Open education: can we crowdsource the Ivy League?
April 17, 2010
It sounds so tempting: creating your own schedule, learning what you are passionate about, combining courses and subjects in any way you want, being free from university bureaucracy as well as from high tuition fees. Open source courseware and open education captivate the minds of digital natives and challenge education policy experts since MIT has launched its open courseware project and some creative others have followed suit. Despite the numerous benefits, open courseware and education 2.0 have their dark sides: with the traditional education still in power and degrees from famous universities still opening many doors, open education ideas have much room left for improvement.
The issues of open courseware and Do It Yourself education were discussed yesterday at re:publica in Berlin in a workshop held by a Palomar5 participant Basti Hirsch and a pioneer of DIY master studies Pippa Buchanan. As I was listening to them talk, I could not stop thinking about the vast body of human knowledge that is out there, waiting to be discovered, reflected upon, transmitted, used, changed, improved… Nowadays technology has made all this knowledge more accessible than ever before. Open courseware delivers high quality learning materials, online platforms like School of Everything connect people willing to learn with people able to teach, social media and networking tools allow us to get in touch with likeminded individuals. Sharing knowledge and seeking for creative education becomes natural for the generation of digital natives, for whom online lifestyles, coworking spaces and opensource software are the norms of life. Sharing is one the fundamental principles of their philosophy. So is the idea of mashup and remix (see Lawrence Lessig for deeper insights).
Open education and DIY degrees give space for individual self-expression and perfectly match Zeitgeist of network society: do not take anything for granted, deconstruct, remix, mashup, connect, collaborate…Its spirit of openness and “no control” gives digital natives the hope that in the world of Web 2.0, their lives can go the way they want even when it comes to the fields that are normally strictly regulated.
However, open education is missing something.
First and foremost, the process of DIY education lacks legitimate feedback and control. A student whose education draws upon downloadable courses from MIT database does not get assessed, supervised or guided by any reputable mentor or any other person who has been professionally trained as a teacher. Peer revision hardly solves the problem since making progress in learning requires feedback from someone, whose worldview, knowledge and experience are different from yours and who has the competences to deliver this feedback in a comprehensive and effective way. This is often not the case when feedback is given by someone of your age. For a level up we all still need support from those who are visibly smarter than us.
Second, DIY education and its freedom will never substitute the atmosphere of learning at a university. Studying at home while wearing your pajamas and eating muffins may sound fun, but it can get troublesome as soon as you start missing books, resources and access to conferences or student life. However vivid your online life is, the real student life still takes place on campus.
Third, the contemporary society and business world appear to be rather conservative when it comes to educational standards. Although some companies do not care about your degree, the majority still do, so getting a proper job without a proper proof of academic performance can be a problem. Moreover, DIY education hardly allows for academic research and cannot offer a scientific career: for that an established academic institution is needed.
Fourth, in the long run open education can undermine the economy of educational system. If professors and mentors are no longer needed, what is going to happen to their jobs? Who is going to pay people with academic degrees who have invested time and effort into their profession if they can be substituted by DIY curricula, peer revision and collaborative courseware? This dilemma is closely connected to the discussions of amateur culture and its pitfalls (for critiques, see Andrew Keen, Jaron Lanier). In my vew, both the critics and the enthusiasts are making some valid points. It would be narrow-minded to disregard the creativity of human communities, though it would be idealistic to trust the mob too much, especially when education is at stake.
Finally, the idea of open education is simply too new and too controversial to be taken seriously by governments and many traditional universities. Clearly, it should not be taken down only due to its pitfalls. On the contrary, it should be further developed and discussed by governments, universities, students and the general public. Much remains to be done before we can crowdsource the Ivy League. Through trying out new things, opening up to citizen creativity and taking the best from collaborative potential of the modern Web, our society can make its education free.
April 18, 2010 at 11:36 am
Interesting article. I definitely think there is a future in education that is very different from the one we know. I think that we have difficulty imagining structures that are different from the ones we grew up with. In education this means student life, the personal or impersonal professor student relationship, books, directed study, etc., but I think this all belies the fact that education is dramatically changing. In the US we have the University of Phoenix, and other online degree granting institutions, which are fully accredited. Perhaps degrees like these will never be able to compete with the social function of an Ivy League degree as a method creating social stratification, but the fact is that education is democratizing, as you pointed out in your article. In the long run, just as in other spheres like media for example, the result I think will be beneficial as traditional gate-keepers loose their positions, and are forced to adapt to the new educational market, or find new jobs, while the value per dollar of students everywhere stands to increase. I think this is a great thing. Perhaps, and this is just speculation, students in increasing numbers will begin to study subjects that provide concrete skills and jobs prospects, while leaving the liberal arts because these subjects can now be accessed for free on a hobby basis. Nobody knows how this will all develop, but I agree that it is exciting.
April 18, 2010 at 4:16 pm
“I think that we have difficulty imagining structures that are different from the ones we grew up with” – here I totally agree. Sometimes we do try to imagine something new, and this results in creating fantasies about everything in the world being free. Perhaps open education will make things easier, perhaps not. Perhaps it will combat university corruption and bureaucracy, perhaps not. As with Web 2.0 technologies, here we sense that something new is coming, but fail to grasp what are the exact consequences. This is why these issues are so exciting)
I believe that universities will be eventually forced to democratize. When more students will start learning in a DIY programs, universities will have to attract them through offering better services, which is beneficial for everyone.
It is interesting to see how open education trends are developing in the USA. I guess it is totally different in Europe and absolutely different in Russia. There we still have very conservative university structures, with rigid bureaucracies and lack of innovative attitude. The situation is complicated due to corruption and extremely low salaries of the professors. They already have to struggle for survival and are forced to engage in corruption..if open education comes to Russia, professors can see this as a major threat to their position and resist.