Is your brain open?

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Today I participated in a webinar presentation conducted by Bea de los Arcos from the GO_GN network, with two Canadian open educators and researchers, Connie Blomgren and Verena Roberts. The topic was K-12 Open learning: An overview and dialogue. This topic is of particular interest to me since this is a potential direction for my PhD dissertation, but also ties into the upcoming course on Cognition and Learning. While listening to the conversation and content of the webinar, Verena shared an article of research that caught my attention, by Bronwyn Hegarty titled Attributes of open pedagogy: A model for using open educational resources. The framework Hegarty suggests is linked into the Multiply K-12 OER on the Athabasca BOLT site. The image and related information are Creative Commons licensed CC BY SA, they can be reproduced here, with attribution and a link back to their location.

image of model with 8 linksHere is the framework image. The key features of open pedagogy that also link to cognition and learning include

  • creativity
  • sharing ideas
  • connected
  • contribution
  • reflection
  • review

Each of these, in some way, link to cognitive processes and how the brain works to make sense, attend to ideas, work toward remembering, and building fuller understanding of topics.

Does this mean that the brain has a predisposition to an open mindset? Are our minds open by default? Can we learn to be open?

Something worth examining in the coming weeks, to see where open mindsets and open thinking connects to the topics in the 6411 course – working memory, background knowledge, processing, abstraction, knowledge transfer, automaticity, expertise, individual learning, intelligence, and motivation. This will add to my schema of open education, open practices, and open pedagogies.

To hear more about this open pedagogy framework, from B. Hegarty, as you can listen to this podcast, which is also posted on the Multiply K-12 website.

References:

de los Arcos, B. (2018, August 29). K-12 Open learning: An overview and dialogue. [weblog post]. Retreived from http://go-gn.net/webinars/k-12-open-learning-an-overview-and-dialogue/

Hegarty, B. (2015). Attributes of open pedagogy: A model for using open educational resources. Educational Technology. Retreived from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Ed_Tech_Hegarty_2015_article_attributes_of_open_pedagogy.pdf