Why Should Academics Develop Their Course Materials in Public…?

Before you say “we/they shouldn’t”:

– why do we encourage students to keep a learning journal/diary?
– why do we encourage students to participate in online forums, or ask questions if they’re having trouble understanding an issue?
– why do we try to get them to reflect on their work in public (which includes the submission of assessment material…?)

If we want students to learn, and if we want students to graduate with experience of, and knowledge of how to, learn in a self-directed way, in an environment where information is abundant, we should be showing them how we learn too… which means developing our course materials, and demonstrating how we sometimes struggle with the best way of expressing an idea, or discovering and making sense of third party resources, in an environment where they (and everybody else) can learn from us… like the commons…

’nuff said…

Except, see also: Brian Lamb on Modern scholarship is a race against its own obsolescence

(Did that make sense? Maybe I shouldn’t have published that thought? Maybe it was only worth tweeting? Maybe it’s not worth sharing any of these ideas in case they’re wrong or make me out to be an idiot…? WHO CARES? First rule of blogging: no-one will ever read it. Second rule of blogging: only people who are likely to be interested in the subject of a post will do more than look at the first few words. Third rule of blogging: anyone who does read on will maybe take something from it, contribute back to it, or build on it. Or they won’t… in which case, it was all just a waste of time and incurred some sort of (lost) opportunity cost…)

[See also: Open Course Production]

PS If you’re reading this today(!?;-) then tomorrow there’s an OER event in London that I think is open to all comers? (If it isn’t, and you can do, go anyway;-) Open Educational Resources International Symposium, with opening keynote from Mary Lou Forward and closing keynote from Brian Lamb. There’s also a fringe event tonight where I sure the unmoderated free’n’open talk will happen;-) UKOER10 Fringe.

PPS to complement the above, see D’Arcy Norman’s on private “classblogs” vs. the wild, wide open, which asks: “What right do we, as educators, have to compel students to publish on the open web?”, and goes on: “I have absolutely no problem with faculty and students wanting to have private “classblogs” – if it gets them to a place where they’re able to use the blogging platform in a way that amplifies the effectiveness of their discourse, even (or especially) if the site isn’t public, then it’s absolutely worth doing.” I agree…

Author: Tony Hirst

I'm a Senior Lecturer at The Open University, with an interest in #opendata policy and practice, as well as general web tinkering...

4 thoughts on “Why Should Academics Develop Their Course Materials in Public…?”

  1. Commenting here might just be about reinforcing a tight loop, but I am in your country to give a talk on OER tomorrow, and was planning to cite your July 9th post on “Open Course Production”… so I appreciate the timely follow-up… between this and the comments on the original post the iterative noodlings on the idea are feeding my own fuzzy thinking.

    As for the post of mine you link to, I’m also struggling to finish a book chapter right now. I was feeling blocked, so dashed off that anecdotal bit with the expectation it would not make the final draft, but that it might get the words flowing a little better. On a whim, I tossed it up on the blog. But it’s gotten links from a number of people, and dug up some comments from people that I don’t think I know at all. Which has if nothing else given me the confidence to leave that riff in my draft, getting me a few hundred precious words closer to a completed manuscript…

  2. Hi Brian – arggh – meant to use this post to advertise that event (I won’t be there unfortunately, but will be watching for backchannel activity ;-) Will post a PS now…

  3. A drag you aren’t in London, though I am nervous enough about presenting to this crowd as it is… still clinging to faint hope there might be some way to see you in Barcelona at Open Ed 2010.

    1. Couldn’t resist lure of #fukoer, and chance of a chat with you and Scott beforehand… About to rush for train now… As for tomorrow – I think you’ll be well received… and if you rock the boat a little, that’s what keynotes are for, isn’t it?!;-)

      Re: Barcelona – it’s not in my schedule at the moment, tho’ it may come to be…

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