What sort of “open” do you want?

There may have been a time when it was, when all the forms of openness blended easily into one indistinguishable lump, but that’s not the case now. Not only are there different aspects of openness, but I’m beginning to feel that some may be mutually exclusive with others, or at least prioritising some mean less emphasis on others. What do I mean by this? Well I could list the different types of openness in education: OERs, MOOCs, open access, open scholarship, etc. But instead it’s more useful to consider the motivation for openness, why has someone adopted an open approach in the first place? Here are some possibilities:

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