I have been using this blog as a bit of a parking lot to help articulate some ideas and learning that arise as I consider MOOCs. A spot for the interesting things that come up but that are not part of my final inquiry and I just want to set aside for a bit hopefully to come back to. Behind the scenes I have been attempting to focus on the democratisation of learning, with an emphasis on openness and how this relates to MOOCs. The following is the list of literature I am drawing from thus far to support my more focused efforts with the top four references looking at democratisation of education and MOOCs as topics and the the remaining used to look more closely at openness in MOOCs specifically.

Democratistation of Education & MOOCs

Bondarenko, Y. & Kozulin, Y. (1991) The Democratization of education: basic principles. Higher Education in Europe. 16(1)74-78
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000093679.locale=en

Biesta, G.(2009).Sporadic Democracy: Education, Democracy, and the Question of Inclusion.(Katz, M.S., Biesta, G. Ed.) Education, Democracy, and the Moral Life(pp.101-112). Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8626-7_8

Davies, L. (2002). Possibilities and Limits for Democratisation in Education. Comparative Education.38(3)251-266
https://doi.org/10.1080/0305006022000014124

Openness & MOOCs

Cormier, D., & Siemens, G. (2010). Through the Open Door: Open Courses as Research, Learning, and Engagement. EDUCAUSE Review, 45(4),30–39.
https://er.educause.edu/articles/2010/8/through-the-open-door-open-courses-as-research-learning-and-engagement

Littlejohn, A., Hood, N. (2018). Reconceptualising Learning in the Digital Age. SpringerBriefs in Education. Springer, Singapore.

Rodriguez, O. (2013). The concept of openness behind c and x-MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Open Praxis, 5(1), 67-73. International Council for Open and Distance Education. Retrieved May 18, 2022 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/130655/

Veletsianos, G. (Ed.). (2016). Emergence and innovation in digital learning : Foundations and applications. Athabasca University Press.
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/royalroads-ebooks/reader.action?docID=4538154&ppg=160

I think some more resources about MOOCs and openness specifically will be needed and I will update this list as I go along. One thing worth noting about this process of the critical inquiry for myself is I attended a presentation by Rajiv Jhangiani and Robin De Rosa that Douglas College hosted online last week called Frameworks for Going Open: Human-Centred Futures for Higher Education and a number of sessions at the the Otessa conference this week and both are influencing my thinking around openness and how expansive it can be. I find these new ways of considering openness good practice and good for my learning but it is influencing my drafting of the final product for this paper as I will need to really define openness in this inquiry and work within that definition I present. I am in a murky place right now with openness and how I think of it. The definition will really be important to how I lay out the rest of my findings so that is my next challenge in this inquiry, to hone in on the definition of openness I will be working with which right now is evolving and changing.