Today we live in a world of increased access to knowledge. Whether you want to know the current road conditions for your drive home, or the up-to-date score on the Canucks game, your answer lives mere clicks away on the Internet. Over the last few years, we have seen a huge increase in both the quantity and quality of knowledge readily available to the general public. Websites such as Wikipedia allow people to post new found facts onto the Internet, and it allows others to post, review, and critique these studies. Wikipedia allows for the free exchange of knowledge to anyone in the world, and is a great example of the open access to knowledge that has been made available to the general public over the last few years. It is this topic, open access to knowledge, which was discussed September 18, 2007, at the Teaching and Learning with Technology Session: Teaching for a World of Increasing Access to Knowledge. Held at the UBC Telestudios, John Willinsky (Faculty of Education) and Brian Lamb (Office of Learning Technology) discussed opportunities and initiatives resulting from the emergence of open source, open access, and open educational resources that are readily available today.
A recent trend that has developed over the last few years has been an increase in people’s expectations towards getting access to information. With so much information available on the Internet, people are developing an attitude that they have a “right to know.” Information should be shared, and easily accessible, and this is the purpose of open access and open education. More importantly, educational institutes should be leading the way by opening up access to their research studies, teaching methods, and encouraging life-long learning. One of the key things that should be taught to students is the ability to take skills developed and refined at post-secondary institutions to life after school. Open access education is doing just that, as it is equipping students for life-long learning. Dr. Willinsky also stresses that today’s educators should not only help students access knowledge, but should also contribute their knowledge and research to open access. Knowledge should be shared with the broader community.
To fill this need for a “right to know,” Dr. Willinsky has pointed to a recent “open access movement,” whereby more knowledge and more information can be accessed by the general public for free. One such example of open access is a new policy adapted by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). CIHR, a major funder of health research in Canada, has just implemented a policy that encourages open public access to research and scholarship funded by CIHR. The policy will require researchers to make published research articles available freely and online to the public within six months of publication, if the publishers permit. This means that the general public has access to the newest health research in Canada, all for free.
Another example of open access can be seen with the recent development of UBC Circle. UBC Circle is an institutional repository, where scholarly publications and articles are stored, indexed, and subsequently made available to the public for free. It is a place where educators can contribute their knowledge and research to open access. This also drives more traffic to the article publications, as more people have access to them. Dr. Willinsky noted that the UBC Faculty of Education has seen an 80% increase in citations since publications have been uploaded into UBC Circle and made available to the public. What does this mean? This means that more scholars and researchers are viewing their articles and are using this information in their own publications, students have access to this material to use in their own research papers, and the general public is able to access this material to get a better understanding about a certain topic. It means that knowledge is being shared openly.
Open access education also provides teachers with an opportunity to share knowledge resources. For example, MIT has developed MIT OpenCourseWare, whereby lectures, exams, and other resources from more than 1700 courses are available to users free over the Internet. MIT has given open access to educational resources for educators and learners all over the world. Other educators can access MIT OpenCourseWare and can use the posted ideas and teaching tools to supplement their own courses. Interviews, podcasts, and multimedia demonstrations can be shared and adapted between professors. Brian Lamb stressed that an important part of open access is to be able to find information, and to be able to find information that can be reused by others. Open access material like MIT OpenCourseWare allows others to adapt and change the information so that it suits their needs. A teacher in England may want to use some of the teaching tools posted on MIT OpenCourseWare, but needs to refine them to fit their lecture. By giving open access to their teaching information, MIT OpenCourseWare allows educators to take and adapt teaching tools to supplement their own teaching material, and this makes for a better learning experience for students.
If you want to use information that is copyrighted, you have to go through a very complex and time-consuming route to get clearance. There must be a better way, and there is: open access information! Creative Commons offers users a way to share information freely with one another, provided that certain conditions are abided by, like giving credit of authorship when you use someone else’s work. RSS is another way to share information. RSS can be used to import automatically updated information (such as news stories and research articles) right onto your own webpage or desktop (via a newsreader) without having to visit these individual sites. You can go one step further. Teachers can create their own weblog, and use RSS to subscribe to the blogs of their students in the class. Online discussion on topics is updated in real time, and this information can be shared via open access to the general public. Debates on Shakespeare can be shared and viewed by others around the world.
Brian Lamb also discussed how weblogs and wikis can be used to support knowledge reviews, build knowledge resources, and foster communities. Just check out Brian’s wiki for a vast list of resources that were discussed during this session. By posting on a weblog or a wiki, public websites that are indexed and freely accessible to anyone (not password protected or requiring a log-in), you are contributing to the open access of information. Weblogs and wikis can be used as public forums for debate, where knowledge is contested, and information is shared freely. They also act as social networks, where people from all over the world can read and comment. This engages people in critical thinking, and encourages life-long learning.
Open access education is equipping students for life-long learning, at a time when they have access to more and more information. Learning should not stop after one finishes school, and open access to information allows people to explore this information. Great strides have been made to open up access for the general public, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Students and scholars need to continue to demand more open access to material, create their own weblogs and websites to share information, and continue to pursue a “right to know.”