The jagged edge of OEP: De(constructive) Political, Personal and Institutional Spheres

Janice K. Jones (Janice.Jones@usq.edu.au)

Chris Campbell (chris.campbell@griffith.edu.au)

David Jones, (David.Jones@usq.edu.au)

Peter Albion (Peter.Albion@usq.edu.au)

OER17# The Politics of Open, London UK 2017 - Session 1452

Pomodoro, A. (1990) “Sfera con Sfera”. Bronze 400cm diameter. Photograph: JK Jones 2014

The Political, Personal and Professional Spheres of Open Education PracticeProtectionism (Borders, ideas, economic value), Intellectual Property, Competition

Sharing (Education without borders, Open Education Resources, Collaboration

Macro and Micro – Political, economic, institutional, professional, personal

Acknowledgement of Country

I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands where my teaching and research is conducted: the Gaibal, Jarowair, Ugarapul and Butchulla peoples of Queensland. Honouring the wisdom of Elders past, present and future, and seeking to walk together in a spirit of reconciliation.

Graffiti overpainted by authorities. Stanthorpe, QLD. Photo J.K.Jones 2015

Education is Teaching, Learning, Sharing…

• OEPs :“innovative pedagogical models, (that) respect and empower learners as co-producers” (OPAL, 2011, p. 12) – yet Open Practice between universities is limited (Masterman, 2016)

• Sharing is fundamental to advancing education (Albion, Jones, Jones & Campbell (2017).

Sharing of key concepts and information reduces cost and increases access to educationOERs are culturally framed and adaptable artefacts – they may beReused, Redistributed, Revised, Remixed, Retained (Wiley, 2010)

• Universities collaborate but also compete on a global stage (linked to funding)

• Resulting tension between sharing and protection of Intellectual Property means academics collaborate and compete - ‘publish or perish’

• Assessments and grading systems place students in competitionGroup work is vital but generates fear and distrust in students for whom the experience of

education has been competitiveA pedagogical challenge - to generate trustful and rich collaboration in future educators

Private Property?• Contemporary concepts of

privacy and sharing through Open Education Resources and Open Education Practices are complex

• Boundaries: A politics of space and place: (global g-local and personal)

• Politics of economic exchange -knowledge has economic value –legal/institutional control of IP

• Politics of personal and professional practice/praxis -habitus

Private property notice By Gareth E. Kegg (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

What is private? The land? The bench for viewing? The pathway? The beachfront itself? The water/ocean?

‘My Course’…an outdated concept?

• The physical classroom/lecture theatre invested power and agency in the academic: this positioning replicated to the ‘online’ classroom

• In 2000, academics’ perceived ownership of their online space, content and processes meant they welcomed password controlled and secure hosting -it protected academics’ IP (‘my content’)

• Academics sought protective policies to avoid ‘viewing’ of their online courses by administrators, peers, managers

• By 2017 online courses are visible to professional, senior management and technical staff. Monitoring is extensive.

• Courses - and their concepts belong to the university - not academic(s)

Open Education Practices – Testing

the Boundaries

• Universities increasingly support the creation of Open Education Resources (OERs) but there is less evidence of Open Education Practices (OEPs) in students’ practice, and even less in academics’ practices. Why is this?

• 4 Australian researchers in teacher education from 2 universities (1 urban and 1 regional) test the boundaries for collaborative development and re-use of course content and pedagogical practices across their courses and institutions

• This presentation explores the political, personal, professional and institutional enablers and constraints upon their practices of Open Education

Two universities –two separate courses

• Each course offered for credit as part of a Masters degree for pre-service teachers. Curriculum and approach are accredited by Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (AITSL)- hence many points of similarity in content and strategies.

• Both use creative pedagogical approaches: problem based, authentic assessment, and collaborative projects . Each is challenged to combine two subjects in a 15 week course: 1) The Arts (drama, dance, media arts, music and visual arts) and 2) Technologies –(design and technologies and digital technologies).

A change in professional habitus

• We set out to test the parameters of our respective institutions’ policies and practices, and our own habitus (practices and beliefs) (Jones, Beatorowicz, Ladislas Derr, 2015) – what are the constraints and enablers for our creating a shared course?

• From their initial fear that ‘Big brother is watching you’ academics now accept extensive monitoring for ‘quality and compliance’.

