1 Open Education

Some people tend to think about open education in terms of content and resources. Seen this way, a piece of content or data is open when it meets the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Open Definition: “if anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share [it] for any purpose (subject, at most, to requirements that preserve provenance and openness” (Open Knowledge Foundation, n.d.). This means that, with the right open license, resources like textbooks, websites, videos, curricula, lesson plans, audio, and images can be free to share and adapt according to pedagogical needs.

Open licensing (see Chapter 3) typically results in resources being made available for free (or at least more cheaply), usually in digital form. In open education, for a resource to be truly open, it must be both “gratis” and open. That is, one must be able to access the educational resource at no cost and have the legal rights to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute the resource and/or adaptations of the resource (known as the 5Rs of open; see discussion below). This is the essential distinction between free content and open content. This distinction is key in a digital environment replete with content that is ostensibly free to access (albeit often in exchange for sharing personal information or, at the very least, viewing advertisements). The importance of this distinction becomes more clear when educators move past the basic concept of cost savings and start to take advantage of the freedom offered by the 5Rs to do something more than just access content without barriers.

That said, the “open” in “open education” does not apply just to content, data, or resources. Openness is part of wider change and movement toward equity, collaboration, and creativity in education. In the context of open education, the early focus tended to be on open access to resources, i.e., open educational resources (OER), particularly when the Internet was relatively new, but there are other ways of being open, reflected in the language of OEP and open pedagogy (see Chapter 5). These innovations in educational practices are made possible by open licensing of resources but often go far beyond content to focus on openness in other ways that seek to maximize educator and learner engagement.

For example, “open scholarship” is an umbrella term that can encompass open access, open research, open science, open data, open education, open pedagogy and all other forms of openness in the scholarly and research environment. It is the application of open practices throughout the teaching, learning, research and scholarly environment. Examples of open scholarship practices include:

• The use of open copyright licenses that grant permission for others to freely access, reuse, redistribute, or build upon your scholarly work.
• Using networks, web-based tools, and the interconnectivity offered by the Internet to facilitate collaboration.
• Making research processes, data, and code transparent in order to increase the reproducibility and accessibility of your research.
• Creating and using educational resources that are free of costs and copyright restrictions in order to lower student costs and access barriers for learning materials such as textbooks.
• Integrating principles of social justice into academic processes in order to make scholarship more equitable, collaborative, and inclusive.
• Engaging in pedagogical practices where learners are creators of knowledge and have agency in their own education.
• Connecting and engaging with communities, networks, and the broader public using two-way communication.

Open education as we know it today is part of an open ecosystem, a series of “open” movements that have coalesced around education, technology, and scholarly communication. Apart from open education, the most notable of these movements include open source, open access (see Chapter 6), open science, and open data (see Chapter 7). Rather than arguing for a specific and limited definition of open, most of these movements have positioned themselves in opposition to what they define as “closed” ecosystems (Weller, 2014). This can be seen in the ways that the open education and open source communities talk about their content—not applying strict rules but rather general guidelines. The “open source way,” for example, is described as a set of principles: transparency, collaboration, release early and often, inclusive meritocracy, and community (opensource.com, n.d.). Similarly, David Wiley’s “5Rs of openness” are a set of guidelines outlining what make OER “open”:

• Retain—the right to make, own, and control copies of the content.
• Reuse—the right to use the content in a wide range of ways.
• Revise—the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself.
• Remix—the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new.
• Redistribute—the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others.

1.2. A Brief History of Open Education

With roots in democracy, equality, and social justice, open education and scholarship operate under the assumption that knowledge creation and dissemination should be understood as social practices. In this sense, as Virginia Commonwealth University’s Associate Director for Online Learning Innovation Tom Woodward has stated, “Open is a purposeful path towards connection and community” (Grush, 2014), and the values of inclusion, social impact, and participation are integral to the practice of open. In recent years, there has also been increased emphasis on open methods to advance the speed, sharing, and integrity of scientific discovery.

On a global scale, open education can trace its roots to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, which states that “everyone has a right to education.” The seminal 2007 Cape Town Open Education Declaration stated that open education and the use of OER contribute “to making education more accessible, especially where money for learning materials is scarce. They also nourish the kind of participatory culture of learning, creating, sharing and cooperation that rapidly changing knowledge societies need.” In 2012, the UNESCO Paris OER Declaration recommended that governments “promote and use OER to widen access to education at all levels, both formal and non-formal, in a perspective of lifelong learning, thus contributing to social inclusion, gender equity and special needs education.” In 2015, the United Nations included the right to education in its 17 Sustainable Development Goals as Goal 4: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong opportunities for all.”

1.3. Equity, Diversity, and Social Justice Considerations

Merriam-Webster (n.d.a) defines diversity as “the inclusion of people of different races, cultures, etc. in a group or organization.” Diversity is often perceived as an organizational goal or ethical preference: for open education, including diverse perspectives is both vital and relatively easy.

At a minimum, diversity in open education can be achieved by including a variety of perspectives in the open content. The hope is that doing this will ensure that students can identify with and relate to the course material. That said, it is critical to ensure that other cultures are presented accurately in the materials, and not according to stereotypes or perceptions based on the standards of the creator’s own culture. Including examples from other cultures is a good practice; however, if you don’t know much about the type of people you are incorporating in your resource, your inclusion might feel like alienation for students who belong to that group.

