Back to research

So... what is my research question? I'm revisiting this before meeting with the other OER Fellows in Toronto on Saturday.

How does the application of critical digital literacies inform my open knowledge construction at a Faculty of Education, as I negotiate the complex, personal and contextual teaching and learning landscapes of open educational spaces?

Key elements:

Critical DL

1. code breaking
2. meaning making
3. using & problem solving
4. analyzing
5. persona

Open knowledge construction in open educational spaces

• building understanding - using social media & LMS spaces
• negotiations between personal and professional - Cronin's macro, micro, meso, nano layers
• dial-it-up graphic

Complexity; networking; decisions made and reflective actions

• use of D2L - why I don't step into this space unless I have to (part of code breaking issues - figuring out how to use it on my own)
• use of Slack - why, how, use
• use of Twitter - 
• use of blogging
• use of inquiry projects 
• use of digital storytelling
• external influences and impacts on course design and delivery

NOW: 

• data collection has started but is it the right data? 
• What am I not considering? 
• where will this be 'published'? or will there be more than one possible publication result?

So.... I'm OPEN

Today, Jenni Hayman sent out a message in the ECHO group with a link to the WikiEducator Research/Open Educators Factory site. This describes a project about open education and lead me onto a web tool to self assess & rate your individual openness.

The graphic results are provided immediately, along with some recommendations for readings and viewing to extend your learning. So, I guess I'm not really surprised, but it turns out... I'm an open designer, OER user, open teacher AND and open evaluator.

Open Educator is defined as:

An Open Educator choses to use open approaches, when possible and appropriate, with the aim to remove all unnecessary barriers to learning. She works through an open online identity and relies on online social networking to enrich and implement her work, understanding that collaboration bears a responsibility towards the work of others.

An Open Educator implements openness along four main activities. She:

1. Implements Open Learning Design, by openly sharing ideas and plans about her teaching activities with experts and with past and potential students, incorporating inputs and transparently leaving a trace of the development process.

2. Uses open educational content, by releasing her teaching resources through open licenses, by facilitating sharing of her resources through OER repositories and other means, and by adapting, assembling and using OERs produced by others in her teaching.

3. Adopts Open Pedagogies, fostering co-creation of knowledge by students through online and offline collaboration, allowing learners to contribute to public knowledge resources such as Wikipedia.

4. Implements open assessment practices such as peer and collaborative evaluation, open badges and e-portfolios, engaging students as well as external stakeholders in learning assessment.

Despite that result based on a handful of questions, I'm still not sure about my 'status' as an open educator. As I've been exploring the 'dial it up' model, there are steps and mechanisms to shift my teaching and learning further into the open, but those will need to considered carefully and negotiated. My open means that my students, colleagues and institution are also 'dialing it up' with me. Where do ethics and privacy come into this equation and how can open be balanced with safer internet practices?

Cronin comes into focus

I'm reading (meaning making) and deconstructing (analyzing) Catherine Cronin's article Open Education, Open Questions in order to better understand the layers and levels she describes for open "individuals seek to balance privacy and openness in their use of social and participatory technologies at four levels (see figure 3): macro (global level), meso (community/network level), micro (individual level), and nano (interaction level)."

C. Cronin, CC SA

The graphic clarifies the negotiations that individuals (me, my students) continually make when teaching and learning with/about digital literacies. This is compounded by the pressures all educators face as they venture into the public eye of the profession. Teachers candidates who are new to the profession are negotiating through even tougher decisions as their persona as a student shifts to one of being a public teacher. Their decisions are based on multiple levels of emotional responses beyond the course requirements I may establish for them to shift into public, digital spaces. For example, I don't require my students to sign up and use Twitter but I do require them to sign up and use a blog as part of the course assignments. In creating their blog space, I do not require the students to make their blog public so many keep their settings on private or turn of search optimizations. I invite the students at two points in the course to allow me to link their blog sites to the course site - once at mid point and again at the end of the course. I don't assign specific topics for their blog responses but do require four submissions over the duration of the course. Many will post extensively and build the blog as a learning repository, while others may only do the required posts. For me, blogging allows the students to model and experience identity building, reputation management and digital participation, all elements of the critical digital literacy of persona.

Maybe I should include this graphic into my teaching - it may help students understand that everyone is in the practice of negotiating many layers within digital spaces. Something to consider.

NOTES:

Cronin, C. (2017, October 17). Open education, open questions. Educause Review. Retrieved from https://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/10/open-education-open-questions  

The graphic is licensed under Creative Commons and openly available at https://www.slideshare.net/cicronin/open-culture-open-education-open-questions/24