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Radical Solutions and Open Science
An Open Approach to Boost Higher Education
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Open science is a new concept arising out of the exponential growth in access to abundant scientific knowledge via the Internet and the World Wide Web in particular. This book is about openness and radical change. Daniel Burgos, the Editor, has a well-respected track record in supporting openness, and so is well positioned to ensure the relevance of the contributions in this volume.
It is often said that the only people who are desirous of change are wet babies. So, for educators living in this rapidly changing twenty-first century, acceptance of the realities of change may come with difficulty. In this book, the writers are not only desirous of change, but are also active proponents of openness, trusting that it will radically disrupt the established order in education, much to the chagrin of comfortable traditionalist instructors.
Such rapid change in education has not always been the case. The roots of science and science education are planted in the reality of knowledge scarcity rather than openness. When Hero of Alexandria, a mathematician, physicist and engineer, worked in the great library in the first century, other scientists and students could not access his knowledge without meeting directly with him in a room in the library (possibly the first classroom). His works later became available on scrolls, which were laboriously and expensively reproduced. They could then be distributed to other centres in a very limited way.
This limited access to knowledge was improved somewhat with the printing press and other developments, but real openness has only become possible now with the cornucopia of accessible knowledge available online to anyone anywhere who has an Internet connexion. Today, anyone with a mobile phone can access the Internet at a reasonable price in most countries. More than 90% of the world’s population reside in communities with mobile access and most people have access to a mobile device. Of course there are limitations of language, culture and prior education; nevertheless, this represents an explosion in scientific openness.
Open Science is now supported by many if not most governments. Today researchers who receive grants from government agencies must place their papers online and have them accessible to the public. This has disrupted the educational publishing industry which has for long been highly profitable because they were the only gateway to knowledge and so charged institutions and individuals heavily for the privilege. These commercial publishers are guilty of ‘openwashing’ or claiming to support openness in order to maintain their closed commercial practices. They are deliberately closing off access to knowledge in order to create a false scarcity.
This collection of chapters on openness introduces the reader to relevant views on openness and its affordances for disruption of the academy and society. Chapter themes include investigations ranging from ethical issues in learning analytics to open educational resources, to prosumerism and its effect on disabled learners, as well as issues related to intellectual property rights. The challenges to openness as presented by the authors are disturbing, whilst at the same time intriguing. The authors are approaching the problems associated with openness suggesting possible solutions to support the transition to more open educational access. Open science is rapidly becoming the norm opening up access to knowledge, despite the efforts of commercial interests hoping to forestall it. The chapters in this volume point the way to preserve and expand openness with up-to-date research that points the reader in a positive direction.
Openness: Why Quality Matters
The very recent decision by the general assembly of the UNESCO to recommend the use of open educational resources (OER) is great news and will certainly contribute to a better understanding of these questions and to their adoption by more and more countries. It should encourage players at all levels to build and share courseware, distribute and redistribute OER.
Of course, open educational resources represent just one aspect of open knowledge. Open source, open access and open data all contribute to the same ideals. But, because of the specific nature of education, of the huge numbers involved, this is an important move. We should keep in mind that it is estimated that about 258 million children and youth are out of school today: all what allows a better distribution of knowledge is the right approach.
Yet if we can see many positive signs, many problems are still to be tackled. These are, of course, being looked into by NGOs, Universities, researchers and activists. Let us mention the cost model to be better thought out: is it necessary to remind thatopen doesn’t meanfree and that the costs should be met in such a way as not to create new barriers?
But, in my view, the most complex issue may be the one of handling quality questions.
- 1.
This may not appear at first to be that essential, but it is. When discussing the matter of replacing traditional textbooks by access to open educational resources with local and national authorities, it is the elephant in the room! ‘Who will control the quality?’ is the question raised, or—worse—not raised but underlying all the decisions which are going to be taken on the matter. There have, of course, been occasions whether a severe blunder or even an unacceptable pseudo-scientific fact has crept into a textbook published by some well-known publishers, but the general feeling is that these are rare and, since there is a publisher, an origin can be found, responsibilities can be taken, errors can be traced and the problem can be dealt with. And, most importantly, the responsibility of the authorities is not questioned. And understandably—in my opinion—they need to be reassured when it comes to OER.
- 2.
