LEARNING OUTCOME #4

Examine and reflect upon the potential for equitable access for all learners in online and open learning contexts.

Throughout this course, I wrote blog posts, took notes, read articles, and responded to my pod members’ blog posts in order to meet this learning outcome.

Through readings, discussions, comments, and notes. I was able to contextualize the role of online and open learning in providing equitable access to education. I also reflected on this while working on our pod project which is aptly named the Digital Equity and Perspective Pod Project.

In my topic 3 post,  I reflected on the role of open learning, specifically open educational resources (OER’s) in providing equitable access to education. OER are free, open-licensed educational resources that are usually accessible through an online medium

Mays et al., 2017 introduced the concept of the 5 Rs that characterized OERs. According to the reading, OERs should be reusable, retainable, redistributable, revisable, and remixable. These are critical in facilitating learning that is easily accessible but also empowers learners to contribute to their learning materials.

Here are some notes I took for my topic 3 post

Open pedagogy

• Open educational resources : Reused, retained, redistributed, revised,

remixed. Open learning enables you to learn and contribute to learning material (students as contributors) – EDCi 339 is a good example

• Higher education should be accessible to all this (UN declaration )
• OER make education more affordable, thus more acceptable

But even still there are more accessibly issues like lack of technology, housing, food

• Collaborative effort in building courses

In the reading, the authors provided some open education practices that could bolster the use of OERS. The authors suggest that educators should “Build course policies, outcomes, assignments, rubrics, and schedules of work collaboratively with students. Once we involve students in creating or revising OERs or in shaping learning architectures, we can begin to see the syllabus as more of a collaborative document, co-generated at least in part with our students.” (Mays, 2017). I related to this suggestion because as a university student, I could see the potential positive impact it could provide. I’ve long lamented how one-sided my university education has felt. Almost as though the knowledge was being flung at me. This makes it harder to truly connect with the material and decreases motivation. By enabling learners to have a say in what they are learning, you provide them with the agency to explore, ideate, and discover.

My pod member Madeline shared these sentiments, among many things, and offered this comment in support. She agreed with an assertion I made in my blog post that said “A classic example of a resource that supports this assertion is Wikipedia, this might be the biggest open learning resource in my opinion.”

Hi Samuel

I enjoyed reading your topic 3 post!

I like what you said at the end about collaborative course creation with students and teachers. It only makes sense that students should have a say in the courses that they take. Ultimately, I agree with Mays who said that Open learning allows students “to contribute to the knowledge commons, not just consume from it, in meaningful and lasting ways” (Mays, 2017).

The foundational values of open pedagogy are student “autonomy and interdependence; freedom and responsibility; democracy and participation” (Mays, 2017). By giving students a voice and choice in the classroom, they’re more intrinsically motivated to further their knowledge because learning becomes a part of their responsibility and they have the freedom to pursue what interests them.

I also like what you added about Wikipedia being the biggest open learning resource. I agree with this statement. One of the transformative examples of OERs from the Mays reading was to teach students to edit Wikipedia articles. According to Open Pedagogy, “By adding new content, revising existing content, adding citations, or adding images, students can make direct contributions to one of the most popular public repositories for information” (Mays, 2017). I think it’s important to add that if we are using Wikipedia with young students, we need to inform them that although it is a wealth of knowledge, every internet user in the world has the potential to edit articles. This means that sometimes the information may not be accurate. Wikipedia is a good jumping-off point, but cannot be our only source for information.

I commented on Madeline’s post where she discussed traditional textbooks and their efficacy when compared to OERS

Hi Madeline,
Great job with this week’s reflection.
Our thinking coincides when it comes to the utilization of OER’s. We’ve begun to see “mandatory textbooks” lose more efficacy over the years. They may be mandatory in name, but from a learning perspective, you are able to be successful without them. From A guide to making open textbooks, we see that OER’s cannot solve all the issues of equitable access related to education, but it attempts to provide a free prompt for learning. I believe it is critical to enable learners to take ownership of their learning. OER’s help facilitates this because they allow learners to also contribute to them.
Regarding algorithms, as a software developer, I believe we are a long way away from seeing any real actionable change regarding algorithmic biases and marginalization. This is simply because, at the moment, it’s hard to measure the bias, and tech companies are still making massive profits and are not incentivized to make any change.

Jordyn also spoke about how OERs could help alleviate inequity especially when it comes to traditional textbooks. I echoed some of these sentiments in my blog post when I said “A tenet of open learning is the ability to learn from and contribute to the learning material. Imagine if university students, the main consumers of higher education textbooks, could suggest changes and even offer input to the textbooks they consume. You would have textbooks that edify students and also mutates to accommodate varying perspectives.”

I contributed to her post with this comment

Hi, Jordyn
You spoke on an important issue of equity in your reflection. I agree that as a future educator, it is important to be cognizant of your students’ individual struggles and successes. In a bid to being equitable, I support the use of OER’s over traditional textbooks when possible. I also experienced a drop in textbook costs as I approached my senior year. A lot of textbooks I used at the start of my degree were either written or contributed to by the instructors. As it were, there was not much academic benefit compared to open materials that I could access for free on the internet.

In my reflection, I noted the use of open resources that followed the principle of the 5 r’s: reusable, retainable, redistributable, revisable, and remixable.
These open resources are transformational because you get to actively learn and contribute to them.

My pod and I also explored inequities and access concerns in our Digital Equity and Perspective Pod Project

Johnny has inequity and cultural considerations that prevent him from achieving a flexible and supportive learning experience. The first and most significant issue is his language barrier. Since Johnny’s first language is French, he struggles with maintaining interpersonal relations and accurately communicating his feelings in English, which is needed when establishing social connections and participating in team-based projects. To aid Johnny with these struggles, Mount Douglas High School schedules him appointments with a case manager who helps build his interpersonal skills, and he also attends an E.L.L. class once a week to improve his English. Another obstacle that Johnny faces is that living quite far from Mount Douglas High School forces him to endure a long commute, making it difficult for him to acquire a healthy amount of rest. This puts him at a considerable disadvantage because it makes him feel more burnt out than other students. Johnny adapts to this issue by completing most of his classwork in an online asynchronous and distributed learning environment. This provides Johnny the opportunity to do his schoolwork when he feels most productive rather than adhering to typical school hours, which works well for him as an intrinsically motivated individual. The ability to access material and complete his work at any time within pre-set time frames supports his busy schedule. An additional benefit is that due to Johnny’s language barrier and communication challenges, having more time to formulate his responses is preferred to synchronous classes that favor fast thinkers and typists. However, this type of learning environment is not perfect.