History of Open Education – Why is it All CAI?

In Siemens & McGreal cMOOC Open Education course (##Oped12), there is a link to a history of open education timeline that provides some fodder for education theorists.  The common thread here is a necessity for computer-based technology.  Certainly, without digital communication tools that allow what we today would call the remixing of content, creating work towards an open goal would prove difficult.  But not impossible.  In an earlier blog post, I went over Randy Garrison’s idea that distance education and computer-aided instruction/online education exist wholly separate from one another.  My logical leap from that article is that the xMOOC follows distance education theory and pedagogy, while cMOOCs come from the CAI camp.  Putting such a lens on the history of open education, this specific timeline is bias toward CAI and ignores the contributions of earlier media to the open movement, specifically the early days of radio.  While radio was used throughout much of the world until the 1980s as a platform for education, its place as open source was firmly rooted in the early 20th Century before regulation of airwaves and licenses.

And such a bias makes me wonder how much of our open education discussion comes from this CAI lens.  Where in earlier history can we see the open ed movement, and how can that help us determine a future for education?  The sharing and repositioning of resources and knowledge is not unique to the computer.