A quality slip is something authorities are fearful of. And when actively promoting the use of OER we should have our answers ready. Here are some possible answers:
A. We can argue that the type of control proposed in the context of traditional publishing doesn’t really exist. The editorial boards are made up mostly by people who all have some form of hidden (or not hidden) bias.
B. We can argue that quality control can’t be done because quality is essentially a subjective matter and that from an open point of view we should not reject an open textbook just because we don’t like it. Perhaps this OER suits someone else. Furthermore, one goal of open education is to empower teachers and students, so we should really work on giving each the tools to better decide by himself. This position is either naive or irresponsible. In both cases, it will not make the problems disappear.
C. We can address the problem, in all its complexity. We should address it with researchers. Easy solutions exist: a resource which is good is necessarily of quality, ergo all we have to do is measure popularity.
Instead of popularity, we could measure engagement. If we can see that the material is being used, this is a sign of quality: we can certainly do this with videos which are usually streamed.
And, essentially, we should keep in mind the crucial question ofserendipity . A system in which quality is the unique judge may backfire: as there will be a close connexion between quality of a resource and quality of the institution, interesting OER may find it difficult to get proposed, read and consumed. Serendipity is necessary for openness. The whole idea is to empower the creators of new resources. And if this means that the resource, in an open world may be invisible to others, is not ‘given its chance’, then the open education movement will have to deal with a new problem.
So the quality question is far from being solved and no simple path exists. This should stimulate the interest of researchers from many fields to come up with solutions which will aim at preserving all the benefits of open educational practices.
In this volume put together by Daniel Burgos, Unesco Chair at UNIR, a variety of questions are scrutinised and even when answers are given, the inevitable—and highly desirable—result of research is that you end up with more questions than when you started. So let me just add the quality question to this increasing set and wish that the reader finds in these texts the inspiring ideas she may be seeking.
Radical Solutions & Open Science: An Open Approach To Boost Higher Education is the 2nd Book in a Trilogy of texts that presents radical, innovative solutions for recurring issues in higher education. Every book is focused on a key major field, and each chapter presents a thorough state-of-the-art exploration in a specific topic. The aim of the Trilogy is to provide useful and timely assistance to university professors, researchers, policymakers and students to understand current and potential future challenges in higher education.
This second book has a focus on open science as a powerful tool to advance our thinking and practice in learning and teaching and research. It provides an opportunity for the reader to take time to think deeply about the concepts of openness and how they are applied more broadly. Specifically, the impact across numerous areas such as policy, accreditation, ethics, certification, content, research, data, technology and access to cite just a few.
Several well-known authors in the field were asked to contribute to this book and their work has undergone peer scrutiny to assure the reader of the value and quality of the chapters presented here.
Chapter 1 by Weller debates the meaning of openness and whether there is any crossover in definitions and practices. Chapter 2 by Stracke has focussed on open science. Presenting an overview of how open science can be represented across three science dimensions of research design, processes and publications. Chapter 3 is presented by Griffiths who has a focus on ethics and our use of data in our higher education institutions. A great debate around the erosion of what institutions might call ‘ethical waivers’ for educational improvement. But, the chapter questions whether this partial erosion is, in fact, ethical.
The focus of Chap. 4 by Affouneh comes from Palestine and takes an important angle on the basic human right for access to ducation. Whilst Amiel et al., in Chap. 5 , debates the political consequences of receiving funding of open educational resources, imploring the reader to question how neutral or apolitical funding is or else a warning about misalignment or—worse—suffering the consequences.
Burgos, in Chap. 6 , has a focus on research impact and the ways in which researchers go beyond the typical development of patents, products, etc. and that papers, conferences and presentations must also count in how we understand the ways in which we communicate about their work.
Cullen, in Chap. 7 , has an interesting take on prosumerism and asks whether it is turning higher education institutions into ‘McBusinesses’. Pursuing the argument through the lens of whether it works for accessibility and disability this is a timely read when exponents are seeking greater control of learning by students.
Educator competencies are highlighted in Chap. 8 of the book with Nascimbeni discussing plenty of detail about six competences areas that the contemporary educator requires to thrive in educational environments: personal data management, capacity to leverage the open web, ability to engage in intercultural digital dialogues, critical view on media and capacity to deal with digital ethical issues and with accessibility issues.
