Open Education and goals for this MOOC #H187

Introduction:
I'm an IT professional that has moved into the education sphere. I enjoy working from both the technical and the pedagogy angles. I'm also a mum to a beautiful little 2 yr old boy who is the joy of my life. I'm living in an amazing part of the world (Central Australia) and I'm really enjoying my current position. I'm working for a University that is only just starting to look at Open education. All the opinions and writings on this blog are mine and do not reflect or come from the organisation I work for.

This is my third MOOC so I'm not sure if that puts me in the -oholic category but I'm enjoying the diversity of each one, the different tools and the different means of communication. At the end of each one there has been somebody who shared "I've just joined up to....MOOC..." and there I go! No need to search out or wonder 'what I will do next'....increasing my PLN as I go.

What does Open Education mean to me now:
Open Education to me means courses that are run or information that is available to all, free of cost and free of constraints that would knock a lot of people back (pre-requisites). This may be conducted online but it also could be available locally for eg: community garden working parties.

As we know…money does not always motivate people to finish the course! For people to successfully enrol in a free course and get something out of it, they need another motivating factor! People’s interest may lie in their next job/career or just to merge in with their current life or provide an extra dimension that is far removed from their paid work but is a long term interest. The pattern of paying for a course to get to the next pay level is a well established one. However I think there is a much wider need for open education to be available because people are individuals, dynamic and they want the stimulus of learning what they WANT to learn.

My goals for joining this MOOC are:

  •  think about how open education can relate to and work with the regimented, paid, closed education environment that I am involved with
  • have fun and learn some more internet tools that help in effective online learning
  • increase my PLN


Comments

  1. Wendy, thank you for adding some pieces of "you" into your post..it helps to take the person out of the form of mere words and put a three dimensional person in my PLN

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're getting to be a serial MOOCer Wendy :) Good to have you on board, I think we've got a few from Australia (although probably not very local to you!)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment