Open Education 2015

Multi-access learning (Irvine, 2009; Irvine, 2010; Irvine, Code, & Richards, 2013) is the expansion of mainstream brick-and-mortar campus face-to-face courses into online modalities without creating a separate stream of online offerings. Once a course is in part online, the synergies between having choice of modalities and opportunities for supporting diverse and concurrent learning pathways are considerable. New flexibilities can inform and influence new pedagogies to transform pre-existing beliefs about online and open. For today's learners, there is less "distinction between face-to-face and virtual," which may lead to a greater acceptance and demand for online learning modalities compared to previous generations (Mulder, 2011, para. 5). It is hopeful the next step is for less distinction between online and open.

In this session, the multi-access framework will be reviewed, along with its affordances. We will also report on instructor perspectives. The instructors of closed versions of multi-access courses were interviewed regarding their course experiences and their perceptions about closed and open online pedagogy. As open culture begins to pervade post-secondary campuses, there is a growing need to understand the practices and processes successful instructors enact in these open environments to facilitate community, deal with issues of control and power, and to implement successful strategies for learning design in open modalities. In addition, in order to mainstream open education, the inhibiting factors preventing instructors from traversing out of closed practices need to be identified and overcome.