Open learning, part 2

I am focusing now on three topics within open learning, namely 1) what is it, 2) how to assess it, and 3) the knowledge transfer. 

Open
I am thinking what does open learning mean. I mean the open -part there. Typically open courses are not open to everyone. So open does not mean that the courses would be open to the whole world. Also, there might be restrictions on the number of students allowed to an open course. This can be e.g. on the basis of total participants or based on allowed participants per institution. Typically the courses are free of charge but if one wants to have a certificate, then it is many times not anymore free. So perhaps in the end, open learning is somehow pointing towards interactive learning; learning from each other -type of courses and teaching. So, should we actually talk about social learning ?

Assessment
It is a known fact that in courses where the assessment is based on the performance of groups of students as opposed to individual students, it is easier to pass the course. Grading an exam based on individual student performance is easily tougher for the students compared to group work assessment. This is also reflected in the passing requirements for group works. Typically they may be more qualitative than quantitative: in groups students may be asked to do certain amount of tasks as opposed to calculating the correct answer in a given task (e.g. a math problem). If this is true, could one argue that open learning -style courses are easier for the students ?

Knowledge Transfer
In traditional lecturing, teacher may go through 50 slides (of data) during a lecture. Hence, the given amount of data is rather large. One can of course argue that how much of that is transferred to the actual knowledge of the students. On the other hand, within open learning style teaching, there may be very small amount of direct data transfer during lectures. Typically, most of the time is spent in discussions between students who are not very familiar with the topic at hand. Hence students are discussing on topics they do not understand much about but, at the same time, not much data is delivered on the new topic. Is this effective ?
I would like to see teaching with a combination of both worlds: students would be first given with a bunch of data from the subject matter by traditional slides, for example. Then, there would be a more interactive part where students would be discussing the topics based on the data they have first acquired. This way, the students would have already gained some knowledge of the topic before entering to discussions and communication.

Kommentit

  1. Unknown4. toukokuuta 2021 klo 4.33

    I think the view of "what is open" is rather narrow. For example, open education refers not only to whether a course is fully or partially open but also to whether open educational resources are used.

    VastaaPoista

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