The many faces of openness meet the many faces of online learning in Egypt

MOOC discourses originating from the Global North can appear potentially colonizing to educators in the Global South. In this session, we contextualize open from an Egyptian perspective and refer to different open educational practices we have been involved in, including the creation of Arabic content based on Western models (e.g., Edraak MOOCs, Wikipedia Arabic, and Tahrir Academy), the creation of local OERs using local models, the reuse of existing English-language Global North content (e.g., MITx with AUC/AUB, translating EdX content in Edraak, etc.), and participation in existing connectivist MOOCs as facilitators. We highlight how openness, when contextualized to different regions, can look different and have multiple faces.