Open EdTech Summit (IV). Conclusions

Fourth and last session at the Open EdTech Summit. Conclusions, in the shape of “plus” and “idealistic” ideas, are presented.

Personalization of the Learning Process

• Two kinds of personalization: what is taught, and how is it taught.
• Concerns about converging processes (e.g. Bologna), acreditation and control frameworks, etc.
• Build new models instead of change current ones, by trying to make obsolete the latter. Find spaces of subversion.
• One space for subversion is assessment, trying to make ends meet with freedom of choice.
• Extreme importance of capacity building, letting the student to localize their own decisions.
• Automated personalization as suggestions, not as compulsory roads to follow, and led by the teacher, not by the technology.
• Microcredits as the smallest unbundled parts of a larger course, so they can be “rebundled” into other courses according to needs and competences to be acquired.
• Opennes a requisite for tailoring and personalization, enabling cost reduction, remixing itself, etc.
• Collaboration is enhanced (if not just enabled) by openness, but personalization can play havoc on social activities: beware.

Learning Content Development and Delivery

• Content as infrastructure, thus OER has to go beyond content and enter into meaning creation.
• Content is not static: it has a source but evolves multi-directionally.
• New roles shaped by the new landscape: teachers and institutions become guides, enablers, capacity builders.
• Cultural shift: from the notion of controlling knowledge towards an open environment.
• Superiority of open content for reuse and reproduction, but as it is not static, the concept of preservation is at stake and needs redefinition.
• OERs should provide context-sensitive output formats: open distribution.
• Open quality assurance: not only open content creators, but also curators.
• Rethink copyright and fair use.

Future Technologies at the Service of Learning

• We need open, interoperable tools and services, no more corporate driven, pre-packaged, specific tools.
• The World is an LMS: knowledge is anywhere and we have to know how to find and retrieve it.
• Access is a right: free broadband (or really affordable), free content.
• Technology has to enhance the joy of learning (not make it a nightmare).
• The success of FLOSS communities should be replicated in OER.
• New assessment models that capture the personalization of learning. The community might be able to accredit the learner.
• Content will come to the learner in a personalized way.
• Usability: make the interface invisible.
• Help (and give credit to) the process of the teachers’ using technology and acquiring digital capabilities.
• Education has to radically change according to the disruption that the Internet represents.

Learning: Everyone, Everywhere and Anytime

• uLearning: ubiquitous learning as the new model.
• Long life learning requires adaptability of the system.
• Knowledge does not go out of date, just becomes more complex.
• Connections more important than the nodes.
• Self organized learning, through mash-up curricula, user generated content, communities of practice and learners, within personal learning environments.
• Ubiquitous and persistent classrooms for continuous (and informal) learning.
• Universal recognition of levels and certificates.
• Accrediting institutions internationally.
• Context and progress aware of digital scaffolding.
• Recognition of prior and experiential learning.
• Limit the cultural imperialism of technology and learning design: one size does not fit all
• Free access for all
• Encourage respect and understanding through learning.

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