What Sort of Open?
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formal education has more of a focus on support and less than simply making a resource free. Increased access is not necessarily about price.
- Increased experimentation – One of the reasons many people adopt open approaches is that it allows them to experiment. This can be in the use of different media, creating a different identity or experimenting with an approach that wouldn’t fit within the normal constraints of standard practice. For instance, many MOOCs have been using the platform to conduct A/B testing where they tweak one variable across two cohorts, such as the position of a video or the type of feedback given, and investigate its impact (Simonite 2013). The open course creates both the opportunity, with large numbers and frequent presentations, and the ethical framework that permits this. MOOC learners are not paying, so there is a different contract with the institution.
- Increased reputation – Being networked and online can help improve an individual’s or an institution’s profile. Openness here allows more people to see what they do (the motivation of increased audience) but the main aim is to enhance reputation. As an academic, operating in the open, publishing openly, creating online resources, being active in social media and establishing an online identity can be a good way to achieve peer recognition, which can lead to tangible outputs such as invites to keynotes or research collaborations. Issues of individual reputation and identity are addressed in Chapter 7, on open scholarship.
- Increased revenue – In the previous chapter I raised the issue of openwashing and using openness as a route to
