Rethinking the Open Society #oer17

Here are my slides from yesterday’s presentation at OER17. All feedback welcome. Abstract This presentation explores open education ideologies in light of educational technologies; recent political discourse; and the political philosophy of Karl Popper. Since the latter half of the 20th century, “openness” has developed within stable frameworks of liberal/social democracy, and is now often […]

Critical issues in contemporary open education research #srhe

This presentation outlines some key considerations for researchers working in the fields of open education, OER and MOOC. Key lines of debate in the open education movement is described and critically assessed. A reflective overview of the award-winning OER Research Hub project will be used to frame several key considerations around the methodology and purpose […]

#liveblog: Critical Perspectives on ‘Openness’ in Higher Education #srhe

Today I’m in London for the Digital University Network Seminar at the Society for Research into Higher Education. Lesley Gourlay began proceedings by noting that openness is an area which needs to be looked at in the context of the ‘digital university’ series. Here are my notes on the presentations by the other two speakers. […]

#opened16 live blog: College Affordability and Social Justice

Preston Davis (aka @LazyPhilosopher) invites us to think about the early days of Western civilisation where philosophers like Plato and Aristotle formed educational institutions on the basis of their own privilege. This kind of system persisted into Roman times, where males with the ability to pay could attend organised schools where they would learn to […]

The Open Research Agenda #opened16

Today at Open Education 2016 I presented the provisional results of a research consultation exercise we have been doing at OER Hub over the last year. Several people asked for copies of the slides, which are available here and on the OER Hub SlideShare account. All feedback welcome. You can still take part in the project […]

#opened16 liveblog: OER Research Fellows Update

This session began with an introduction from John Hilton III, who leads the OER Research Fellows programme. The project is intended to build future research capacity in the OER field. Most of the work done by this group uses the COUP framework, which focuses on cost savings and learning outcomes. At present there are: 43 Fellows […]

The Open Research Agenda

Here are the slides I’ll be using today for my presentation at the CALRG Annual Conference. The Open Research Agenda is an international consultation exercise focused on identifying research priorities in open education. You can read more about the project here: The Open Research Agenda (2) The Open Research Agenda (1)

Framework for an ethics of open education #oeglobal

Here are my slides from today’s presentation. You can access the full paper in Open Praxis from May 2016 via http://dx.doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.8.2.291.

Colonisers and edupunks (&c.): two cultures in OER?

I’ve started writing this post at the Open Education 2015 conference at the Fairmont Hotel in Vancouver because I want to try and capture some thoughts about the evolution of this movement and community. But I’m finishing it from home after a little bit of time to digest and also after attending OpenUpTRU in Kamloops earlier […]

Open education and critical pedagogy

I have a new publication entitled ‘Open Education and Critical Pedagogy’ upcoming with Learning, Media and Technology. Here’s the abstract. This paper argues for a revaluation of the potential of open education to support more critical forms of pedagogy. Section 1 examines contemporary discourses around open education, offering a commentary on the perception of openness […]