@article{1c1e19662e6c44858d93e873593eed53,
title = "Open education in closed-loop systems: Enabling closures and open-loops",
abstract = "University systems maintain prohibitive closures that constitute a closed-loop system: opaque academic practices, control of what counts as knowledge, financial and social exclusion, and the perpetuation of privilege. Yet this closed-loop system is also governed by adherence to values around education as a public good, openness, and authenticity, and education as a vehicle for social mobility. The closures and openings created with such systems are in tension. Open education in universities is entwined in these tensions. In this paper, we differentiate between prohibitive closures and enabling closures. We define enabling closures as closed loops of activity that allow for openings both at the boundaries of the university and within. It is through these enabling closures that universities can adhere to open education as accepted policy and practice. As such, in this paper we explore how open education sits in tension with closed technological and increasingly commercialized educational infrastructures in higher education.",
keywords = "digital education, open education, open access, open source, higher Education, systems theory",
author = "Michael Gallagher and James Lamb",
note = "Funding Information: The second form is in the transformation of the structures themselves and the actors involved. This second form inevitably involves a boundary crossing as these structures and actors are not always strictly educational, but rather educationally adjacent. Nor are they accessible to all. Examples of this, harkening to the open access discussion above, is Plan S, which mandates that results from research funded by public grants, provided by the national and European research councils and funding bodies that comprise COAlition Sopen access journals or on compliant open platforms. Many research funding bodies have signed on to Plan S and as such universities are now, to greater or lesser degrees, being governed by its mandates. This is notable insofar as where academics can publish (Frank et al., ; Moore, ), when seen through this systemic lens of closed-loop systems, it stands as an enabling closure that emerged from systemic work on overall process transformation. Open loops were deliberately introduced to transform the operating conditions of academic publishing practice, and then these open loops were consolidated as closed loops of institutional and sector practice. While open access to research is but one small strand of the overall open education body of work, it stands as an illustrative one for noting how open and closed loops can speak to one another. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.",
year = "2023",
doi = "10.1080/01587919.2023.2267475",
language = "English",
volume = "44",
pages = "620--636",
journal = "Distance Education",
issn = "0158-7919",
publisher = "Routledge",
number = "4",
}