The Significance of Education Technology through Open Education
In this digital era, people can find any resource for their projects easily. They can find the resources from YouTube, SlideShare, or any open resource in the internet, and nowadays, the digital process is more advanced, so it is possible to gain material lectures from such a good higher education.The present condition is very different from what people faced previously, when people just gain material lectures in university library or text books, or find relevant research on paid journals. You can find phenomenon that tells about the advance of technology in education, through the story of Henry Reich. But, one book that can capture the advance of education technology at its best is written by Martin Weller.
Martin Weller in his The Battle for Open: How Opennes Won and Why It Doesn’t Feel Like Victory shows many data about the Open education, and the results are analyzed as the form of Open movement. However, great challenges are kept ahead, such as the important implementation of Open Education policies and how to transform this Open education from informal practice to formal practice.
Even though, there is still great challenges in aligning the importance of Open education with our formal practice nowadays, but, here are Open Education platforms that I previously used and these platforms offer material lectures from top higher education in the world. You can use these platforms to accomplish your needs in gaining good materials.
EdX
Through its profile, edX claims as one of the organizations that has a purpose to “increase access to high-quality education for everyone, everywhere”, and moreover, this organization also has a purpose to investigate how students learn through “variety of novel tools and techniques” which are offered by faculty or university. Interestingly, this organization claims as nonprofit organization which has no attention to gain profit from the students.
Coursera
Coursera “provides universal access to the world’s best education” and “offers courses online for anyone to take.” As Weller states on his books, he mentions that Coursera is one of commercial players in Open education. However, after I investigate this site, I assume that it has no attention in how people learn through online courses, but we can agree that Coursera offers more courses than other platforms.
To sum up, I argue that Coursera offers more choices for students in choosing courses than edX, but edX offers material courses that developed from accountable research which benefit students in acknowledging current research in the world. So, people can choose both platforms in accomplishing their needs in learning, but most importantly, Open Education hopefully can achieve its mission in increasing access to courses as well as improving human quality through education.
References:
Weller, M. (2014). The Battle for Open: How openness won and why it doesn’t feel like victory. London: Ubiquity Press.
https://www.edx.org/about-us
https://www.coursera.org/about/