102 Ideology, Performativity, Disruption, and the Uncanny as a Student in Open E
102 Ideology, Performativity, Disruption, and the Uncanny as a Student in Open Education
Jessica Chretien
During the last semester I got to spend a lot of time learning about and participating in conversations about Open Education in the PSU community, but also in the larger national, and even global, Open Ed community.
What is Open Education? Well Open Ed is… pretty broad and always up for debate, always being reworked. A lot of Open began with the faculty and staff at institutions of higher education working to make textbooks affordable for students, or to eliminate cost all together. Open Ed specifically focused on OER, or Open Educational Resources. At the core of Open Ed is often a belief that knowledge should be open–it should be accessible, it should be shared, it should be unconstrained by various forces. As Open has developed, it’s expanded into many values and practices, with a particular focus on Open Pedagogy and the critical examination of the traditions of creation and consumption of knowledge in higher ed classrooms.
As I become more involved with Open Ed, I find myself concerned particularly with certain critical approaches to teaching and learning. Since this semester started, I’ve had the chance to attend several events on campus, hosted by the PSU Open CoLab, directed by Robin DeRosa. I had followed Robin’s work with Open Ed for months, until in January, I saw that the Open CoLab was going to become a distinct place/ hub for Open Ed on campus, and that they were going to be hosting “Fast Blasts” to familiarize faculty and staff with the practices of Open Education (and the Open Ed online community), Interdisciplinarity, and Project Based Learning.
After seeing these events posted on Robin’s Twitter, I finally decided to introduce myself and ask if I could come watch these “fast blast” sessions, as they were only targeted at faculty and staff, and I wasn’t sure I could attend. Of course, Robin immediately told me that she would never host an event through the Open Co Lab that students weren’t allowed to attend (which I figured would be the case anyway).
During the semester, I went to all four of the different fast blast topic sessions; three presentations that were part of the interview process for the Instructional Designer that PSU was/ is hiring; and next week I’ll be attending one for the Interdisciplinary Studies Chair. At almost every single one of these events, I was the only student present. I observed the presentations, I took notes, I thought a lot about what was being said by presenters and other attendees, I asked my own questions, I gave my own critiques, I contributed my own ideas from my “official student” perspective.
In addition to all of this, I joined the Open Ed Twitter community and thought about, asked questions, critiqued the ideas that people from all over the world were putting forth, and sometimes even added my own in the middle of this vast community of people I didn’t know at first (but have started t