I started a new program last week, a Diploma in Open Education. And Weeks 1 and 2 of the first course, Theory & Philosophy of Open Education, asks us to consider some of the history and definitions of Open Education, which has realizing that I am thinking about Open Ed in a different way than I have up until now.

This first assignment is about Defining Open. And the instructions state: “Based on your interactions and reflections in the first discussion forum, summarize your own definition of open education. With reference to the readings from weeks one and two, explain why you have come up with the definition you have, any limitations it has, and any aspects of open education that it prioritizes or excludes.”

My first thought is that definitions are tricky and clearly defining Open Education has not stopped organizations from trying to profit from OpenEd, or taking the definitions and vilifying them as not useful for accreditation or giving away intellectual property, or of taking those defined OERs and placing them behind a paywall (thinking of the recent move of Lumen Learning open texts to CourseHero).

My problem right now is that any coherent definition I have been living by recently is breaking up into incoherent chunks. I am questioning everything: open is freely available, creates access to education for all, eliminates exclusivity opening the door to diversity and inclusion. But does it, and can it within our current systems of education, government, and accreditation bodies?

Some questions which have arisen for me the past two weeks:

• Is Open Education truly open when we still have to pay for credentials? Are our traditional definitions of Open limited to providing education for development (and not accreditation), remembering that many of us work for institutions that need to meet a bottom line in order to get provincial funding, namely through tuition?
• Why is it when things are created to expand the scope of education (books in the vernacular, coffee houses in England in the 1700s, MOOCs, as described by Tait) someone ultimately decides to close them off? Is it elitism? Commodification? Monetization? Ownership? Oversight by authorities?
• When anyone is refused access to education, does that mean it can no longer be termed “open” in any sense?  Do we assume that calling something “open” automatically does the work of including all (as Cronin asks)?
  
• What is Education? We talk a lot about the open side of it, but what is education?  Can we define Open Education without also (re)defining education, and looking at what education means in our 21st century (and post-COVID) world?  Is the opposite of “open”, “broken” as Rajiv Jhangiani suggests in Open as Default: The Future of Education and Scholarship?
  
• We talk about providing knowledge freely through open textbooks, OERs, etc., but what about skills and critical thinking? What do we then bring to the table as instructors when students can find knowledge from so many other sources? 

But before I got too far down the road to pessimism, I was inspired by our class discussions.  One of my course colleagues in her post for Week 1 said “Open education is not a one size fits all solution, but rather a beginning to start to address the inequalities we see in education.” (Anita Farenbruch, class discussion posting). And another colleague said “Open education is a result of consistent self-reflection on the degree to which one’s communicative relationship with the the world around them is equitable, inclusive, and based on lifelong learning with the goal of a diverse, joyous and thriving universe.” (Theresa Southam, class discussion post). Finally, several participants mentioned the aspect of sharing as being front and center in open education: sharing knowledge, experiences, resources. Reading my fellow students hopeful and positive posts has been helping me find my own hopefulness again. Small steps can effect big change – we just need to be patient and persistent!

Maybe at the root of it all, I can take to heart not only the amazing definitions presented by my colleagues in this class, but also the words of Maha Bali that “if you reciprocate and if you maintain relationships and you invest in building them, you’re going to get so much more out of [open education] because people will find you and and get you things you didn’t even know you needed…” And that’s the way we continue to build this amazing community we have around Open Education, no matter what our specific definitions.

So coming back to a sense of the realistic, of the “doable”, and in spite of the gremlins running around in my brain insisting that we need to do more (I definitely feel much more pessimistic at this point in time than most of my fellow participants in this course), I would define Open Education as a beginning towards sharing and giving and reciprocity – we all need to start somewhere, and perhaps over time instead of just a bottom up approach at an institutional level, we can explore a wider top-down support of education that is truly open to all.

Cronin, C. (2020). Open Education: Walking a Critical Path. Open(Ing) Education, (January), 9–25. Retrieved from http://eprints.teachingandlearning.ie/4345/%0Ahttps://doi.org/10.1163/9789004422988_002%0Ahttps://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004422988/BP000010.xml%0Ahttps://brill.com/view/title/56897

Jhangiani, R. (2017) Open as Default: The Future of Education and Scholarship. In Jhangiani, R. and Biswas-Diener, R. (eds) Open: The Philosophies and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science

Tait, A. (2018). Education for development: From distance to open education. Journal of Learning for Development, 5(2), 101-115. Retrieved from https://jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/294/313