Open education and society

The aim of this course is to present and explore the relationship of open education to economic development, cultural change, and democracy.

Students will acquire the following competences:

• Ability to identify and explore the links between open education and economic development, cultural changes and democracy;

• Understand open education as a historical, global and social movement;

• Ability to analyse or forsee the consequences in the state, local community, organisation or institution that applies open education principles in its policies or practices;

• Understand the theoretical underpinnings of the UN and UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals, particularly the call for universal, quality education and its relationship to open education as a historical, global and social movement;

• Understand the relationship between the social objectives and the affordances of open education based on lower costs, open communities and practices;

• Identify and analyze potential positive and negative changes to existing institutions and develop socially appropriate and innovative uses of open education;

• Understand OE as seen by from the perspective of different actors and geopolitical realities.

• Compile a critical report with an analysis of a country, state or municipality, organization or institution that makes use of open education principles through policy or practice.

Students should be able to identify different strategies for the use of open education and identify a wide variety of open education projects, whether governmental, business or educational in nature. Students should be able to identify publicly available data sets, reports and cases to analyze the actual and potential impacts of open education on civil society and its institutions.

During this course, students will examine how and in what form, and with what limitations open education can contribute to social, economic, political and cultural development, particularly through the framework of UNESCO SDGs. By examining the implementation of open education in different contexts, countries and institutions, students will gather a critical perspective on the potentials of open education for social change.

The following topics will be explored in more detail:

• Frameworks for the use of open education

a. Universal access
b. Cost/benefit
c. Cultural preservation/minority language

• Examination of potential consequences of OE in different scenarios

• Social class, race, gender – inequality, inequity and open education

• North/south divide and geopolitical consequences

• MOOCs, higher-education, policy and society

After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Describe the goals of open education as a vehicle for economic and social improvement, including UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);

• Identify the political, economic and social barriers, inequities and differences related to the achievement of SDGs;

• Identify current impacts on social situation, particularly in education, and predict possible future impacts;

• Identify varying uses of and responses to open education by governments, corporations and NGOs.

• Design a sample open education project corresponding to the needs of a specific sector of civil society.

• Amiel, T., ter Haar, E., Vieira, M. S., & Soares, T. C. (2020). Who Benefits from the Public Good? How OER Is Contributing to the Private Appropriation of the Educational Commons. In D. Burgos (Ed.), Radical Solutions and Open Science: An Open Approach to Boost Higher Education (pp. 69–89). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4276-3_5. E-version
• Barth, R. S. (1969). Open Education – Assumptions about Learning. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1(2), 29–39. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.1969.tb00348.x
• Decuypere, M., Grimaldi, E., & Landri, P. (2021). Introduction: Critical studies of digital education platforms. Critical Studies in Education, 62(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2020.1866050 E-version
• Elkin-Koren, N. (2006). Creative Commons: A Skeptical View of a Worthy Pursuit. SSRN, 1–21. E-version
• Hein, G. E. (1975). The social history of open education: Austrian and Soviet schools in the 1920s. The Urban Review, 8(2), 96–119. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02208898
• Hill, J. R., & Hannafin, M. J. (2001). Teaching and Learning in Digital Environments: The Resurgence of Resource-Based Learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 49(3), 37–52. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02504914 E-version
• Hodgkinson-Williams, C., & Arinto, P. B. (2018). Adoption and Impact of OER in the Global South. African Minds. E-version
• Grimmelmann, J. (2014). The Merchants of MOOCs. Seton Hall Law Review, 44, 1035–1049. E-version
• Horwitz, R. A. (1979). Psychological effects of the “Open Classroom.” Review of Educational Research, 49(1), 71–85. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543049001071
• Miao, F., Mishra, S., & McGreal, R. (2016). Open educational resources: policy, costs, transformation. UNESCO Publishing. E-version
• Neary, M., & Winn, J. (2012). Open education: Common(s), commonism and the new common wealth. Ephemera, 12(4), 406. E-version
• Rathbone, C. H. (1972). Examining the open education classroom. The School Review, 80(4), 521–549. E-version
• Weller, M. (2015). MOOCs and the silicon valley narrative. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2015(1). https://doi.org/10.5334/jime.am E-version
• Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: Surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75–89. https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2015.5 E-version