Chapter 9 is of my favourites and if you have been struggling with getting your MOOCs into the curriculum for all sorts of good reasons then this discussion by Cha and So will be of interest to you. A handy framework also looks at credit recognition and online learning that leads to three types of MOOC-integrated learning experiences: Type I—formal MOOC learning, Type II—formal blended MOOC learning and Type III—non-formal/informal MOOC learning.
Chapter 10 by Ramírez-Montoya is a wonderful case study of a collaborative with multidisciplinary teams of energy, production and educational innovation, who designed and implemented 12 MOOCs through the MexicoX and EdX platforms. Operating at scale more than 2,00,000 learners were involved and a huge army of educators, administrators and researchers reaping benefits for social communities, government, business and decision-makers who are likely to be interested in learning environments and open educational practices.
Chapter 11 by Hamza provides an interesting case study of the University of Bahrain and how the University is transforming to address the global, regional and national challenges it is facing today. Readers will find the key pillars and the key performance indicators of the Transformation Plan 2016–2021 very relevant to their own contexts in a changing technological society where our learners require new models of learning and teaching and research must show greater societal impact.
All up, this 2nd Book in the Trilogy will provide food for thought across several areas that are extremely relevant in the twenty-first century. They are representative of different cultural countries as well and provide a global perspective that we can all learn from. In a complicated world with increasing individualism and global issues such as sustainability, ageing, health and climate change amongst many others this time will be a good read for many educators and beyond.
Book 2: Editorial
About Open Science and Open Education
Daniel Burgos
daniel.burgos@unir.net
Research Institute for Innovation & Technology in Education (UNIR iTED), Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR), Spain ( http://ited.unir.net )
There is a key difference between Open, Universal and Free. In 2017, the OUF (which stands for those three concepts) system was officially presented at the 27th ICDE World Conference on online learning in Toronto, Canada, to a large community of open education believers (Burgos, 2017). Until then, there was a broad misunderstanding between the concepts ‘open’ and ‘free’. I assume that most of the misconceptions came from the wrong identification of ‘free’ as a gratis thing, with no cost. Maybe I am wrong. The fact, however, is that many scholars, students and stakeholders working on open education overlapped both concepts: whatever is open is always free and vice versa. In addition, in the kick-off meeting of the Erasmus+ Capacity Building project OpenMed (in 2016, Rome, Italy), there was an initial debate between what the boundaries of open education were. We agreed that something (a resource, for instance) could be open, but not accessible to everyone, and still be granted as an open educational resource (OER) (Stracke et al., 2019). Lastly, the concept of open education has evolved considerably (Walberg & Thomas, 1971), especially from 2015 (Hilton, 2019). As long as the movement is getting broader and deeper, the nuances play a role. We have moved from just OERs to open educational practices (OEP) and, lately, to open science. There is large agreement about a number of pillars that support open education, resources being just one of them. We could name content, methodology, data, research results, policies, licensing, technology, access and more to come. This larger umbrella evolves the previous concept of OER, and the previous one of learning object (LO) (Polsani, 2003), or even unit of learning (UoL) (Burgos et al., 2007), to a new scenario, where every stakeholder is taken into account, and content is no longer the only input to deal with.
Open Science is Way Beyond Content
A number of aspects came to move the discussion to a slightly more advanced level. On one side, teachers show their interest in open education and how to integrate resources and methodologies into the daily life (Chen & Bryer, 2012; Gramatakos & Lavau, 2019). They realise that the combination of formal, non-formal and informal learning into one harmonised backbone provides a richer and more complex soil to deploy effective educational methodologies, learning strategies and tools. On the other hand, technology awareness makes that very technology invisible, so that the teacher, the researcher or the student can focus on what matters most, with technology being just a simple tool. In addition, other stakeholders, like content providers or policymakers, can play a key role in the open scenario, since they complement and foster the concept and practical applications of an open, universal and/or free product or service to the society.
Meaning of Openness
Openness is not just a theoretical approach or word-based powerful speech, but a practical and active project that requires specific actions in motion, as a polysemy. Part of these actions comes along with logistics, politics, management, finance and many other aspects of the same Rubik’s Cube so that the project is successfully implemented (Transgeniclearning.com, 2017).