• Self-commodification via a curated online presence underpins most academic careers. We found that the value of ‘visibility’ and public learning spaces for collaborative sharing is closely tied with success – and academic freedom (Ferrari &Traina, 2013)

• Blogs and curated sites underpin our practice with future teachers – allowing free access to collaborative spaces over years rather than weeks. These are used in parallel with password-controlled university learning spaces

Surveillance –Accountability?

• Bentham’s Panopticon – a central viewer monitors prisoners who do not know when they are being watched = Awareness of visibility brings compliance

• He later reversed asymmetrical model– including direction of scrutiny from periphery to centre) = Power must be accountable

• Separateness – cells of experience

• In the 21st C. Surveillance is omnipresent – for security, compliance, ‘recording of evidence’ and reporting = Data

Visibility, Reporting, Compliance,

• 21st Century State surveillance of internet users is omnipresent and largely invisible (McCullan, 2015)

• All online course content is hosted on a password controlled website, and stored in a university content repository

• Course files and images are checked for compliance with licensing and publishing agreements by university content managers

• Open Courseware is available (not for credit)

• Course examiners ‘work around’ constraints to student/academic collaboration by creating their own websites/blogs and directing students to OERs hosted there – and engaging them in adding new content

• However, in collaborative tasks undergraduate students have expressed a wish for course examiners to ‘oversee’ communications on social media sites connected with their courses (Jones, 2011)

By Planetoid - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47870978

Where are we on the OEP scale? (Ehlers, 2011)

A ‘Continuum’ reflecting academic & students’ experience?

• It seeks to evaluate progress toward OEP

• Students begin as consumers or OERs

• Then begin to remix and co-create

• Some doubt about sequence (Albion, Jones, Jones, & Campbell, 2017)

(Stagg, 2014)

Matrix + Continuum

Challenges for Open Practice

• Personal: We use similar tools – Blogs, Wikis, OERs, Personal Websites Diigo. Our philosophies of education and research meet at many points, but our ‘languages’, pedagogies, conceptual frameworks and ways of working come from different disciplines and educational backgrounds.

• We started by mapping which of our courses and pedagogies allowed connecting points for sharing and co-creation (following slide)

• Our commonalities are that we engage students in collaborative projects, curation of OERs, peer review, online working and sharing of draft and final works through online tools. We also ask students to co-create and share OERs.

How Open? Mapping courses and pedagogies

Awareness/Access

Sharing (new –OER/Open textbook)

Passive Remix

Active Remix

Student Co-creation

EDS4407 ArtsEDM8006

Arts/Technol

EDS4407 ArtsEDM8006 Arts & Technol

EDUC7112 Teachers as

LeadersEDUC7014 Future

classroom

EDP4130 Technol Curricand Pedagogy

EDUC1049 Learning tools

21C.EDUC3703

Technol/Arts in 21C

EDC3100 ICT & Ped –

CONTENTStudent Blogs

EDP4130 Technol Curricand Pedagogy

Resources

Micro sphere – Personal Habitus

• Personal/Professional Habitus: Using our diverse knowledges, thinking styles, discourses, skills and pedagogies as assets -not obstacles. Challenging our axiology of practice – but we need more time!

• Open Sharing Blogging is visible thinking consistent with the OEP but sharing ‘what we do not yet know’ challenges what constitutes an ‘expert’. One team member found this difficult – preferring to ponder quietly rather than voicing the journey.

• Limited Resources: Time, support, virtual and real spaces to meet – working inside/outside our respective institutions with all their planned delivery points creating a space/place for working differently.

MACRO Sphere –The external machine• Politics: Institutional competition

against a backdrop of neoliberal ideologies – Quality Control/Benchmarking puts constraints on collaborating ‘across institutions’

• Policy and practice: Protectionism (IP) and constraints (password access, programs hosting) means doing things differently threatens ‘Consistency’/ ‘Quality’

• Legal duress/ Permission to share: two of the group had long established professional practice of freely sharing their academic products. But beginning to do so mid-career without permission risks censure, with potential impacts upon career prospects.

Consumers to Creators – Breaking the Machine?

• Currently, across several of our courses• Students and academics create/share resources• Those materials are made openly available• Students and academics also curate collections of existing resources

• Our students create OERs with their own class & externally/over time• Peer review occurs in-course to ensure quality and usability• There is free choice of format – and peers can re-use, adapt and re-share• So this suggests both courses are working at level C & Stage 5

BUT – Students 2 different universities cross-collaborating would take us to another stage. This has not yet occurred. Would we require ‘permission’ from Academic Deans? Legal Office? What are the issues? Can we collaborate without breaking the machine?

