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Tag: Lisa Spiro

Back to the beginning: ds106 and open education

By aetherbunny on February 25, 2013

This week’s post is going to be a bit short, but I’m hoping to lay the groundwork for a return to where all this madness began: ds106! My initial proposal revolved around framing a discussion of open education and edtech with my experiences in that class, and while I’ve spent these first few weeks getting my bearings in an unfamiliar field, I need to start bringing things back around.

I’m dipping back into Spiro and Alexander’s NITLE paper about open education in the liberal arts this week. They’ve provided some excellent definitions of open education, and I think it might be useful to examine ds106 to see how it fits into those definitions, and how it is affected by being part of the curriculum at the University of Mary Washington.

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Three ideals in one assignment!

By aetherbunny on February 5, 2013

Before I carry on any further with digesting Spiro and Alexander’s paper on open education in the liberal arts, I wanted to do two things: first, try to clarify a little of what I was discussing last week, and jump to the end of the paper to check out the section on obstacles facing open education. Wonderfully, I think I found a way to tie them both together! It’s a tenuous connection, but it is there.

What I was essentially trying to say last week is that grades and the degrees students are issued based on those grades are not intrinsically valuable; in much the same way as our currency operates, they operate on a belief system and, so long as we measure academic achievement in grades and degrees, the hope is that they can be “cashed in” down the line for a job, or an even more valuable degree. In that sense, a degree operates as a type of currency, an investment that will hopefully ensure a greater return in the future than the amount of money and effort initially invested. The problem, of course, is that rates of inflation for tuition have skyrocketed, student debt is at an all-time high, and the degree that would have guaranteed you some kind of employment a generation ago is now a riskier investment than ever.

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Beyond class, beyond grades: a reflection on “assessment”

By aetherbunny on January 28, 2013

Okay, we’re off and running and I am writing my first blog post for my edtech/online ed independent study here at the University of Mary Washington.

The first point I would like to make is this: I am more than a little overwhelmed.

I’m essentially taking this semester to give myself a crash-course in emerging pedagogies in edtech, and even reading through the first paper I picked out has confirmed that I’m coming into this as the humblest of padawans. Fortunately my adviser, Dr. Zach Whalen, is a little like really chill Yoda, and continues to remind me that I don’t have to know everything in order to say something.

That said, I would like to add the caveat that I’ve only scratched the surface of these topics and trends. If I say something ignorant, it’s probably because I genuinely don’t know better. Yet. But eventually I will.

The first paper I’m reading for this study is “Open Education in the Liberal Arts: A NITLE Working Paper” by Dr. Lisa Spiro and Dr. Bryan Alexander. It’s serving as a brilliant introduction to edtech/online ed, and specifically the culture of openness that is evolving in those contexts. I’m currently processing how ds106 fits into the definitions of openness they describe in their work (it is certainly an open course, but how does it embody open teaching? Open coursework? Open learners? How does the openness of ds106 challenge, change, and interact with the more “traditional” aspects of UMW’s teaching?) but this section on “open assessment” struck a particular chord with me:

Open assessment: Through badges, portfolios, and other mechanisms, the open education community is developing ways to certify learning that often depends upon open educational resources and approaches. For example, Mozilla’s Open Badges program provides an infrastructure for organizations to recognize skills that people develop outside of traditional educational contexts.

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