Hi Jeffrey – many thanks for including us in this discussion! We have certainly read and discussed Martin Oliver’s paper — as we have explored most of the papers in that special issue of Learning, Media & Technology (2015, v40, n3) with the theme “Critical Approaches to Openness”. It is an important journal issue for all interested in this theme – it also contains papers by Richard Edwards and Lesley Gourlay which we mentioned in our NLC2016 workshop.

Frances has begun some research to try to find out the extent to which these papers are referenced in the Networked Learning and Open Education fields. I’ve just searched for Frances’s post about this but cannot put my finger on it just now – perhaps Frances might add the link here.

We drew on much of this critical work in our own NLC2016 papers and tried to extend it in specific ways. For example, Oliver and other authors in this LMT issue highlight many important issues regarding openness. In my NLC2016 paper, I address some of the concerns that Gourlay raises, for example, and note that they are particular critiques of OER, but do not necessarily apply to OEP or open pedagogy. “Open” is a broad construct; any claims for or critiques of openness must make very clear the particular definition(s) of open education being used.

There is so much more critical work to be done — delighted to be doing this alongside you, Jeffrey 🙂