Open Education in Palestine goes way beyond Open Education
When we speak of Open Education we almost take for granted to live in a widely connected, internationalized, free and open world. Open Education means, among other things, to widen participation and access to learning and contents, to promote the principle that education is for everyone without boundaries of any kind. We defend the idea that education can be quality education and at the same time open education, without excluding each other.
Palestine taught us something more.
Our collegues from An-Naja National Univerisity welcomed the OpenMed team to discuss possible means of mutual cooperation, for the adoption of strategies and channels that embrace the principles of openness and reusability within the context of South-Mediterranean universities. Under the motto “Think smart before you start!” An-Naja National University is working towards innovation, smart and digital learning and teaching, and you would expect to have a campus full of international students and academics. Instead, while they work to make education accessible and open, Universities remain framed by occupation. Foreign students and academics are rarely granted a Visa long enough to study or teach for a semester and more. If on the one hand networking and cooperation with European and other South-Mediterranean institutions is becoming stronger over the years, in the light of projects like OpenMed, internationalization as such remains on paper when checkpoints are normality.
On the 20th of April, thanks to the work of the Center of Continuing Education, Birzeit University hosted the Palestine National Strategy Forum in the framework of the OpenMed project. The event was a national seminar on the prospects of building a strategy of sustainable learning and open educational resources. The Vice President of Community Affairs at Birzeit University, Asim Khalil, talked about the challenges that Palestinian universities face today, leaning towards globalized and open communities in the context of a military occupation. In this context, education must find strategic actions to implement open education practices and resources for the sake of academic and institutional development. Indeed, open education and international cooperation may become tools for empowerment and liberation, to overcome the obstacles that the Israeli occupation puts in place. This is the great lesson learned in Palestine, in the words of Nedal Jayousi (Director of the Erasmus+ Office in Palestine) and Marwan Tarazi (Director of the Center of Continuing Education at Birzeit University).
Open Education in Palestine goes way beyond Open Education. Living under occupation reduces the possibilities of developing education, especially when that many international academic experts and scholars are denied access to Palestine. Open Education becomes a means to outreach others beyond any wall, to share contents and learning with a wider community without boundaries (and fences, and gates).
“It is 4am in the cattle cage, still you wait, the line before you is so long, and behind you now it is longer. Few of you speak, you are packed so damn tight that you hold one another upright […] It is 7am in the cattle cage, now is your turn, you produce your papers unfold, threefold, eyes down, heart down, your shoes are down on their luck, but you are out of the line now […] The country they stole from you speeds outside your window and you imagine the man you would have been, the man you should have been out there […] in a Palestine unraped, unstolen.”
“My voice sought the wind” Susan Abulhawa