In doing so, we also must be cautious with what we promise. Usually, these declarations hold goodwill but lack a twist of realism. If we commit to open up 50% of the resources at university X by 2020 or 2030 (the last magical number in every official document, anywhere), we must be sure to reach that threshold by then.
That figure should mean an engagement that drives the specific steps to get there. We cannot spread around self-given and unrealistic figures, placed far away on purpose so that events can modify the route or the promise along the way, and nobody is held accountable (Huston, 2019).
This community of openness is usually accused of being idealistic and impractical, producing a lot of words but little usefulness (Contact Nord, 2012). If we incorporate criteria and actions beyond the words, like the ones afore-listed, and we draw a realistic and verifiable plan, like the ones afore-proposed, we could break the glass ceiling between ‘foolish goodwill’ and the ‘too realistic to take “open” seriously’. Meeting at the middle point would make both sides part of the same project, since there is a balance to find, possible, and at hand reach, to enrich all for the best of education.
From Commitment to Action. From Action to Accountability
Out of this historical moment, with so many people working in good conscience to open up education, and in the spirit of UN SDG 4, we need to be specific (United Nations, 2012; Unterhalter, 2019). We, the educational community, the society, need to move from commitment to action (like the motto of the 2nd OER World Congress, 2017, in Ljubljana, Slovenia) as well as from action to accountability. We need to be effective, to provide resources and services, but also to apply metrics and be smart. We need to move from a feeling of goodwill to a calculated project management-based action plan involving milestones, resources committed, impact factors, key performance indicators, dissemination metrics, scalability and, above all, sustainability. A good conscience goes to sleep when a real problem comes to the table, or a family issue, or the lack of funding, or the increasing need to multi-task on the job. So, we cannot guarantee a long-term action if there is not a business model and a strategic plan behind all those remarkable efforts (Downes, 2007; Kalman, 2014; Daniel et al., 2015). It is our duty not just as visionaries and good people, but also practical stakeholders of the educational game. We need to get into accountable actions, leaving behind promises in good faith and embracing a well-equipped master plan in motion. This is the key to success. And, as educators, it is our duty.
About This Book
This book looks into a number of topics related to open science—from ethical and privacy issues to specific application cases in higher education; from the role of a user at university level to the integration of online technology in knowledge transfer and from the integration of resources into formal environments to diversity. The compilation of chapters provides a diverse view into a number of challenges and common concerns amongst the community members, with a clear drive to encourage discussion and foster an open approach to this very concept that is always polysemic depending on the context, the culture, the target and the stakeholders involved.
Open science is a powerful tool to boost higher education. The most frequent use of OER has led to a broader approach to the concept of openness. Resources are not enough since they require a full context to support an effective implementation. Open science addresses access, technology, data, research results, licensing, accreditation, certification, policy and, of course, content. The smart combination of these factors will provide the higher education system with a strong platform to integrate formal, non-formal and informal education. The teacher, the student and the educational manager will strengthen their competences and resources for a better understanding and performance of the learning and the teaching processes. This book brings together all these key topics through a selected set of blind peer-reviewed chapters written by expert players in the field—experts who present the current state of the art and the forthcoming steps towards a useful and effective implementation.
References
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His interests are mainly focused on Educational Technology & Innovation: Adaptive/Personalised and Informal eLearning, Open Science & Education, Learning Analytics, Social Networks, eGames and eLearning Specifications. He has published over 140 scientific papers, 4 European patents, 14 authored books and 21 edited books or special issues on indexed journals. He is or has been involved in +55 European and Worldwide R&D projects, with a practical implementation approach.
In addition, he is a Professor at An-Najah National University (Palestine), an Adjunct Professor at Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL, Colombia), a Visiting Professor at Coventry University (United Kingdom) and Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas (ESPE, Ecuador). He has been Chair (2016, 2018) and Vice-Chair (2015, 2017) of the international jury for the UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa Prize for the Use of ICTs in Education. He is a Consultant for United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), European Commission, European Parliament, Russian Academy of Science and Ministries of Education in over a dozen countries. He is an IEEE Senior Member. He holds degrees in Communication (PhD), Computer Science (Dr. Ing), Education (PhD), Anthropology (PhD), Business Administration (DBA) and Artificial Intelligence (MIT, postgraduate).