OPEN KNOWLEDGE ACROSS BOUNDARIES –

A CASE-STUDY ON CONTROVERSIES

ANNE ALGERS, SENIOR LECTURER

Academia’s responsibility in times of fake news and knowledge resistance

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, COMMUNICATION AND LEARNING

• Providers of un-biased knowledge • Critical voice in societal debate• Ballance discussions in social media

Photo: Designed by Freepik

Changing role of academia

Education of the privileged

Education of the masses Collaboration with society

Used to be clear boundaries

GAPAcademia Society

Education

Education

OVERLAP

Open education allows boundary crossing

Boundaries

Boundaries are social constructions that define who are included and excluded from interactions

(Edwards & Kinti, 2010).

What is boundary crossing?

Boundary crossing can be seen as horizontal movementsof knowledge between multiple parallel activity contexts

(Engeström et al., 1995).

Photo: Alex Marsh

What is a boundary object?

• An object that is introduced to achieve boundary activities and to connect actors from different worlds (Star & Griesemer, 1989)

• An object that is generated through a process of boundary activities (Engeström et al., 1995)

Photo: Baruch

How can OER be used as boundary objects?• For knowledge sharing within and across disciplinary and

organizational boundaries

• For sharing of knowledge and values across nations or cultures

• For sharing of knowledge that used to be unrecognized or non-transperant with society

• For dealing with tensions?

Photo: OER_CC0 Public Domain

DISA is currently being translated into English

Controversial aspects

• Photos and video footage showing slaughter is not uncontroversial as such pictures can be perceived as aversive by some.

• The umbrella organizations for slaughter houses feared that such pictures would be used by animal rights groups to discredit abattoirs.

• Hence, threat was used to place the material behind passwords!

Controversial aspects

The OER is available at http://disa.slu.se

and can be accessed and used by anyone, including various course organizers.

A focus group study about boundary practices

• Two focus groups (even gender distribution; representatives from academia, NGO:s, authorities, and industry, 50% users of OER 50% non-users)

• Two hours discussions about OER and OEP in the subject area

• Video recorded discussions, transcribed in their fully length and analysed

• A scientific paper will be submitted for publication

Photo: Ivan Malkin, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Academia Industry

AuthorityNGO

Citizen/Consumer

• Transparency

• Participatory culture

Openness – focus group discussions mainly about

Transparency – results from the focus group study

1. Inclusiveness

2. Establish a counterweight to commentaries by lay

3. Users perceive a quality stamp

4. One common source to go to for whole society

5. A way to increase trust in science

6. Change of attitudes

7. Manage conflicts/dealing with tensions

Transparency – some excerpts-”Because this OER is very detailed it requires constant updating. We want tohave only one proper source to go to in case of conflict, and therefore it is important that this OER is constantly updated and of high quality”

-”What a lot of people see online – they don’t think that what they see is legal. When they get to know that this [handling of animals] is legal and that there is science behind it, it can create conflicts”

-“How should one handle [the culture] dimension in a material like this?... digging in a Swedish context is already a handful”

Participatory - results from the focus group study

1. The disputed nature of the knowledge produced

2. Creation of conflicts

3. Risk of mis-interpretations

4. Scarcity / small community

5. Time consuming to moderate polarised discussions

Participatory – some excerpts

-“It is important to have both citizens and scientist to inform each other what is fair and what is cruel”

-”Since [the specific OER] only has few users we cannot rely on this material to be self-repairing”

-”It is generally fairly difficult to achieve consensus with such an emotional topic…and often that is what hampers a constructive discussion”

-”we do not actively guide the public to [the OER], since we do not want to create conflict”.

OER for sharing secrets in the food industry across boundariesseems to have the potential to both resolve and create tensions!

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, COMMUNICATION AND LEARNING

Anne Algers, anne.algers@gu.se, @AlgersAnne