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B E R L I N, 30 JU N E 2011

Today UNU-MERIT 1 and UNU-ViE 2 hosted a workshop onof Open Education: Concepts and

on the sidelines of the AnnualOpen Knowledge Conference (OKCon) in

Berlin, Germany.The workshop attracted 30 participants todebate the higher-level field of OpenEducation (OE), fed by interactivesessions to gather, review and define OEconcepts and practices.

A brief introduction to the OpenEducation field was followed by a post-it session to identify the core components of OE. These

Why not skiprepeating it over and over againwas more than a filler and that it mirrors an attitude, behaviour,concept or desirable state. Others warned against thefetishization of the word , and of the risks of diluting itsmeaning with

This introduction was then followed by the two core sessions:the first asked why to engage in OE and how to provide it, thesecond explored possible services and how to make OEsustainable.

From the start there were numerous contributions from theattendees. Within minutes Elf Pavlik had set up an onlinecollaborative notepad , which was then used in parallel to the

physical session. In a Twitter-fuelled world physical workshopscan easily be augmented by virtual events, and after a fewtweets we even got some further virtual participants. Click hereto see how the online dialogue developed.

1 United Nations University Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology2 United Nations University Vice-Rectorate in Europe

http://okcon.org/2011/programme/the-why-and-how-of-open-education-concepts-and-practiceshttp://okcon.org/2011/programme/the-why-and-how-of-open-education-concepts-and-practiceshttp://okcon.org/2011/programme/the-why-and-how-of-open-education-concepts-and-practiceshttp://www.slideshare.net/andreasmeiszner/ok-con-slidesjune31stintrohttp://www.slideshare.net/andreasmeiszner/ok-con-slidesjune31stintrohttp://www.slideshare.net/andreasmeiszner/ok-con-slidesjune31stintrohttp://typewith.me/okcon2011-openeducationhttp://typewith.me/okcon2011-openeducationhttp://typewith.me/okcon2011-openeducationhttp://typewith.me/ep/pad/view/okcon2011-openeducation/latesthttp://typewith.me/ep/pad/view/okcon2011-openeducation/latesthttp://typewith.me/ep/pad/view/okcon2011-openeducation/latesthttp://typewith.me/ep/pad/view/okcon2011-openeducation/latesthttp://typewith.me/okcon2011-openeducationhttp://www.slideshare.net/andreasmeiszner/ok-con-slidesjune31stintrohttp://okcon.org/2011/programme/the-why-and-how-of-open-education-concepts-and-practices

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SESSION 1: WHY E NG A GE IN OE AND H OW T O PRO VIDE IT?

why engage in OE and how to provide it brief presentation which listed a number of reasons to engage with OE, as well as examples on how OE might look like in practice. Our premise was that traditional formal education is not only exclusive but that it

resembles a Blackbox 3. More transparency and efficiency, with a view to improving education,were much discussed higher-level reasons for engaging with OE, though this is far from obviousin the word cloud below, drawn from the session one dialogue captured through the notepad.

What the word cloud doescapture is the degree of debate surrounding OE as

being a part of traditionalformal education, and not a

parallel education universe.The discussions explored

how the different meaningsof openness could help us toimprove contemporaryeducation systems.

there were two main tracks up for discussion. First, to consider what happens once education isopened up, what is desirable and what might be problematic. Second, to consider and discusssimilar things which are already out there, including the much-cited case of Open SourceSoftware. What was remarkable about this session was that a room full of people appeared toshare a common understanding of the OE field.

SESSION 2: SUSTAIN ABIL IT Y O F OE AND TH E SERV IC E PERSPEC TIV E

The second session on possible OE services and sustainability started with a brief introductory presentation . This very heterogeneous group not only looked at OE from a business angle, butalso discussed a range of perspectives, including education as a public good, ethicalconsiderations, alternatives to monetary compensations, and so forth.

Our second word cloud does notentirely mirror all the many aspectsdiscussed, instead suggesting that

One other major aspect was that of scarcity. It has been argued that solong as there is no scarcity there isno real problem in publicly fundingthe education system, independentlyof the cost involved. However, oncethere is scarcity, decisions have to

be made on where to cut funding.

3 There is a common distinction between Blackbox and Whitebox systems in the software domain. Proprietary software is usually referred to asBlackbox, i.e. the internal structure of the software code is hidden, untransparent and closed. Open Source Software on the other hand iscommonly referred to as Whitebox, as the code is accessible, the processes are transparent, and all information is open.

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Summing up, the first session explored how OE fosterstransparency and enhances efficiency, and the secondsession demonstrated how unbundling education could helpto better understand the costs of individual education

positions (OE as a Whitebox see footnote 3). OE maytherefore help not only to cut the cost of education, but to better articulate funding priorities.

O E AT T H E O PE N K N O W L E D G E C O N F E R E N C E

On 1 July 2011, Andreas Meiszner joined a session on Hacking Education with Philipp Schmidt from P2PU .

liberately provocative, entitled:Open Education : Totally pointless or a mean to modernizetraditional formal education?'

For his part Schmidt presented a number of success stories from P2PU, with a view to providingcomplementary means to traditional formal education. This contrasted well with the OE focus onmodernizing and taking traditional formal education further. The difference must be spelled out,

traditional formal education is marked by well-established structures.

How efficiently is change being handled within education? Over a decade has been spent on the-

time given what has been achieved -- and how much remains to be achieved.

S AT E L L I T E M E E T I N G : ope nSE

In addition to the main proceedings,there was a project meeting of openSE , which focuses on OpenEducational frameworks. At thismeeting Lin Squires, Matty Smith andElmar Husmann from the EuropeanLearning Industry Group (ELIG)

provided preliminary results fromtheir 2011 Open Education Survey . This highlighted the similarities

between the fields of OE and OpenSource Software, suggesting thatsustainable models for OE will needmore time to mature.

F O R M O R E D E TA I L S C O N T A C T Andreas Meiszner, UNU-MERIT, meiszner@merit.unu.edu

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