Learning - Moments of Mist and Clarity

The advantages of open online learning are more than well-rehearsed on this course, but I feel that the disadvantages are hinted about but not openly addressed in the teaching materials like the lectures, videos and articles. Openly discussing the pros and cons would give a bit more balanced view of what can, and what cannot, be gained through open online education (for more information on the advantages and disadvantages please see Bali, 2014; Oudeweetering and Agirdag, 2018; Zhenghao et al., 2018). What seems to be missing in the studies dealing with open online learning is the examination and acknowledgement of open online learning as education policy and the political nature of educational transfer with potential unintended consequences. In the rest of the blog I will be dealing with these questions. International education started long before open online learning and MOOCs entered the scene. Educational systems have always developed relationally but what is new is the level of g

Discourses represent the world from a particular perspectives and shape how we can talk about a topic, for example digital literacy, and what kind of meaning we attach to the phenomenon. Discourses, thus, influence the way we construct our identities in powerful ways (Fairclough, 2003). Regardless of knowing all this, I had never really reflected upon how I had come to assume an identity of what Prensky (2001) calls digital immigrant, the one who can adjust/cope in digital environments but never quite hack it, always having at least one foot in the past. Born in the 1960’s where the internet was nowhere in sight during my school days, nor in my university days and not really even during my PhD studies. There was no google scholar. I was forced to physically visit different libraries and grind bookshelves in the basement in order to find the article I wanted. The first net based digital tools, the email and sms-messages, had just been invented, and I was eagerly using them, and have eve