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Open Education
Leo Havemann and Javiera Atenas

This week #LTHEchat celebrates Open Education Week and considers how we can make openness easier to adopt. Open Education, comprising a series of practices and a variety of elements is almost a living entity, constantly changing, adapting and growing. Since Openness was first defined in the early 90’s the term has broadened in scope so that the open family has grown into open access, open science, open software, open licensing, open policies, open data, open repositories, open publishing, open courses and of course, open educational resources, and open educational practices.

The International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) describes open educational practices as those practices that support the production, use and reuse of high quality Open Educational Resources (OER) through institutional policies, promoting innovative teaching models, and respecting and empowering students as co-producers of their own learning. Open education is about making knowledge available to anyone, anywhere, and supporting formal and informal learners.

Why do we want, in the upcoming #LTHEchat, to talk about open education and its practices? Because we think that at the heart of open education is the people, the practitioners, the teachers, students and users, not OER; Open Access; Open Data; or Creative Commons. While these open movements have traditionally emphasised IP and licensing matters, these are not necessarily at the heart of what makes an open educator willing to share. However, these licenses are designed to support and enhance sharing and reuse, so this is an interesting game, where is necessary to shift the focus from the elements to the people.

Giulia Forsythe   @bccampus #OERforum @opencontent Why Open Education?

Our intention is for participants to discuss your perceptions of openness in education, to understand how do you feel about and perceive these practices and how you use any of these elements in your practice. For us, openness and its elements are changing the teaching and learning landscape, but it is still unclear how or if are these becoming normal practice. So we look forward to your thoughts on the good, the bad and the ugly, about the benefits and challenges.

The storify is available here.