OpenEd: Week 15

Blog your overall feelings about the course. On the content side, what did you learn? How will you use it after the class is over? What did we not cover that you realize now we really should have? On the process side, how could the class be better next time it's taught? What would you change? What would you keep? Is there anything we as a group can do after the course is over? (Stian Haklev)

Overall, I like this course. It is kind of special to experience learning by blogging. It is my first time to have this kind of class, without meeting teachers and students, but we read the ideas of students around the world through blog technology. It is interesting to read people who are not in the same place as where you stay, and get the responses from them sometime.

I learn more about open education through this class. In the first week we read regarding the right to education. I got a brief overview of the educational systems in different countries. The necessity of mandate education is also discussed. From the second weeks a serious of open-education related readings are provided. They help me have a better understand about the open education. The issues related to open education come from a variety of aspects, such as the motivation of sharing, the business model, the barrier of management of OER, the quality of OER, the sustainability of OER, different types of license, and their overlay, etc.

The links of five open education projects are good examples for us to know the current trend of OER movement. I am really with these websites which offer free learning materials. I find most of them have really high-quality learning materials. Audio, video, or interactive learning software are helpful for learners to engage in the learning processes. There are lots of meaningful and valuable materials are provided though this websites. It is beneficial for learners to have the opportunities to have free access to them without costing money. These free materials will bring more learning opportunities for people who live in poor areas if there are enough technologies offered for them to access these valuable learning materials.

Peer production is a model based on the idea of decentralization. Centralization provides explicit support, but the cost is expensive. On the contrary, decentralization allows more control over the courses, and explicit support is available through a group of participants. Decentralization is helpful for the sustainability of OER. Developing course contents by the modules is better for the long-term management of the websites.

I think the class covers most of important contents of OER. Reading other students’ blog is a good way for learning. Sometimes I couldn’t not grasp the main idea of the readings, what I did was to visit other blogs to see what had been posted, and read their postings. It really helped me to understand the main idea of the readings. In addition, by reading posting from other blogs, you could read some stories about the experiences of OER, and know the points of views of people from various places. Therefore, I think we can still keep the way for following students.