In this cMOOC, I hope to get an immersive experience in what it’s like to participate in “open education.” I’m about 1 month in to a new position as an instructional designer for connected learning at Colgate University. I first signed up for OpenLearning18 because open education is in line with the learning/design principles of connected learning. I’m hoping that my participation will give me some insights that I can apply to my own instructional design practice as I’m trying to figure out what it means to openly/connectedly learn.
What do I hope to contribute to OpenLearning18? A lot of questions! Much of this feels really new to me e.g. cMOOCs, blogging and tweeting are things I’ve never done before this week. Also, I’d say many of the courses I’ve had throughout my education were “closed” on multiple levels, including the course I taught here at Colgate, so it feels different (in a good way) to be participating in such an open course. On the other hand, the values and design principles of open learning don’t feel so new to me, as I’ve encountered them before in other contexts. For example, a lot of this week’s readings reminded me of participatory action research and community engaged learning/teaching/research experiences I had in grad school as they related to urban forest management, and also to general discussions around “science” and “ivory towers” needing to be more open to the public. Anyways, I just expect to have a lot of questions stemming from the connections I’m making between how these ideas are applied in open education versus in the other academic and community settings where I’ve previously worked.
