CTLT and Friends

if I was going to advise any *learner* about pursuing their interest (and by definition, in an “open” situation the set of learners is not prescribed), I’d urge them to find an *existing* robust community of people already talking about that subject, and then focus on helping them develop skills to engage, as a newcomer, with existing coversations and communities.

Can the two ideas– open, networked learning communities and open courses affiliated with and/or products from institutions not only co-exist, but feed off of one another? I get the asymmetry aspect, I really do, but I’m not convinced that institutions have no worth or that the situation for continuing– maybe even increasing– that worth is hopeless

@Scott Leslie. Thanks for your comment on the language of ‘courses’, or in my case ‘modules’. It has helped me realise that my approach to open education post my looming retirement may be trapped in the wrong mindset. I have been trying to think of how I can convert a module I teach at Leeds Uni that dies when I retire to an OE resource ‘in the wild’. I have been thinking about how it can be packaged as an OE module that a community of network of open learners can engage with and exploit/re-purpose according to individual and collective needs. I assumed that I and others would somehow organically become mentors (open tutors?) and flexibly help out as required. Perhaps I should be trying to develop links with existing communities engages in discussions and project around the discipline of my module and try and contribute there somehow. I think your comment illustrates the difficult transition in moving between open education as content (based on a formal education model) and open education as process that engages disparate audiences with varied agendas and objectives.

"I still feel like there's no there there" when it comes to colleges' efforts to measure student learning, Kevin Carey, policy director at Education Sector, said in a speech at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation meeting Tuesday.Views like Carey's, which are widely held by policy experts who look at higher education from the outside, tend to aggravate faculty members and other professionals in the industry to no end...given how much assessment activity is unfolding on the campuses.That's where the disconnect comes in. Most of the assessment activity on campuses can be found in nooks and crannies of the institutions - by individual professors, or in one department - and it is often not tied to goals set broadly at the institutional level. Some of it has been undertaken directly in response to the outside calls for accountability, and seems workmanlike - testing or measurement done for measurement's sake.To be ultimately successful, any meaningful assessment effort must be embraced widely by instructors...and to do that, "you've got to start this conversation as an instructional conversation that includes assessment".... It must begin with agreement (in a department, a college, and ultimately across a discipline or institution) about the learning goals that students should derive from the curriculum - and then intensive work to infuse the skills needed to reach those goals into the curriculum, course by course....

If all of our students are remembering the same things, the things that they learned for their standards test, the collaborative work between those students will only differ insofar as they have lived different lives OUTSIDE of school. In this sense, the education system plays NO part whatsoever in contributing to the creative economy.