I have to admit that this topic didn’t really open up. In our own PBL group work we discussed about instructions, or steps, one needs to take in order to make an open course. Most of the two weeks our approach seemed quite chaotic but in the end the team ended up with good overall look at things you need to consider when creating an open summer school and resources you might want to consider that are free to use. One major challenge is that our University favors its own LMS over an open one, which make participating difficult and the integration of open courses to one place. This is because of security and continuity reasons. I guess if you are making a one time summer school, you could just utilize all free and open platforms and programs you can find. Then again, if you have in mind that someone else is going to be teaching the course you made in 10 years, maybe it is a safer bet to use your university’s LMS that everyone knows how to use. Sometimes the free platforms get shut down as well or are not maintained. Then there is also the issue of personal data security of these free platforms.

Now looking what others have done, openness can mean also the transparency between a student and a teacher for example. Openness has also a lot to do with copyright matters, since if you are using a photo from the internet in your closed course, you can do as you want since it a “private space”. As soon as you open the course, then it is a public space.

Already in topic 1, I noticed I had a blind spot in copyright and licencing,  or at least I would want to be more sure about what material I can use and how. I didn’t feel like I learned much more but I wouldn’t say it was because of lack of effort or good discussion on the matter but more about copyright and licencing being an unclear field. The basic mantra is understandable – do not copy what belongs to someone else. Remember to reference to the work of others when you are using it as a source. But where do you draw the line if you make you own illustration of a graph or a photo? What part of it is yours and what the original creators?