In recent years, open education has gained significant interest among educational institutions, innovation leaders, and within popular media. In this study, we use Twitter social media data to examine the discourses surrounding openness as well as the people who participate in the discourse around openness. By targeting hashtags related to open education, we gathered the most extensive dataset of historical open education tweets to date (n = 178,304 tweets and 23,061 users) and conducted a mixed methods analysis of openness from 2009 to 2016. We find that the movement towards openness in education has a variety of meanings for different people and has evolved significantly over time. Findings show that the diversity of participants has varied somewhat over time and that the discourse has predominantly revolved around open resources, although there are signs that an increase in interest around pedagogy, teaching, and learning is emerging.
Assistant Professor, Instructional Psychology & Technology, Brigham Young University
Dr. Royce Kimmons is an assistant professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University and is the founder of EdTechBooks.org. He has worked in the realm of teacher education for 11 years and has presented and published widely on issues related to teacher... Read More →
Dr. Michael Paskevicius is Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Victoria. His research focuses on learning design practices, the development of digital literacies, and supporting personal knowledge management in an environment of... Read More →
