Among the key innovations in the field of education has been the shift to the distance and open learning which has been made possible with the rise in the level of networking across the world. This is marked with some of the approaches that educators and curriculum developers are implementing to ensure ease access and effective teaching and learning process. Advancement in technology has effectively affected various approaches on teaching and learning where learners prefer to learn at home as well as their place of work. (Read Wiley & Hilton 2018). Learning now go on through the social media platforms like twitter, Facebook and YouTube which are essential sections of for interaction especially among the youths who interact more with internet and social media at large. From this article I have unleashed a further understanding 0of an open pedagogy in learning which is influenced by freedom to learn in various ways without being in contact with the teacher.
Most students find it hard to share their expression and their take while in class because of their nature of being inferior and unable to confront their fellow students, but the entry of an open and distance learning provides open systems that impress the insights of every student regardless of their level of understanding. The current approach to education has had a unique view where social and open platforms are not just meant for communication and interaction rather influences education (Puspitasari & Oetoyo 2018). With the entry of the Open Educational Resources (OER), an open pedagogy has come to outplay other ways of educational practices. The OER-enabled pedagogy emphasizes on the need to practice learning in context to the 5R permissions which is an essential characteristic of OER. Researchers have produced enough evidence that give credit to this system of learning which seems to be taking over the way education should be accessed in line with the change in technology.
This open pedagogy incorporates various challenges that face the process of education for example the current outbreak of COVID-19 has called for institutions to develop a distance and open learning for their students to access education (Simpson 2018). This is because of the demand to stay at home and observe social distancing, this has benefited most institutions that were well established with the distance learning format but has been a challenge for institutions that lack a well-established system of interaction for distance learning (Bozkurt 2019). Open platforms like now Twitter helps learners to express themselves more and develop an intrinsic motivation to discover more knowledge on a certain topic. An open system of interaction allows every individual to express themselves just like they do on twitter group conversation.
Despite this freedom, twitter can also harm the student since they may not work or response in accordance to the directives given by the tutor but according to the way they wish it to be. Twitter is a platform where one develops a conversation with himself then others follow hence it may be challenging for a learner to adhere to the education matters, attention can be diverted very easily with the use of twitter (Read Wiley & Hilton 2018). Twitter can be used to increase access to education by developing education programs and learning tweets since this is a social platform where most youths use to interact and thus it will be easy for them to access these matters titled as “TRENDING NOW” where most people click to follow the latest trending stories in various sections in the world. Twitter can enable the development of OER-Enabled pedagogy since it is also open and unified platform for distance and open learning.
References:
Bozkurt, A. (2019). From distance education to open and distance learning: A holistic evaluation of history, definitions, and theories. In Handbook of Research on Learning in the Age of Transhumanism (pp. 252-273). IGI Global.
Puspitasari, K. A., & Oetoyo, B. (2018). Successful Students in an Open and Distance Learning System. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 19(2), 189-200.
Wiley, D. & Hilton, J. (2018). Defining OER-enabled Pedagogy. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 19(4).
Simpson, O. (2018). Supporting students in online, open and distance learning. Routledge.