Presentation at #dlRN15 - Exploring how educators conceptualize and make decisions about openness

1. Unpicking Binaries
or, how educators conceptualise & make decisions about openness
Catherine Cronin  @catherinecronin  #dlRN15  16/10/15
Stanford Memorial Church (Flickr)

2. @catherinecronin
slideshare.net/cicronin

3. #marref
Twitter photo: @HelenORahilly

4. #HOMETOVOTE

5. openness & open education
Much published about benefits of and barriers to
openness, as well as interpretations of openness.
Relatively few studies provide empirical results.
Theoretical context for this study: openness and open
educational practices as sociocultural phenomenon.
This perspective rejects the notion that such practices are
deterministic and holds that, with adequate information and
evidence, learners, instructors, and researchers have the
agency to accept or reject any particular technology or practice
or to find alternative uses for it that will better serve their needs.
- George Veletsianos (2015)

6. my PhD research:
open educational practices (OEP)
in higher education

7. research questions
1. Why and how do faculty/academic staff in
higher education use online tools and spaces
for research, learning, and teaching?
2. Why and how do students and faculty/staff
interact in open online spaces in higher
education, and how do they negotiate their
digital identities in these spaces?
research questions

8. research questions
1. Why and how do faculty/academic staff in
higher education use online tools and spaces
for research, learning, and teaching?
2. Why and how do students and faculty/staff
interact in open online spaces in higher
education, and how do they negotiate their
digital identities in these spaces?
research questions

9. research methodology
Descriptive case study
Empirical setting: one university
Broad definition of ‘faculty/academic staff’ –
includes full-time & part-time, permanent & temporary,
contract & no contract
Phase 1. semi-structured interviews with 15-20
faculty/academic staff (constructivist grounded theory)
Phase 2. questionnaire for all members of
faculty/academic staff (1000+)

10. digital
engagement
digital
literacies
digital
identity
emerging themes
openness
anxiety

11. “traditional” use of LMS,
post lecture notes &
readings
use of LMS invite student
engagement in LMS,
and/or beyond LMS
no social media; no
SNS profiles
use of SNS,
social media
use social media & SNS
for research and/or for
teaching
Digital Visitor
engagement, “pull”
information on request
network
presence/activity
Digital Resident
engagement, “push”
notifications & active
networking
digital engagement

12. use Digital Natives
discourse to describe
students’ knowledge/
behaviour
awareness of
digital literacies
encourage development
of digital literacies for
students/staff;
teach/embed digital
literacies
lament loss of analogue
scholarly practices
“I'm afraid of the future of
digital scholarly
practices
value digital scholarly
practices, design into
courses & assessment
“
digital literacies

13. single online institutional
hub
“
online hub multiple online hubs,
institutional as well as
chosen/external (e.g.
Academia.edu) and/or
created (e.g. blog)
“
strict boundary keeping professional/pers
onal boundary
blended & flexible,
accepts context collapse
digital identity

14. little concern for
copyright restrictions;
little/no awareness of
Creative Commons
copyright & open
licensing
use OER, create OER,
identify as open
practitioner
privacy is important,
focus on risks
privacy privacy is important,
focus on management;
or accepts lack of
privacy
openness

15. • institutional position, i.e. precarity
• anxiety at all levels of engagement with social
media/SNS (irrespective of level of use), e.g.
“Another Thing” to do
• unsure of institutional policy or position re:
social media, communication with students,
openness, etc.
• unmanageable workload
anxiety

16. This University as anxiety machine.
This University as means for the production of anxiety.
This University that forces us to internalise the
creation of value and the extraction of value and the
accumulation of value.
This University that is recalibrated for value as we
seek to resist in the name of teaching and learning
and becoming and emancipation and us.
- Richard Hall (2015)

17. unpicking binaries…

18. ‘Open’ is a continuous, not binary, construct. A door can be
wide open, completely shut, or open part way. So can a
window. So can a faucet. So can your eyes. Our common-
sense, every day experience teaches us that ‘open’ is
continuous.
- David Wiley (2009)
Openness is not the opposite of closed-ness, nor is there
simply a continuum… not simply whether education is more
or less open, but what forms of openness are worthwhile
and for whom; openness alone is not an educational virtue.
- Richard Edwards (2015)
open vs. closed

19. observations
to be explored further
• Use of OEP is relatively low, and uneven.
• Strong preference for Professional/Personal
divide (individually defined & managed).
• ‘Digital Natives’ assumptions are persistent.
• Anxiety re: use of social media & maintaining a
digital identity/presence exists widely: usage
does not innoculate.
• Greater use of open tools & spaces by
academic staff with less institutional security.
• Apparent lack of institutional understanding,
recognition, policy/position, support re: OEP.

20. Thank you!
Catherine Cronin
@catherinecronin
slideshare.net/cicronin
catherinecronin.wordpress.com
Image: CC BY 2.0 visualpanic

21. References
Edwards, Richard (2015). Knowledge infrastructures and the inscrutability of
openness in education. Learning, Media and Technology, 40(3), 251-264.
Esposito, Antonella (2015, September 25). PhD researchers using social media:
Exploring the emergent trajectories of academic identities. SRHE presentation.
Hall, Richard (2014, March 19). On the University as anxiety machine. Richard
Hall’s space. [blog]
Stewart, Bonnie (2015). In abundance: Networked participatory practices as
scholarship. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed
Learning, 16(3).
Veletsianos, George (2015). A case study of scholars’ open and sharing
practices. Open Praxis, 7(3), 199-209.
Wiley, David. (2009, November 16). Defining “Open”. iterating toward openness.
[blog]