I was asked to submit a chapter proposal into a coming book focused upon "Open Learning and Formal Credentialing in Higher Education: Curriculum Models and Institutional Policies." The writing of this chapter fits very well into my OnPhD work; in particular, my skills and knowledge development and my increased commitment to publishing my work.
Curriculum models that incorporate credentials for open and lifelong learning
My understanding of open is that anyone can gain entry; like an open door. Openness also means there is no barrier, other than identifying yourself. Even then, you may still enter a truly open space anonymously. This means that an open environment has no fee for entry and no security guard checking you on the way in. I believe open learning is no different, people should be able to learn wherever, whenever, with any and all resources (copyrighted or otherwise) they choose. Having a more knowledgeable and skilled population, makes open learning good for all communities, regions, countries, and the planet as a whole.
I believe life-long learning encourages people to acknowledge that they will learn for their whole lives. People need to commit to learning new things to assist and encourage them in being better friends, neighbors, community members, employees, bosses and more engaged in their own lives. Life-long learning encourages people to pursue life-long passions and interests.
Given this understanding of open and the belief in life-long learning, people should drive toward entering into their own learning with reckless abandon with a disregard for conventional restraints toward accessing the people, materials and resources available for their learning. Life-long learners should be bold and create their own personal curriculum and attach open credentials to their learning whenever milestones are achieved within their learning journey.
This book chapter will explore a model for mapping out a personalized curriculum, creating learning plans and attaching digital badges into this curriculum and learning plans. The topic of focus for this chapter will be "Curriculum models that incorporate credentials for open and lifelong learning". The curriculum development model it will follow is described in this blogs previous post titled "The self-determined learner".
A growing list of references for the writing of this book chapter are;
