http://www.fininformatica.it/wp/open-courses-certificates-and-accred

This article by Jeffrey Young started a quite large discussion about open courses, more or less hacked certificates, accreditation of informal learning etc.

I feel so much implicated, since Jeff specifically mentioned me as a case of a person who, after having attended the almost famous (or should I say notorious? ) OpenEd2007 course, received a home-made certificate from the instructor (with some doubt, as Jeff says, also on the legitimacy of this act…), put it in his/her CV and/or used  it as credit for his/her  official education curriculum.

Yes, I did exactly as described. I, and my PhD supervisor agreed, attended that great course, made all assignments and gained that certificate.

Now I see many people wondering if it was legal, if it was ethical, if it is sustainable as a model for open learning.

But I think they are missing the point.

It seems the problem is in that somehow “unauthorized certificate”. They say “how orrible! People are using informal learning for credit in formal learning paths!!”. The certificate become an evidence of this sacrilegious contamination between two worlds, formal and informal. It seems that everybody is in favour of informal learning, provided that it doesn’t disturb the more important, more recognized formal learning!

So, if the problem is the certificate, I can well give up to it! Because, and this is the point, the real value of that open courses (and other ones, such as the current CCK08, to wchich I’m participating without any form of accreditation…) is NOT the certificate!

I learned a lot from OpenEd 2007, and all my connections, blog posts, comments, collective works, presentations, articles related to that experience, are still out there as tangible proofs of this learning. So I could equally put the OpenEd course in my CV and could ask to my supervisor to evaluate all that activity for credit in my PhD, also without that piece of paper!

Maybe informal learning accreditation could not be an insourmantable barrier, if only we don’t petrify on bureaucratic details.