The Participatory Open: Can We Build a Pro-Social / Pro-Societal Web? [O-127] Members : OER19

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Wed, Apr 10 2019, 3:00pm – 4:00pm

Authors: Bonnie Stewart, Lawrie Phipps, and Dave Cormier

Room: Lecture Theatre

Theme: Back to basics

Type: Open spaces (30mins)

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Description

Session Description

Can open networks and participatory practices be used to re/build towards digital platforms and policies that centre equity and the public good? Focused on the question of “open for whom?,” this conversation explores the idea of a web that works for humans, and its relationship to open practice.

The session explores the rise of misinformation and totalizing platforms, and the logics of business and media underpinning these emergent realities. Today, digital and open spaces are being weaponized at individual, corporate, and governmental levels. “Digital by default” policies undermine social program participation (Alston, 2018), whilst pervasive surveillance and predatory practices are normalized. Trolling and bots are regular features of social landscapes, and people are often hesitant to engage online in sharing ideas or fighting the echo chamber.

This session posits an alternate logic of open participatory education, grounded in adult education histories and contemporary open practices. Open networks and practice (Green et al, 2018) can potentially seed meaningful change online and off. The conversation will examine the possibilities of open and participatory practice for building towards a more equitable information ecosystem and society. It will bring forward the idea of a pro-social web (Hengstler, 2017; Cormier, 2018) and reach beyond individual sociality to questions of digital public infrastructure and of the public good. Facilitators will also frame core challenges for a pro-social and pro-societal web, including the enclosure of educational open practice by techno-solutionist systems, and the problem of the Extraction Imperative (Erickson, 2017) that governs the networked commercial platforms on which much open education practice is based.

This will be a scaffolded and engaged discussion, with opportunities for connecting ideas to practice, and for generating and gathering new ideas, understandings, and relationships. A “cafe approach” will be used, including brainstorming, templates, and mapping deployed to capture input and generate next steps towards a pro-social and pro-societal open web.

References
Alston, P. (2018). Statement on Visit to the United Kingdom, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. United Nations. Available at: https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Poverty/EOM_GB_16Nov2018.pdf [Accessed 30 Nov. 2018].

Cormier, D. (2018). Making Change in Education II – Complexity vs. Lean Six Sigma (learning isn’t like money). [Blog] Dave’s Educational Blog. Available at: http://davecormier.com/edblog/2018/11/18/managing-change-in-education-complexity-vs-lean-six-sigma-learning-isnt-like-money/ [Accessed 30 Nov. 2018].

Erickson, K. (2018). The Future Of Network Effects: Tokenization and the End of Extraction. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/public-market/the-future-of-network-effects-tokenization-and-the-end-of-extraction-a0f895639ffb [Accessed 30 Nov. 2018].

Green, C., Illowsky, B., Wiley, D., Ernst, D., Young, L., DeRosa, R. and Jhangiani, R. (2018). 7 Things You Should Know About Open Education: Practices. EDUCAUSE. Available at: https://library.educause.edu/resources/2018/7/7-things-you-should-know-about-open-education-practices [Accessed 30 Nov. 2018].

Hengstler, J. (2018). Education system that supports a society where people are able to live with & use technology in prosocial ways for continued human growth & development. [online] WordPress.viu.ca. Available at: https://wordpress.viu.ca/cyberhumanity/ [Accessed 30 Nov. 2018].

Session content

This session will be an open space emergent conversation, led by two experienced facilitators. We will use a combination of digital and analog methods to frame and organize the conversation, including projected images and questions and graphic organizing templates for each table, as well as a collection sheet for input. Framing concepts will be introduced in three short provocations, one remote, then table conversations will be coordinated via the graphic organizers and sticky notes, and facilitators will gather and theme input and encourage participants to connect digitally for ongoing discussion and action. Ideally this would be a 60 minute conversation, but could be done in a 30 minute session.

References

Alston, P. (2018). Statement on Visit to the United Kingdom, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. United Nations. Available at: https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Poverty/EOM_GB_16Nov2018.pdf [Accessed 30 Nov. 2018].

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