The hidden curriculum of open education

Over the last years, a variety of initiatives have globally proliferated that offer Open Education (OE). OE provides both freely distributed information as well as freely distributed (open) courses (MOOCs) to educators and students, in view of eliminating institutional and economical barriers to education. What is presently lacking, however, is an integrated framework identifying the precise role and meaning of OE in higher education. In order to develop such a general framework, the project scrutinizes digital platforms that distribute and provide OE (taking into account visuals, design, software, code, language, etc.). The project’s specific objectives are a) to classify the operations and mechanisms of OE platforms in order to b) identify their official, and particularly, their hidden curriculum. To that effect, the project will devise innovative research methods that combine a quantitative with a qualitative approach, and that are particularly appropriate to analyze digital forms of (open) education.

Keywords:Open Education, Hidden curriculum, Software studies, Qualitative website analysis, Visual network analysis, Commons, MOOCs

Disciplines:Education, culture and society, Psychological methods, Mathematical and quantitative methods, General pedagogical and educational sciences, Social theory and sociological methods, Political theory and methodology, Education curriculum, Education systems, Specialist studies in education, Other pedagogical and educational sciences