Weekly Reflection: Open Education Theories – Freedom, Responsibility, and the Hidden Burdens of Openness

Open Education aims to make learning more accessible, participatory, and flexible. Through OER (Open Educational Resources), Open Pedagogy, and learning spaces outside the LMS—like blogs, portfolios, and personal domains—Open Education challenges traditional, institution-controlled models of teaching. In theory, this approach sounds ideal: learners set their own goals, learn at their own pace, and take ownership of their growth. But as I reviewed this week’s materials and connected them to my own experience and my A1 inquiry, I realized that Open Education carries a double-sided reality. It offers freedom, but also shifts responsibility and risk onto learners in ways that can unintentionally deepen inequality.

1. Open Education assumes an “ideal self-regulated learner”—a model that rarely exists

The philosophy of Open Education relies heavily on the idea that learners can:

  • plan their own schedules
  • maintain long-term motivation
  • manage their attention
  • evaluate resources
  • stay consistent without external pressure

But realistically, even adult university students struggle with self-regulated learning. Not because they are lazy, but because:

  • modern university life is deadline-driven
  • students juggle part-time jobs, heavy workloads, and personal responsibilities
  • time-management and metacognitive skills are still developing
  • “learning at your own pace” is rarely possible

Open Education often assumes a level of independence and discipline that most learners are not yet supported to reach.

2. For younger learners, these issues become even more serious

Children and adolescents have less-developed self-regulation skills. They need structure, scaffolding, clear boundaries, and frequent feedback.

Open Education’s emphasis on autonomy can unintentionally create:

  • confusion
  • anxiety
  • lack of direction

So while the model seems equitable, in practice it may benefit only highly self-motivated students, while others fall behind. This is the same pattern observed in MOOCs, where fewer than 5.5% of learners finish a course despite the high level of “freedom” (Chuang & Ho, 2016).

More recent research shows the same dynamic. A 2024 comparative study reported that 30.31% of registered MOOC learners never began the course at all, and completion outcomes split sharply depending on learner intention. While the enrollment-based completion rate stood at 30.02%, learners who explicitly intended to finish achieved a much higher rate of 48.13%. This contrast illustrates how, despite an appearance of openness, MOOC structures continue to reward those with strong self-regulatory habits while offering little support for learners who struggle to maintain motivation (Celik & Cagiltay, 2024).

3. Digital environments make sustained focus extremely difficult

Speaking honestly, I often found myself pretending to watch online lectures while doing something else entirely.

With just one browser open, distractions are everywhere:

  • YouTube
  • social media
  • messaging apps
  • games
  • online shopping
  • notifications

This isn’t a personal moral failure—it’s how digital platforms are designed. Attention engineering makes distraction the default. Open Education, which relies even more on self-directed digital learning, unintentionally places learners in an environment where staying focused becomes a constant battle.

Crucially, we are expected to win this war without ever being trained for it. We were thrown into this battle alone with no manual on how to defend our focus. If even highly disciplined soldiers struggle to win the battle against themselves, it is cruel to force young students to overcome these temptations with absolutely no training.

4. Students will always find “workarounds”—a predictable response to unrealistic demands

Whether the assignment is traditional or open-ended, students always find ways to complete it with minimal friction:

  • Googling answers
  • asking AI tools like ChatGPT
  • reading summaries instead of full texts
  • getting explanations from Discord or group chats
  • submitting “performative” work that fulfills requirements without real learning

These aren’t just acts of cheating. They are adaptive responses to unrealistic demands.

Institutions can govern the procedures of learning, but not its instinct for escape. Learning gravitates toward any available opening—AI tools, hidden backchannels, improvised techniques. It resists containment. In the end, students follow that instinct: they find a way like every life form does.

If Open Education does not acknowledge this instinct, it risks becoming disconnected from how learning actually happens in digital spaces.

5. The Dual Nature of Open Education: Freedom as Both Empowerment and Burden

Open Education offers genuine strengths:

  • a voice and public space for learners
  • reduced dependence on restrictive LMS systems
  • opportunities for creative and collaborative work
  • improved access through open resources

However, every strength has a mirrored weakness:

  • Freedom becomes overwhelming without guidance
  • Autonomy becomes a burden when students lack support
  • Open learning expands choice but increases responsibility
  • The absence of structure can amplify procrastination and inequality
  • Digital openness amplifies distraction and inconsistency

Open Education is not a universally positive model—it benefits some learners while unintentionally disadvantaging others.

6. Personal experience: the freedom felt empowering, but also unsettling

While writing blogs and exploring open resources, I appreciated the freedom to express myself.
But at the same time, I often felt uncertain:

  • “Am I doing this correctly?”
  • “What exactly is the standard?”
  • “How much is enough?”
  • “Is my pace good enough?”

Without clear boundaries, I found myself procrastinating more, not less. And because everything depended on my own structure, the pressure felt heavier rather than lighter.

This made me realize that freedom is only empowering when proper scaffolding exists.
Without it, freedom becomes anxiety. Hearing that ‘everyone else got it except you’ is honestly terrifying.

7. Conclusion: Open Education is powerful—but only when its hidden burdens are acknowledged

Open Education is an important movement that pushes learning beyond institutional walls and encourages creativity, openness, and learner agency. However, its philosophy assumes an ideal learner who is perfectly self-regulated, intrinsically motivated, and digitally disciplined—an assumption that rarely matches reality.

Open Education simultaneously:

  • expands opportunity and increases pressure
  • democratizes content and risks widening the gap between learners
  • removes institutional control and shifts responsibility entirely onto the student

For Open Education to truly work, it needs a balanced approach that combines:

  • freedom with structure
  • autonomy with guidance
  • openness with realistic expectations
  • creativity with support

Most importantly, student silence or failure in open environments should not be interpreted as a personal flaw,
but as evidence that educational structures must better support the humans living inside them.

📚 References

Chuang, I., & Ho, A. (2016). HarvardX and MITx: Four Years of Open Online Courses — Fall 2012-Summer 2016. SSRN. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2889436

Celik, B. and Cagiltay, K. (2024) ‘Uncovering MOOC Completion: A Comparative Study of Completion Rates from Different Perspectives’, Open Praxis, 16(3), p. 445–456. https://openpraxis.org/articles/10.55982/openpraxis.16.3.606