Open Learning Experience Bingo

Abstract

Definitions of openness and open education abound, but with so many, how can we use them effectively to explore the openness of assignments, activities, classes, or programs? Open Learning Experience Bingo is a game that a group of collaborators have created to give people a way to surface and discuss the many different ways that educational experiences can “open” beyond traditional practices. Each bingo card includes boxes containing possible “ingredients” in a learning experience, and radiating from the center of each box, “dimensions” of openness along which an ingredient might be opened. You “play” bingo by reading or hearing about a learning experience and marking areas on the bingo card that you think the experience opens. The game incorporates broad concepts of openness and seeks not to measure the openness of learning experiences, but to identify and spark discussion about areas in which experiences are opening — or might be opened further. As artifacts, completed bingo cards display a sort of “heat map” of openness that can be used to compare and contrast bingo evaluations of various learning experiences.