Whether intentional or not, ethnocentrism—“the attitude that one’s own group, ethnicity, or nationality is superior to others” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.b)—can creep into the content and presentation of open course materials, just like in traditional course materials, and it is something all open authors should be aware of. This does not mean that everyone must create course content that accurately portrays and includes all cultures and perspectives; however, open educators should be respectful toward other people and be aware of their biases as they arise.

One way open educators can accomplish this is by explicitly acknowledging the perspectives that are included in their content and those that are not. They can ask themselves how their social and cultural background is reflected in the work they have created. What authors have they cited and acknowledged in their work, and why? Acknowledging that one’s perspective is limited while including other perspectives in one’s work can be an incredibly rewarding experience. Some benefits of including diverse perspectives in open course content include:

• Engaging more students because they recognize themselves or their life experiences in the course content.
• Sharing content that appeals to instructors in a variety of educational settings.
• Creating a more interesting reading and learning experience for students and learners around the world.

As a developing open educator, if you are not certain about how or where to add examples relevant to other cultures, that does not mean your open resource will never include these perspectives. Thanks to open licenses, once your open resource is available online, instructors from other countries, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds might choose to remix that work to meet their needs, reflecting new perspectives. The changes they make might include:

• Translating the book into a different language.
• Adjusting the content to meet the local cultural, regional, and geographical interests.
• Adding content relevant to their local culture or knowledge.
• Revising the material for a different learning environment.

Likewise, an open educator might find an open resource they would like to use and adapt it to include more diverse representation in order to make it more relevant and engaging for their students. That flexibility is one way the use of openly licensed materials can contribute to diversity and inclusion.

1.4. Students as Open Education Stakeholders and Activists

Graduate students can directly benefit from OEP and are therefore important stakeholders just by virtue of their student status. Many student organizations take an active role in advocating for OER and open access. For example, the Right to Research Coalition, an international alliance of more than 90 undergraduate and graduate student organizations in over 100 countries around the world, works to promote openness in research through advocacy and education. The group co-hosts OpenCon, an international conference series and community empowering students and early career academic professionals to advance open access, open education, and open data. The Right to Research Coalition and its members have been an important catalyst for change by meeting with policymakers about legislation, publishing articles and op-eds in support of open access, advocating for open access policies on dozens of campuses, and educating the next generation of researchers, administrators, and policymakers about the importance of open access. The group’s Student Statement on the Right to Research sums up the importance of open educational practices, particularly open access.

Attribution: “Speak Up for Open Education: A Guide for Student Activists” by Abbey Elder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

There are many low-barrier ways that individual graduate students can get involved in the open education movement, and student organizations and student government can encourage these activities within their student body.

First, talk to your professors or advisors about OER. The final say about what resources will be used in a course usually lies with faculty, to whom students have unique, direct access. Some ways of doing this include:

• Showing faculty that you care about this issue by sharing your thoughts on high textbook costs or showing them you appreciate it when they use cheap or free alternatives. One easy way to do this is through the course evaluations that take place at many institutions.
• Tell faculty about open alternatives. If you know of examples of OER that would be useful in a course you have taken, tell the instructor about it. Demonstrating your interest is likely to trigger their interest as well.
• Point to potential benefits of OER beyond simple cost savings, such as the opportunity to customize the material for the class.

Second, create open content yourself. You can choose to publish your own work under an open license as well:

• If you have the opportunity to publish your work in a journal or other online platform, investigate whether the journal or platform offers open access publishing options.
• Many universities have local opportunities for students to publish their work, often in student-led journals or other campus publications. If your institution’s publishing options do not include open access, suggest that they investigate open licensing as a way to expand their reach and increase their impact.
• You can use platforms like Flickr, Unsplash, and YouTube to upload photos and videos you have created under open licenses, including content you may have created as part of your coursework or doctoral research.

Third, consider engaging your fellow students in advocating for open. While there are many benefits to open beyond cost savings, one of the best ways to mobilize student voices in support of open education is to appeal to the fact that students spend too much money on textbooks each term. You can demonstrate wide student support and inform students about the high cost of textbooks through a campaign like #TextbookBroke, a social media campaign that can be adapted to any institution. This is particularly effective when sponsored by a student organization or student government. It involves asking students to take a photo showing how much they spent on their textbooks, then posting the photo on social media along with the hashtag #TextbookBroke. The photo could be taken as the student leaves their campus bookstore, or an image of their bookstore receipt could be posted online along with the hashtag. The campaign raises awareness of the existence of open textbooks and OER, and starts the conversation surrounding the costs of educational resources and how they are used in the classroom.

References

Grush, M. (2014, November 12). Open pedagogy: Connection, community, and transparency. Campus Technology, https://campustechnology.com/Articles/2014/11/12/Open-Pedagogy-Connection-Community-and-Transparency.aspx

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.a). Diversity. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved March 5, 2023, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/diversity

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.b). Ethnocentrism. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved March 5, 2023, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ethnocentrism

Open Knowledge Foundation. (n.d.). Open definition. https://opendefinition.org/

Opensource.com. (n.d.). The open source way. https://opensource.com/open-source-way

Weller, M. (2014). The battle for open: How openness won and why it doesn’t feel like victory. Ubiquity Press. https://doi.org/10.5334/bam