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The reading in this week further defined what is the “Open pedagogy”. A new word is used for the definition: “OER-enabled pedagogy”. For me, the explaination helps me understand more on what should we exactly do to make the course “open”. Instead of just complete the task, student will “learn by doing” in OER-enabled pedagogy.

The four-part test mentioned in the article is used to identify if the assignment is renewable or disposable. For renewable assignment, student are not just complete the assignment, but also share them to public and make this assignment become a learning resource of others. One of my courses in this semester can pass all four tests. This course is teaching us “how to be an ukelele teacher”. One of the assignment require us to record a video of teaching “Open strings”, which is a basic concept in ukelele study. We need to read the article about how to teach the lesson (the article is on brightspace, but it is from OER), we need to find the song we want to use in teaching, and practice the song by ourselves. Finally, we need to upload the video on brightspace. But the teacher also gives us an option, which is uploading the video on youtube and send him the link. As a beginner of ukelele, I can play ukelele much skillfully after I complete the assignment. There are also some ukelele teacher in this course, and they can use their assignments to teach their own students. We are also invited to share our assignments on Youtube, which is open licensed.

But there is a problem on the four-part test. It can only define how open the course is, but it cannot define how effetive the course is by this “open” methode. The most important part of open pedagogy is letting students “learn by doing”. What if the students never care about feedbacks after they post their assignments to public? For example, in my ukelele course, even if we were required to upload the video to Youtube, we can choose to ignore the feedback from public because that doesn’t help on our grades. In that case, the assignment has no difference from disposable assignment, we just need to complete the task and we don’t care that any more.

It is also considerable that what is the effect of making the course “open”? Is that really make the course more interesting and rewarding? Back to the example of ukelele course, if I was required to upload my video to Youtube, I will face the pressure of being judged by others at the same time I recieve the feedback. Will that pressure become my motivation, or is that going to kill my interest on ukelele? The value of “open pedagogy” is not only on the renewable learning resource, but also on letting students learn by making the resource. It is important to find out how much more students can learn by “learn-by-making” than other ways.

The reading about Open Educational Resources gives me a new, critical view about pedagogy. Pedagogy is not the same thing with teaching in high school, we are not only facing those full-time students, but also some people who are facing the chanllenge on time, place or finance and still choose to study.

In the situation discussed in the third reading “Design principles for Indigenous Learning Spaces”, OER plays an important role on education to Indigenous community. Use of OER reduce the cost for Aboriginal people. OER can replace the textbooks, and more importantly, it reduce the cost on labour resources. That can also reduce the cost of government, when they are bothering about the dispatch of labour force to support the education of Indigenous community.

Open education can be a good style of education for Aboriginal people. As mentioned in the third reading, group working put them work together and learn from each other, hence break the spatial barrier. In addition, open learning gives them an opportunity to communicate with people outside their hometown. They can discuss with people who have different cultural background, life experience and logic of thinking, and Aboriginal people can learn more from those people than people who grow up in the same environment with them.

But Open education is not the absolutely right way of education for Aboriginal people. It is obvious that people will learn much when they participate in the discussion, but what will happen if they cannot follow the discussion because of their limit on knowledge?  If people are still a beginner of internet, how can they find the appropriate resources for their study  if the course is completely open? To solve these problem, one of the way is provide them a platform, where most of the resources they need have been sorted out. This is more likely to be distributed learning.

According to the readings this week, I learned much about how the courses are classified. I’ve noticed an advantage of online teaching compare with the offline one, which is timing. The online learning makes asynchronous courses become possible. Students who are not good at quick thinking in class have enough time to think and respond. One disadvantage of asynchronous course is, if the course is cnetralized at the same time, students have absolutely no chance to interact with each other. That is a bad learning environment for students who prefer to learn in discussion. But online learning do not need to be fully asynchronous. For example, most of the courses in Uvic shift to online courses after COVID. Professors record their lecture and post them on brightspace, students in different time zone can watch the record anytime. But the live courses are still available for students prefer instant respond from professor and their classmates. One example is my physics course this year. The course is designed to be asynchronous, professor record all of the teaching videos before the course starts, but we still have tutorial class twice a week. Students who cannot understand the concepts individually can discuss it with their professor and classmates at a certain time.
I think it is also a good way to find the key point of a course through its course structure. This can be useful for the learning in university. For example, if a course is centralized, then most of the information you need can be found in the materials applied. If a course is decenralized, you may get the key point in discussion. This method helps people to know where they need to focus on at the beginning of the course, so they don’t need to struggle on finding the core knowledge of that course.
I also have a question about the second reading: If technology enhanced learning can be classified as a part of E-learning, is that means all of the courses using computer to demonstrate their concepts (e.g. powerpoint) can be classified as E-learning?

Throughout the reading in this week, I have extended my knowledge of keeping privacy. It is always important for people to keep their personal information safe when they are working with internet, and it is necessary for people to know their right of themselves or others to disclose or change their personal information.

The “Aha” moment is about the encryption of password. I was using the similar password for my computer and cellphone, because that is easier for me to remember. Now I realize it is not a safe way to protect my privacy. Using different password and change them at least once a year is a good way to keep security of personal information, or hackers can crack them all once they know one of them.

I agree with the fifth concern in Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: Twenty-first century student sorting and tracking. If we just concern about the effect of big data on online education, use of big data will help teachers or companies to filter out the talent people by their race, gender,age or some other properties. It looks like a better way to make an appropriate plan, and is helpful allocate the resources. By doing so, the difference between learners can be easily ignored, and it is unfair for people who has equal ability but discriminated by their personal property. As mentioned in the article An urgency of teachers: The work of critical digital pedagogy by Morries S.M. and Stommel J., a pedagogus concern less with grading, more with big ideas, the themes of education, its ethics, and morals and goals. I believe the use of big data should not be a easier way to “grade” people, it should be developed to become a way for digital pedagogue to enhance the experience of education.

Reference:

Regan, P., & Jesse, J. (2019). Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: Twenty-first century student sorting and tracking. Ethics and Information Technology, 21(3), 167-179. DOI: 10.1007/s10676-018-9492-2

Morris, S. M., & Stommel, J. (2018). An urgency of teachers: The work of critical digital pedagogy. Hybrid Pedagogy.

https://teaching.madland.ca/passphrases, last access August 4, 2021

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