Collaboration - Academic Espionage?

OERs – free to access and legally modify, retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute (Allen & Seaman, 2014)

University rhetoric around innovation (creation) but re-use is problematic:

Academics discouraged from re-using, remixing, & redistributing courseware

Universities must ensure re-purposed materials do not re-appear across a series of courses studied by a student in a degree

Discourses around OEP are contradictory: academics encouraged to collaborate within ‘teams’/across subject boundaries

Sharing content with colleagues carries risks of legal action by the employing university

OEP, Sustainability, Benefits and Risks

BENEFITS

• Initiate collaborative cross-institutional praxis

• Universities co-create and share - End wasteful duplication of courses

• Focus academic talent on creative re-purposing of a wealth of content

• Elevate importance of pedagogy over ‘content’

• Reposition learners as innovators/authors

• Redistribute intellectual wealth for free access globally

RISKS

• Potential flattening of place-based culture/voice in courses

• Increasing casualisation of academic work

• Reduced ‘ownership’ of successful courses - impact on career profile

• Outsourcing to guest lecturers reduces opportunity for novices

• Curation may re-inscribe received ideas/viewpoints over innovative or ‘different’ ideas/voices

• G-local Universities cannot compete against ‘giants’ in global economy -differentiation of ‘product’?

Conclusions – OEP Disrupting Both Spheres

• OEP is disruptive within competitive ecologies (such as universities where controls protect knowledge/practice as IP)

• It is also valued by universities as a manifestation of innovative, ethical and sustainable praxis

• Currently difficult for universities to support collaborative cross-institutional OEP in pedagogical contexts

• Barriers: political, professional, personal and institutional-accreditation, ‘plagiarism’, IP

• OEP as collaborative practice likely to flourish first ‘in the wild’ before becoming a feature of contemporary university practice

• This positions collaborating academics as essential disruptors of surrounding machinery - with attendant risks to both spheres

References• Allen, E & Seaman, J. 2014. Opening the Curriculum: Open Educational Resources in U.S.

Higher Education, 2014. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthecurriculum2014.pdf. [Accessed 2 April, 2017].

• Albion, P., Jones, D., Jones., J.K., Campbell, C. 2017, Open educational practice and preservice teacher education: understanding past practice and future possibilities. In: 28th Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (SITE 2017) , 5-9 March 2017, Austin, Texas.

• Bossu, C, Brown, M, & Bull, D 2014. Adoption, use and management of Open Educational Resources to enhance teaching and learning in Australia. Office of Learning and Teaching. Sydney, Australia.

• Ehlers, U.-D. (2011). From open educational resources to open educational practices. eLearning Papers (23).

• Ferrari L, & Traina I 2013, ‘The OERTEST Project: Creating Political Conditions for Effective Exchange of OER in Higher Education’, Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, vol.9, no.1, pp. 23-35

• Jones, JK, Batorowicz, B, Ladislas Derr, R, & Peters S 2015, ‘Decolonising research and teaching methodologies: A “ninth moment” symphony of artist-educator-researcher voices’, International Journal Of Pedagogies And Learning vol. 10, no 2 pp166 -178.

• Masterman E 2016, ‘Bringing Open Educational Practice to a Research-Intensive University: Prospects and Challenges’, The Electronic Journal of e-Learning, vol. 14, no 1 pp. 31- 42.

• McCullan, T. (2015). What does the panopticon mean in the age of digital surveillance? Guardian Online. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/23/panopticon-digital-surveillance-jeremy-bentham

• Open Educational Quality Initiative (OPAL) 2011, Beyond OER: Shifting Focus to Open Educational Practices. International Council for Open and Distance Learning. Oslo, Norway.

• Sphere Within Sphere 2017, Wikipedia 23 January 2017. Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_Within_Sphere. [23 January 2017].

Images

Abandoned Presidio Modelo complex in 1995. Photograph: The Guardian. Downloaded from: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/23/panopticon-digital-surveillance-jeremy-bentham

Echelon Spy Image by iTSFx Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Wiki. [CC by SA].Downloaded from: http://splintercell.wikia.com/wiki/File:ECHELON_SPY_4.jpg

Pomodoro, A. (1990) Sfera con Sfera. Bronze 400cm diameter. Photograph: Jones, J.K. 2014.