Talk:Open education

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 29 January 2019 and 8 March 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Olive00.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 05:43, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Merge with Open Educational Resources
Here's a one page summary of Open Education, in the sense of the education movement from the 60s and 70s. It seems distinct from the current Open Education movement (which this page references). From what I read, the movement in the 60s was about constructivist classrooms, the new movement seems to be more about a combination of Open Access and the remixable "openess" of Open Source Software. Maybe the old concept of OE should have its own page, as a disambiguation?

Ccathy (talk) 06:44, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Open Education is absolutely a different term than Open Educational Resources and should be kept distinct. Open Education is a term that has been around for decades and refers to the opportunity for learning to be available for those who chose to reengage with systems/universities that allow open entry/exit and remove barriers to formal participation. The potential of Open Educational Resources is slightly more than half a decade old and still evolving to reach its potential. To collapse the two terms to one obscures the distinction between the two and the as yet unrealized and untested unique potential of Open Educational Resources (OER). OER is an outgrowth of the Web, requires open licences and harnesses the power of community and the opportunity to localize and translate educational resources. These are all dimensions distinct from Open Education. There are many more - but let me stop there and contend that there is far more to be lost than gained from merging the two. Ccathy (talk) 06:44, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the OER page already describes the OE concept pretty well but this contents would probably be better off here. Before merging or redirecting myself, I would like to read other opinions. -- Mietchen (talk) 15:28, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Eager to see two word merges. Open Space to cover technology as well as meeting protocols, Open Education to cover resources, offerings, how to. etc. Rationale: After Gnomedex "Open Everything" keytone, I found that it resonates better, the open source meme carries over faster, if we can keep the title two works.RobertDavidSteeleVivas (talk) 14:03, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Do not merge these two topics. 'Open Education' refers to a form of eduation where there are no barriers to entry, and specifically, no academic barriers. Hence the name of the Open University in Great Britain, which is not free. And Athabasca University, "Canada's Open University", which is also not free. 'Open Educational Resources' describe a type of educational resource that is created specifically for free distribution. Examples include MIT's OpenCourseWare, which is free. Stephen Downes 10:03, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Mr. Downes. The fact that 'Open Education' shares some (not all) of the core values of OER, and the fact that their names are so strikingly similar, does not warrant a merger. Perhaps a name change for one or the other? Is that even possible? Probably not even necessary, but it IS clear that this page requires more content in order to clarify the difference. Otherwise we won't even know what we are discussing. Trubacca (talk) 06:26, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with Stephen and Trubacca. Open Education isn't synonymous with OER or Open Source. I also agree that this page needs more content to sort out the differences - as it stands it doesn't represent OE as I understand it or as it applies to the OU UK Nogbad (talk) 13:37, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Agree that OE and OER should not be merged. Different concepts, with fundamentally different definitions. Relatedness does not make it the same. Jrandom


 * Perhaps one of the three of you might want to edit the article itself? Because it's certainly true that given its current content, it should be merged.  --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 06:18, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I also think that OER and OE should not be merged. I put OER in Google just now and came to this discussion. I still have not looked at the content. The two terms are not identical.|Nadia El Borai


 * Keep but edit. Open Education should probably just redirect to a page for "Open University", with a note on the "Open University" page showing a link to "Open educational resources".  This article as it exists today (11-Aug-2010), uses the term "Internet" in conjunction with Open Education, creating some confusion.
 * The mention of internet in the current article is going to confuse the reader, who will naturally conflate the idea of "Open Education" with "Open Education Resources". A similar confusion could exist with "Open Source" and "Open Systems".  Open Source is the term used to refer to software where the source code is available under a variety of possible licenses.  Open Systems is a 1990s term used by Sun Microsystems and others to describe systems where the interfaces were clearly documented and subject to standardization, allowing mixing and matching of technologies, commonly in Unix environments.  rhyre (talk) 03:10, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Input on reworking this page
Per an exercise via a P2PU course, looking at ways to improve this page. For sure we see that the point of this page has already been established. If there are others watching this page, would love feedback or notes you have. Tvol (talk) 02:42, 7 October 2011 (UTC)
 * First of all, full disclosure: I'm also in that P2PU course. So, my thoughts are that the topic of this page should be on the concept of "open education" (as opposed to "closed education") and the movement that is references. How I see it, Open education is the overarching category that OpenCourseWare, Open educational resources, Open textbooks, etc fall under. I think that makes sense, semantically, and thus, that is how people most often use the terms. Thus, the goal for this article could be to provide a general overview of the open education field, its history, how the various pieces relate, and, of course, sections about those other pieces that link to them. Does this proposal make sense? I know the motto is "don't ask to do, ask for forgiveness" but I thought I'd put the plan out there. (Another full disclosure: I work in the Open Education world at Creative Commons.) Greg G (talk) 23:12, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Greg G:

I am interested in reworking the page as well, and I agree with your perspective on open education. If you are interested we can start writing the page collaboratively and just let the rest fall as it does.Fredwbaker (talk) 00:25, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Open a new dialogue about open education page
Hello:

I am new to editing wikipedia, but I have been studying open education for a while now. I really want to make this wiki entry all it can be, but it seems to have been inactive for a while and i didn't want to step on any toes.

