Open Education? How does that work? #opened09

One week ago today, I attended an online seminar with George Siemens and Dave Cormier. My professor, Jennifer, had told the class about this seminar. (See my blog post: http://rielliott.blogspot.com/2009/08/george-siemens-and-dave-cormier-free.html) During that seminar I learned about the Open Education Conference taking place in Vancouver. From Wednesday to Friday last week, I was a "vicarious" attendee at the Open Education Conference. (I love to see those ripples spreading outward. Jenn told us about the Monday night seminar; I attended the Monday night seminar; I attended the Open Education Conference; I told others about the conference. The ripples are moving outward, encompassing more and more people)

Water Ripples alicemariedesign. Flickr

I liked the idea of open education but could not see how this would work for universities. Professors need to be paid. Students need to get degrees that are recognized by the world. What would "open education" look like in that setting?

I still don't know but, a professor at the University of Regina may be pointing the way. Dr. Alec Couros is offering a EC&I course (graduate level) titled Social Media & Open Education. Students have registered for his course for credit. Now he is throwing open the course for anyone to join as a non-registered student. Here's what Alec has to say:

"The success of this course in past offerings has been greatly due to the tremendous support and participation from non-registered students. All lectures in this course, from September 15/09 to December 8/09 will be publicly available. To access the lectures, look for the appropriate date under "Synchronous Sessions", then look for the weekly Elluminate link. I will also offer the appropriate Elluminate link via tweet via the Twitter profile, @courosa.

Live lectures will take place every Tuesday evening at 7 p.m. Saskatchewan time. Additionally, all sessions will be recorded and made available in several media formats.

We would also love to learn from you! I invite you to visit the blogs of the registered students (links available soon) and leave comments and feedback. If you happen to come across an article, blog post, video, etc. you think would be valuable to us, please use the Delicious tag 'eci831readings'. And, we'd love if you responded to our weekly sessions in the format of your choosing (e.g., blog post, vlog, podcast, etc.) Just tag your media as 'eci831responses' and students will be able to access these. " (Class information, http://eci831.wikispaces.com/NonRegistered)

In Alec's tweets about the class, he said that he takes care of the registered students in the class and the non-registered students take care of themselves. Alec is paid; students get their degrees; yet it is still "open education" because an unlimited number of non-registered students can join in. Wow! So that's how open education works.

Here's a video of Alec's introduction of himself to the class

Alec's class already has non-registered students from Australia, Chicago, Windsor, and Edmonton. I am seriously considering signing up to be part of this class. Why don't you join me?