Levine, “Amazing Stories of Openness”: http://cogdogblog.com/stuff/opened09/

10. Open education is a mind-set; it’s a way of working.
You don’t produce openness, you are open.

11. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution
3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit
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