Recent research has revealed the "Global Collaborator Mindset" (GCM) (Lindsay & Redmond, 2022) as critical for educators to develop online global collaborative teaching abilities. The GCM comprises four key attributes: Connection, Openness, Innovation and Autonomy. This presentation focuses on the Openness attribute and its importance for globally collaborative and open educational practices aligning with the core idea that "open is everyone's business." While technology provides access to networks, cultivating an open mindset serves as the fundamental enabler for educators to fully engage in open global collaboration and radically transform pedagogies beyond conventional classroom-based teaching paradigms. The Openness attribute challenges assumptions that online connectivity alone fosters open educational practices. Study findings indicate educators require developing this open perspective, coupled with specific skillsets, to become truly capable open global collaborators.
Openness as a mindset can be explicitly defined, intentionally cultivated, and applied through iterative learning experiences over time. It represents the critical disposition explaining why certain educators willingly embrace and effectively implement radically open and collaborative pedagogical approaches. As engagement with the Openness mindset deepens through practice, this attribute becomes further ingrained within educators' professional identities as open practitioners.
Central to the Openness mindset is believing in the inherent value of transparency, openly contributing ideas, and collaboratively co-creating new knowledge together with others across boundaries and within "flattened" learning environments that transcend traditional classroom walls. Openness involves prioritising the collaborative process itself as the core purpose of teaching and learning - moving beyond one-way content delivery to continual, inclusive knowledge-building with diverse global audiences.
Key aspects and applications of the Openness mindset include: leveraging digital technologies to create, share resources openly and fluidly online; redesigning teaching approaches around new student-driven, participatory pedagogies based on the belief that education fundamentally expands beyond mastering set content; adopting an "anytime, anywhere" stance where collaborative co-learning happens continually across contexts; intentionally deconstructing traditional instructor-student hierarchies to position all as co-learners collaboratively building understanding together; integrating new radically open practices into learning environments; and cultivating empathy, receptivity and deep respect for diverse cultural perspectives and ways of knowing.
The Openness mindset provides an essential conceptual model for transforming what it means to teach and learn in the digital age - nurturing the open dispositions required to embrace globally collaborative, networked educational practices. Specific open concepts crucial for "everyone's business" include:
- Mindset - The core beliefs, perspectives and dispositions that underpin openness as an educational philosophy and enable open pedagogical practices.
- Collaboration - The process of openly sharing ideas, resources and collectively co-creating new knowledge together with others across contexts.
- Flat Learning - Deconstructing traditional hierarchies and power structures so that everyone has an equal opportunity to engage as open co-learners.
- Openness - A holistic approach embracing radically transparent, collaborative pedagogies focused on learning as an inclusive, continual process of open knowledge construction. Cultivating an open participatory mindset oriented around collaboration and flat, inclusive co-learning is everyone's business - essential for transforming teaching into an open educational practice fostering global connectedness for our modern, networked world.
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[Session 3E]: Practice and Policy in OEReferencesLindsay, J. & Redmond, P. (2022). Online collaborative learning starts with the global collaborator mindset. Educational Studies.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03055698.2022.2133957Author KeywordsMindset, Collaboration, Flat Learning, Openness
