I’ve nearly signed up with the OU #h817open course a few times in the last two weeks and then shied away at the thought of committing 16 hours a week.

But I have finally decided to give it a go – knowing I can’t commit this much time but knowing that one of the really great aspects is that as an open student I don’t have to.  So why have I signed up?

  • It will be nice to have the opportunity to talk with others about open education, open courses and OER. I have worked in this field for a few years and do a lot of writing but don’t always get the change to discuss things
  • This kind of course is my favourite model for an open course – Martin Weller calls them open boundary courses – where there are fee paying registered students working towards accreditation and open students who might dip in and have various motivations for joining – I think it makes for interesting experiences for both kinds of learners and for the facilitators
  • I have been working with the OU around a particular aspect of informal learning recently so being a student might add to my insight – although I am also working through another OpenLearn Course
  • My work on synthesis of the UKOER programme should make the subject area fairly easy to engage with – hoping that this will mean some aspects may take less time – hopefully I will also have something to offer to the discussions
  • I’ll get some badges; ) well actually I hope to discuss issues around the concepts of open badging
  • I am currently working on the OER4Adults project with colleagues at Glasgow Caledonian so am interested in the area of OER for lifelong learning
  • I have participated on other open courses – DS106 and Change11 and been involved in a research study looking at self regulated learning in MOOCS
  • We home educate our son who is now 16 and he may need to consider open forms of learning rather than a conventional route- so this is a big motivator
  • I like learning

That is a longer list than I had expected.  I look forward to working with the other participants…..

I will try really hard not to drop out…

Open University online degrees