Abstract:

This paper proposes a framework of Openness in Education regarding Educational Resources, Infrastructure, Participants, Educational Institution and Outside Environment across ten Capabilities plus the Time and Place dimensions. Then it applies this framework and evaluates the Openness of several Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The results reveal that they lack Openness at a large extent.

The concept of Open Education relies on the idea that the world's knowledge is a public good. The United Nations (U.N.) Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free”. Consequently, open education is a human right and education should be free and open. However, there is a lot of ambiguity what it means free and open education. A lot of attempts have been made in order to define Openness in Education. However, there is still confusion since Openness is a broad, abstract, general and complex concept that encompasses many meanings. So, the specification of Openness in Education is not an easy task.

Recently, open Educational Resources (OERs) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have attracted a lot of attention. These resources include educational content, objects, articles, books, presentations, case studies, videos, music, tasks, assignments, assessments, tests, learning maps, syllabus, curriculum, courses, pedagogies, strategies, methods, designs, software, applications, tools, data, and learning management systems, among others. However, Openness of MOOCs and OERs has multiple dimensions, and each dimension has multiple levels (degrees). This paper aims at presenting a framework to describe the dimensions of Openness in MOOCs and OERs.

In order to construct a framework for Open Education in MOOCs and OERs, we first examine the following:
What (or Who) is Open: Educational Resources, Infrastructure, People, Educational Institution, Outside Environment,
To Whom is it Open: to People, Educational Institution, Outside Environment,
When is it Open: anytime, during specific times,
Where is it Open: anywhere, at specific locations.

Then the paper defines the Openness of Educational Resources, Infrastructure, People, Educational Institution, and Outside Environment across ten Capabilities plus the Time and Place dimensions. Based on this model, the paper develops an appropriate questionnaire and evaluates the Openness of several MOOCs on Language Learning. The results reveal that they lack Openness at a large extent.

Keywords:

Evaluation, Massive Open Online Courses, Language Learning, Open Education, Open Educational Resources, Openness.