ONL journey - the bumpy road of K.S.

Collaboration, is it really that hard? Sometimes it is hard to change our habits, but anyway sometimes it is really worth trying. That is the thing with collaboration. Almost no one knows what it is about, or people have a foggy vision of collaboration. They rather think of cooperation (when saying “of course we collaborate” in noble words), divide the tasks among people and then stick the pieces into one coherent/incoherent whole. And collaboration is more than that, it is “…an essential part of how we need to operate to be successful in today’s world” (1). The world evolves, so should we. From one of the articles - “when cooperating, people perform together (co-operate) while working on selfish yet common goals” (2), while during collaboration people should forget about their own goals and work on the single shared goal and should share the same values . And here each voice matters, meaning that when someone would leave the group, the balance would change. The group wou...

Openness is a subject that evokes different feelings – like a closed can without the label, you don't know what is inside and what to expect and when you decide to open it, everything could happen. And in addition the edges could be sharp. But what could fall out of the OPENNESS can? Collaboration, open education, open educational resources, open textbooks, creative commons, sharing, globalization, unlimited access, e-learning, knowledge and many many others. The question is how we want to manage the cans content? For sure knowledge and information should be dealt with responsibility. E-learning courses, all MOOCs should be made available to everyone free of charge? It depends – making courses can be a way to earn money for living, then why resign getting paid for it (some governmental or EU funds could be thought of)? Collaboration? But to what extent? And is it possible to cross all the barriers (also those existing only in your head)? How hard it is to become open? For s...