Is there anyone out there that is interested in reworking this page with me? Is there opposition to someone simply editing the page? Fredwbaker (talk) 00:22, 9 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Fred, what excellent timing! We are currently launching a project, WP:Communicate OER, specifically to help stimulate discussion & action on improving articles like this. Please add your name to the "Team" tab listed on that page, and then check out the "Do" tab. We will be most active next week, during the Open Education conference in Vancouver. Hope to be working together soon! -Pete (talk) 22:56, 11 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the link! I am excited about getting this article in shape.  Look forward to working with you all. Fredwbaker (talk) 00:41, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

A class working on this article?
Hi -- as discussed above, I'm leading an effort related to this article, WP:Communicate OER. I see that a number of new Wikipedia contributors have worked on this article in the last couple of weeks; is this perhaps a class assignment? It's great to see focused attention on this article; we would love to work with you! Please feel free to contact me directly, or just use this talk page. I guess the main question is -- do you plan to keep improving the article, or is your project is complete. Also, of course feel free to sign up for our project: WP:Communicate OER Team. -Pete (talk) 17:18, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Misc. (poorly formatted) external links redacted from Reflist Section
"Open Course Ware A Stakeholder Analysis" ...may be a good reference source for this article.

"Distance Education and Open Learning in a Developing Country like Bangladesh: Philosophy and Reality" ...looks like a potentially useful resource, needs further consensus regarding distinctions between Open vs. Distance education. Christine Bush in Mountain View, CA 20:38, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

"The Open Education Revolution: Sharing Nicely" by Delia Browne ...looks like a potentially useful resource, needs further consensus.

2012 Open Education Conference ...looks like a potentially useful resource, needs further consensus.

Open Education Precursors ...looks like a potentially useful resource, needs further consensus.

The Future of Learning Technologies ...this is blog resource which would be of more value if the large diagram it features were available to in a larger, more readable size. Nonetheless, I'm not really sure the topic of "gamification" is in fact relevant to Open Education; needs further consensus.

NYU Open Education Project ...looks like a good resource, but should be integrated into article.

The Open University Explained ...looks like a potentially useful resource, needs further consensus.

The Gallery of Teaching and Learning ...this resource is about the Open Portfolio Initiative which might itself make a good example for reference to Open educational resources, even though this article about the OPI appears somewhat dated and has several inaccurate or broken links. A discussion of OPI could perhaps be multiple-referenced to include and/or.

MathWorld from Wolfram.com ...this would make a good example of an educational resource which is free but not open, but should not be listed as a stand alone OE because it is not open.

Christine Bush in Mountain View, CA 20:37, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

New outline of open education
Today, students in my Writing Wikipedia Articles class started a new article, outline of open education, to help address some of the perennial issues under discussion on this talk page. Hopefully this will be a useful place to explore the connections among various related topics. I think we are open to considering whether it might ultimately work better as a navigation box, or as a page in a WikiProject; but we were eager to get started somewhere, on collecting and organizing the ideas! Please give us a hand, or let us know if you think the "outline" format is the wrong way to go. -Pete (talk) 16:44, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

How to deal with Open learning and Open education
This topic has been raised on the WikiProject Open talk, the WikiProject Education talk, and Open learning talk pages. As a step toward clarifying the connection between the two terms, I added Open learning as the main article under Open education's Learning philosophies section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Litjade (talk • contribs) 13:23, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment
This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Peer-to-peer University (P2PU.org) supported by Wikipedia: Aim for Featured Article and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program&#32;during the 2011 Q3 term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:20, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Critical approaches to open education
There are a number of concerns regarding the implementation of open education systems, specifically for use in developing countries. These include a potential lack of administrative oversight and quality assurance systems for educators/materials in some programs, infrastructure limitations in developing countries, a lack of equal access to technologies required for students' full participation in online education initiatives, and questions regarding the use of copyrighted materials. Biohistorian15 (talk) 19:29, 28 March 2024 (UTC)