Envisioning the Future of Open Education: A Perspective from the Non-English-Speaking World

Open Education 2016

Authors: Katsusuke Shigeta, Center for Open Education, Hokkaido University, Japan and Tomohiro Nagashima, Stanford Graduate School of Education, United States

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. MIT OpenCourseWare’s bold idea to publish learning materials for free has become a worldwide movement, enabled by the contributions of a large number of people. Fifteen years after its launch, the achievement of Open Education is that it has become an invaluable part of the global education sector, disseminating OER both within institutions and to the public. Yet, we should admit that we have also found some limitations and challenges to scaling up. To cross this chasm, we will explore the current status of Open Education and the challenges we face, especially from the perspective of non-English-speaking countries. What is the best way to spread the great idea of openness in education?
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Future of Open Education at Community Colleges

Open Education 2016

Author: Una Daly,  Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, United States

“Open education encompasses resources, tools and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide,” as defined by the Open Education Consortium.

Openness is therefore concerned with eliminating barriers to educational access and attainment. One important example of eliminating barriers can be seen in the “open admissions” policy of institutions such as community colleges in the U.S. and Canada, and universities such as Open University in the U.K. For a good part of the last century and continuing into the 21st century, these institutions have welcomed learners, regardless of previous academic credentials, who are seeking access to affordable and high-quality education.
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Dream A Little

Open Education 2016

Author: Lorna M. Campbell, Scotland

The brief for this short paper was to “envision open education 20 years from now,” to “dream about the future.”

I’m not normally much of a dreamer. If I had to hang a label on myself, I’d say I’m more of a pragmatic realist, not much given to flights of fancy. However, there’s no denying that I’m passionate about open education, and sometimes it’s nice to dream a little…

My dream for open education is for all publicly funded resources to be released under open licence and to be accessible and available to all members of the public. And by resources, I don’t just mean education resources. I mean cultural heritage collections, works of art, and archives, too. Commercial companies that digitise and paywall public archives will be a thing of the past, and our cultural commons will be unenclosed and unencumbered by restrictive copyright legislation and prohibitive access fees.
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2036: The Evolutionary Revolution of Open Education Realized

Open Education 2016

Author: Catherine Casserly, Aspen Institute, United States

In 2036, new cultural practices will have been sufficiently embedded in the fabric of society to support the global acceptance and adoption of open education and its practices in the reclaimed commons. The default license in education will be Creative Commons, albeit with the standard simplified to CC0. With technological advances, the continuous loop of Open Educational Resources used in context for learning, with immediate assessment and feedback data on learning outcomes, will be realized. Rapidly, useless content and assessments will be reworked and improved. Pedagogical data gathered, stripped of individual identifying information, will be openly available to accelerate the next stage of innovation. Efficiencies in both in learning and cost will be achieved.
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Universal Education Realized

Open Education 2016

Author: Cable Green, Creative Commons, United States

The Guardian, October 6, 2020
Nairobi, Kenya

World leaders met in in Nairobi today to celebrate universal access to education for all. The final free Android tablet and solar charger were ceremoniously handed to Amani Adoyo, a grade three student at Bangani Secondary School. The three-year-old “Global Open Education Access” project has surpassed all expectations by providing everyone with universal access to quality educational resources in local languages, customized by local teachers, schools, and universities.

World leaders decided in 2016 that the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals could not be solved by the less than 10% of the global population which held tertiary degrees. Global warming, clean water scarcity, high costs of clean energy technologies, and refugee crises required all minds to learn about and collectively solve these global challenges.
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Open Learning in the Future

Open Education 2016

Author: Stephen Downes, Canada

This morning Dan Colman updated his master list (OpenCulture) of free and open courses offered by top universities, a list that now includes 1,200 courses and roughly 40,000 hours of audio and video instruction. (Colman, 2016) This is actually only a small percentage of the tens of thousands of learning resources available freely and openly on the internet.

To get a sense of the depth and breadth of free and open online learning resources, look at YouTube coverage of the Stirling Engine (also known as the external combustion engine). As of today, I count 154,000 results. (YouTube) These are not advertisements or spam—they are individual contributions, ranging from ‘Jim Tangeman’s wood fired Stirling engine powered tractor’ to ‘Homemade Stirling Watts Beam Engine, Hot Air Engine’ (“This is something I’ve been working on for five months,” says the author). (Knight, 2014)
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The Price of Freedom: Open Education and the Tragedy of the Commons

Open Education 2016

Author: Andy Lane, The Open University, United Kingdom

Looking back from our position now in 2036, it should have been more obvious to us 20 years ago. Open education was beginning to make its mark, being referred to in several UN-sponsored declarations and underpinning the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Improving access to education for everyone and reducing the cost of that access were worthy aims, but as with so many things, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, “It’s the economics, stupid.” Access to open educational resources is nearly universal and does provide a basic opportunity for all. For many, it also provides an opportunity where there was little or no such opportunity before. But this limited benefit for the many has been outweighed by the greater benefit to the few, the economically and educationally privileged. So how did this happen?
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