Group Admins
Description
The quest for governance models suited for specific needs of open education (in healthcare) is multi-facetted and can be viewed as a ‘wicked problem’. Wicked problems are characterized as having multiple stakeholders with different viewpoints, system changes that address one aspect will influence other aspects of the problem, and generally there is no stopping rule or final solution. Classical ways to problem solving like blueprint thinking will not work for this kind of issues. The best way to address a wicked problem is to fix one aspect in a short-cycle approach – evaluate the effect and move forward from there. Notions from complexity theory turn out to fit well to the complex nature of wicked problems (Eoyang & Holladay, 2013; Mason, 2014).
The case presented is a project for content curation and reuse of OERs in medical curricula in university medical centers and setting up local and national governance for the system. After careful evaluation of the multi-facetted problem context it was decided to define the situation as a wicked problem and act accordingly.
The presentation will focus on how the problem space was approached with methodology from the ‘wicked problem’ viewpoint and how this influenced the evolution of the governance ecosystem. On the national level this involves a content curation infrastructure and content curation services (Kerres & Heinen, 2015; Kuipers, 2012). On the institutional level the focus is more on implementation in the curriculum (open content redesign; Lloyd & Mukherjee, 2014) and facilitating adoption by teachers. The role of university libraries and educational expertise centers will be discussed. Finally, the difference between governance models for closed and open education, and the transition from ‘governance for openness’ to ‘open governance’ in dealing with complexity will be addressed for this case.
Eoyang, G., Holladay, R. (2013) Adaptive action: leveraging uncertainty in your organization. Stanford CA: Stanford university press
Mason, M. (2014) Complexity theory in education governance: initiating and sustaining systemic change. Oslo, UNESCO International Bureau of Education
Kerres, M.; Heinen, M. (2015) Open Informational Ecosystems: The Missing Link for Sharing Educational Resources. IRRODL, Vol 16, No 1
Lloyd, M.; Mukherjee, M. (2014) Wicked problems in designing open online learning. In Proceedings of World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications 2014, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), Tampere, Finland, pp. 1347-1360.
Kuipers, E. (2012) Content curation–a new way of monitoring the „Truth “. In: trend report open education 2012, Utrecht SURF.