• Interim presentations • Final project

Tel Amiel completed his PhD in Instructional Technology at the University of Georgia. He is currently Adjunct Professor at the School of Education at the University of Brasília where he coordinates the UNESCO Chair in Distance Education. He is a member of the Advisory Board of UNESCO/IGF Dynamic Coalition on Open Educational Resources, and the co-leader of the Open Education Initiative, an activist research group. More information on https://amiel.net.br.

Selected bibliography:

Amiel, T., ter Haar, E., Vieira, M. S., & Soares, T. C. (in press). Who benefits from the public good? How OER is contributing to the private appropriation of the educational commons. In P. N. Mizukami & J. F. Reia (Eds.), Shadow libraries – From the photocopier to the cloud: Access to knowledge, piracy and education. Rio de Janeiro: CTS/FGV.
Amiel, T., Duran, M. R. da C., & Costa, C. (in review). Building institutional policies on openness through open educational resources: An analysis of the Open University of Brazil.

Zancanaro, A., & Amiel, T. (2017). The academic production on open educational resources in Portuguese. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, 20(1).
doi.org/10.5944/ried.20.1.16332

Amiel, T., & Soares, T. C. (2016). Identifying tensions in the use of open licenses in OER repositories. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 17(3). dx.doi.org/
10.19173/irrodl.v17i3.2426

Amiel, T., & Duran, M. R. da C. (2015). Desafios do trabalho com recursos educacionais abertos na
formaçăo inicial docente. Revista EmRede, 2(2), 76–92. Retrieved from aunirede.org.br/revista/
index.php/emrede/article/viewFile/66/84. The challenges of working with open educational resources in initial teacher training.

Amiel, T., Kubota, L. C., & Wives, W. W. (2016). A systemic model for differentiating school technology integration. Research in Learning Technology, 24. dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v24.31856

Amiel, T., & Soares, T. (2015). O contexto da abertura: Recursos educacionais abertos, cibercultura e suas tensőes. Em Aberto, 28(94), 109–122. Retrieved from emaberto.inep.gov.br/index.php/
emaberto/article/view/1673/1644. The context of openness: Open educational resources, cyber cultur

Duran, M. R. C., Costa, C. J. da, & Amiel, T. (2014). The Open University System of Brazil: A study of learner support facilities in the northern, north-eastern and southern regions. Policy Futures in Education, 12,221. dx.doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2014.12.2.220

Amiel, T. (2014). Recursos Educacionais Abertos: Uma análise a partir do livro didático de história. Revista História Hoje, 3(5), 189–205. dx.doi.org/10.20949/rhhj.v3i5.128. Open educational resources: An analysis through the lens of History textbooks.

Amiel, T., & Amaral, S. F. do. (2013). Nativos e imigrantes: Questionando a fluęncia tecnológica de alunos e professores. Revista Brasileira de Informática Na Educaçăo, 21(3), 1–11. dx.doi.org/10.5753/
RBIE.2013.21.03.1. Natives and immigrants: Questioning the technology fluency of teachers.

Amiel, T., & Santos, K. (2013). Uma análise dos termos de uso de repositórios de recursos educacionais digitais no Brasil. Trilha Digital, 1, 118-133. Retrieved from: editorarevistas.mackenzie.br/index.php/Tdig/article/view/5892. An analysis of the terms of use in repositories for digital educational resources in Brazil.

Amiel, T. (2013). Identifying Barriers to the Remix of Translated Open Educational Resources.
International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 14(3), 126–144.
dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v14i1.1351