Open and Online:

connections,

community & reality

Catherine Cronin@catherinecronin

&

Sheila McNeill@sheilmcn

#openeducationwkUniversity of Sussex

14th March 2014

CC

BY

-SA

2.0

cog

dog

Who’s here?

Are you...

a - Lecturer

b - Learning technologist

c - Librarian

d - Student support

e - Researcher

f - Other / bit of everything

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?

“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

about.me/catherinecronin

How open are you?Extensive use of digital technologies

Limited use of digital technologies

Closed

“lone academic”

Open

“digital scholar”

Source: Jenny Mackness #FSLT13

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

Social Networks

Internet

Mobile

Networked Individualism

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

2005 2013

Image CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Alec Couros

Networked Teacher

Networked Students too…

Student

Based on image CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Alec Couros

NetworkedEducators

NetworkedStudents

NetworkedEducators

NetworkedStudents

Classroom

Bounded Online Spaces

Open Online Spaces

Flickr CC images: cdessums, infidelic, sholeh!

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

NetworkedEducators

NetworkedStudents

Classroom

Bounded Online Spaces

Open Online Spaces

NetworkedStudents

Classroom

Bounded Online Spaces

Open Online Spaces

NetworkedEducators

#icollab TAGSExplorer(thanks to @mhawksey)153 nodes 756 edges

@CT231 IT Professional Skills#ct231 ct231.wordpress.com#icollab icollab.wordpress.com

“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 thenegotiation of productive identities

through landscapes of practices.”

CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 choconancy1

Etienne Wenger (2010)

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

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

“ 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

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

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)

We’d love to hear

your thoughts & questions.

Thank you!

Catherine Cronin@catherinecroninabout.me/catherinecronin&

Sheila McNeill@sheilmcnabout.me/sheilmcn