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The Virtual symposium has ended, and I have given myself a couple of days to reflect on my learnings before sitting down to write this.  To be honest, a couple of days is nowhere near enough time to fully synthesize all the information that I was able to take in.  What is certain is that I ended the week exhausted, educated, and most of all excited.

I did not have much experience with the concept of open education before the RRU symposium.  I had heard a brief description of it while taking my Provincials Instructor diploma but not much was said and it was never fully explored.  There were many ideas that did surprise me.  A couple of the standout surprises that got me thinking of my own practices as an educator:

  1. Dave Cormier talked about how open education is based on a participatory model. It is not a top-down sage from the stage model but rather an instructor as a facilitator model.  This strongly resonated with me.  I hold strongly to a constructivist theory of adult education.  The idea that we create and construct our own learning based on our own experiences sits well in the open educational model.  By inviting the student into the process perhaps they are able to engage more with the learnings when they help in the process.
  2. Social media is an area that I have been working with incorporating into my educational model. I have had some success and some failures.  Dr. Hodson’s session on mindful social media offered some very strong arguments for the implementation of social media into the educational framework.  She also gave some very strong caveats as well.  Her whole idea behind SM/indfulness was challenging.  We do need to understand the platforms that are out there.  We need to do the research to find the right tools.  It is important to understand that technology is not going to be the answer to every problem.  It is very easy to get wrapped up in the technology and forget that it is a means to an end.  First and foremost, the student, then the tool.

An area that especially intrigued me was the idea of disposable assignments.  I look forward to investigating this concept deeper.  It is important that we assess the learning of our students. I never actually thought of our methods of assessment as throwaway learning.  I look forward to researching how I may incorporate a method of assessing my students that allows them to bring value to the world instead of just going through the motions and then throwing their assignments away at the end of the course.

The idea of the open loop university is one that does not fully connect with me.  I do like the idea of being able to jump in and out of the framework as you feel ready.  Where I take issue is that in order to do so you have to have a very independent student.  A student that has a strong intrinsic drive and is disciplined may find themselves flourishing in such an environment.  However,  it is my experience that there needs to be boundaries, assessment, and some sort of extrinsic reason for following through.  I myself have enrolled in many free MOOC’s and signed up for online courses that I never came close to completing.  While I was very interested in the topics and would have benefitted greatly from them I had no “skin in the game”.  There was nothing pushing me to complete them at the time.  I am very much for free and open Education; however, I feel like there needs to be a strong extrinsic motivator.  Perhaps as I research and learn more about this idea I will find that my views are swayed and even changed.

While this was a week that at times felt overwhelming, I walk away excited.  As I watched the presentations and interacted with the presenters and fellow students I had one thought constantly in my head.  I have found my people.  I have found people that are just as excited and are as passionate about this field as I am.  I am very excited about my future in this program and I look forward to more weeks of overwhelm and excitement.

References

Cormier, D. (2017, April). Intentional messiness of online communities. Presented in the Virtual Symposium of the 2017 MALAT Program at Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC, Canada.

Cronin, C. (2017, April). Open culture, open education, open questions Presented in the Virtual Symposium of the 2017 MALAT Program at Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC, Canada.

Hodson, J. (2018, April).  “Mindful” social media engagement in a time of Cambridge Analytica.  Presented in the Virtual Symposium of the 2018 MALAT Program at Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC, Canada.

Lalonde, C. (2018, April).  Sharing and CC licensing.  Presented in the Virtual Symposium of the 2018 MALAT Program at Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC, Canada.