CAS Digital Learning in Emergencies (2022-23)/module4-Taam
Openness in education and science: the case of research labs
Introduction
| Education has never stopped accompanying humankind since it came into being. Only have its form, content, context and systematicity kept developing in diverse ways, from as simple as parents-child learning settings to very sophisticated systems seen in modern and recent histories of formal general and higher, non-formal and informal settings.
Development towards more sophistication seems to have had been at the expense of the general public, leading to closed and elitist systems. Class (2022, p.2) traces back some reaction to such systems in people’s call for “public lectures on Dante” in 1373 in Florence in Italy, which heralded the birth of European universities. With time, population growth, development and sophistication never stop, which gives rise to more need for organisation and systemisation and more stress on resources. Logically, the balance will need then to reduce size of your targeting in order to reduce pressure on resources while continuing sophisticated development. In education, this meant its closure on fewer people, leaving many of them behind. For instance, higher education institutions “are, for the most part, closed or isolated systems,” (Moisey (1984, p. 14). This will continue for some time before people and societies feel its negative consequences and the drive to get up and call for openness, like calls for open learning. It was “[o]riginally intended to increase democratization of higher education in terms of respect for individual differences and equal opportunity, (Ibid, p. 5). Then came the calls for “open education” “during the 1960s and 1970s, [on the grounds of] heated political debates about the power of education over children took place and people like Freire lobbied for ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ (Deimann & Sloep, 2013, p. 18). With the turn of the century, the ‘open education’ movement continued. This time, “digital technology caused a revitalisation in the beginning of the 21st century […] in favour of the unrestricted proliferation of education for everybody around the globe,” (Ibid, p.18). As we entered the third decade of the century, the movement gained more momentum with more ‘openness’ terms coined. “Open Access, Open Content, Open Courses, Open Data, Open Design, Open Knowledge, Open Learning, Open License, Open Scholarship, Open Source, Open Standards, Open Teaching and Open Universities are given as examples of evolving-adaptive open approaches,” (Werth & Williams, 2022, p.5). International organisations and known universities like UNESCO and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Oxford University, for example, have emerged to endorse the ‘openness’ in education as well as science. Free online course materials (OpenCourseWare) and open GigaScience journal are practical endorsements by the two education and science institutions. As to UNESCO, following a number of international conferences, it issued two “Recommendations” of Open Educational Resources (OER) in 2019 (UNEXCO, 2022) and Open Science in 2021 (UNESCO, 2021). With more newcomers into the movement comes higher terminological debate. The two UNSECO’s Recommendations have helped defining ‘openness,’ there still questions that are yet to be settled. According to class 92022, p. 5), “the question remains: where should scholars put emphasis today? On the “Open” aspect? On the “Education” aspect? On “Open Education” as a construct and potential means of renewing education?” Atkins (2007) sees answers to this and similar questions in the future. To him, “[o]penness” is complex and not a black-and-white issue—a spectrum of degrees of resource openness is developing. The future holds opportunities and challenges for enriching and exploiting this spectrum,” (p. 28). We are not going to engage into such debate due the limite, practical purpose of this paper, as will be presented below. It should suffice for this purpose to add that research is an arena of science. Research, on the other hand, does not start from scratch, neither does it start by uneducated people. The research is initiated from knowledge acquired by researchers in school and university, i.e. through education. At the same time, research produces knowledge for learners and instructors in school and university, that is for education. Thus, it is a continuum in which education leads to science and science serves education in what Class (2022) describe as "knowledge society." As put by Inserm, “beginning from what is already known [education], scientists ask questions, construct hypotheses, and develop experiments that will generate new knowledge [education]” (Inserm, 2021). |
Overall objective
Be aware of Open Education and Open Science concepts and practices
Learning outcomes
- Identify key concepts and practices of open movement.
- Appraise examples of research practices from the openness perspective.
Method
The paper will explore how a convenient sample of research (neuroscience) labs are open. ‘Open’ here can operationally be defined as in the shown in the Openness Assessment Framework below.
The sample will be those labs returned from search using the main Internet search engines of Google and MS Bing to search for cognitive neuroscience research labs. It is a scientific field that should have no security and financial implications that may justify access restrictions.
Methodological procedures will include the following:
- Develop an openness analysis framework (OAF);
- Look up a convenient sample of cognitive neuroscience research labs (CNRLs) using Google and Bing search engines;
- List sample’s elements in a directory or catalogue form that can describe to others what each is about and guide them to how to reach out to it;
- Assess the sample of CNRLs using OAF; and
- Produce a taxonomic outline of openness in CNRLs’ research practices (expected result).
Evaluation
The evaluation of OERs & OEPs found will depend on a rubric underpinned by the sharing value. Sharing comes at the heart of all openness values when it encompasses all components of the subject matter like objectives or purposes, contents, method (methodology), tools, results and documentation. Therefore, preliminarily, the rubric can look as follows:
- Fully open: All objectives or purposes, contents, method (methodology/pedagogy), tools, results and publications are publicly shared.
- Almost fully open: All parts of the system, but objectives/purposes, are shared.
- 'Quite open: Content, results and publications are shared.
- Open a little: Only contents or publications are shared.
- Virtually closed: Nothing shared, but some titles or links.
- Closed: Nothing shared other than the names or titles of research project.
For illustration, these are a few preliminary examples
| Openness Level | Home | Unit | Lab | Publications | Projects |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open a little | Arizona State University | Dept of Psychology | Decision Neuroscience Laboratory | Has access links to full articles | Only titles |
| Virtually closed | Learning and Development Lab | Links to journals, but no access | Only titles | ||
| Open a little | Memory and Attention Control Lab | Has access links to full articles | Only titles | ||
| Quite open | University of Missouri | School of Medicine | Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory | Refers to government medicine library with almost all full articles are accessible | Shows progress and results of research (see example) |
| Closed | Boston Children's Hospital | Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience | The Wilkinson Laboratory for early language acquisition and cognition | No reference to any. | No reference to any. |
| Closed | The Nelson Laboratory for brain and behaviour development in infants and children | No reference to any | No reference to any. |
References
Inserm (2021). Research continuum. Online source available at https://www.inserm.fr/en/our-research/research-continuum/. Accessed on 20.12.2022.