Accomplishing open and flexible education in higher education through digital media

Jean A Saludadez
University of the Philippines Open University
Los Baños, the Philippines

Open universities are known for their provision of open and flexible education. This paper argues that open universities can do so without compromising the ideals of higher education through the agency of digital media. The framework — a theory drawn from the organizational communication field that explains how one can act from a distance — assumes that action is shared between human and non-human agents and that the ultimate origin of what is happening in a given interaction is not the participants and their actions/moves, but the specific reasons that they come to stage (or not) their discussions. Archived recordings of online class interactions were collected from three open universities in Asia and analysed by employing the ventriloqual approach that involves a three-step process of: (1) collecting archived/recorded online interactions; (2) identifying markers through which digital media appeared to recurrently and iteratively express themselves in the recorded interactions; and (3) understanding or hearing what the markers are made to say. The analysis shows how digital media perform their agentive role of accomplishing the pedagogical purpose of open universities, as well as exercising their authority and legitimacy as institutions of higher learning.