Santtu at the helm by wili_hybrid
When I get a free minute I try to get through some of my feedreader. Unfortunately I don’t get very far into it because Abject Learning is first in the list.
This time Brian is questioning the need for OER, and I have to say I largely share his position, it is over rated in the grand scheme of things.
One of the other participants asked a question that resonated with me: if we live in an era of information abundance, why is the primary drive around OERs the publication of more content? And what other activities around the open education movement might be an effective use of our energies? What other needs have to be met?
The predictable response from content centric OER proponents relates to copyright and freedom, OER content is “free”.
But as Brian points out, this is increasingly a non issue:
I staked out something of a confrontational stance… that higher education is still conducting its business as if information is scarce when we now live in an era of unprecedented information abundance. That we in the institutions can endlessly discuss what content we deign to share via our clunky platforms, while Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, TED Talks, the blogs and other networked media just get on with it… That I might not be able to legally reproduce much of the copyrighted media on the web, but I can link to it, maybe embed it, or simply tell students to search for it.
Already, formal education is out of the picture in every way. Our educational services are locked up in Blackboard, and our teachers are too afraid to professionally network online. Online education is a dark web. Stepping up to the plate then is Open Education services like Wikieducator, but bringing another set of restrictive criteria that effectively keep people in a twilight zone – adherence to one form of copyright. While the Internetworked cultural development powers on, largely ignoring copyright or bypassing it with hyperlinks, embedding and data sharing, OER efforts want to declare a point of difference because we think copyright is still even relevant! Trouble is we are held back because the user base we rely on to produce this “free culture” still have no idea or just don’t want to have to worry about copyright – they just want to get on with the teaching with what ever the best content is on the day, and with the least amount of practical restriction as possible.
The rhetoric about freedom and moralistic argument in OER amps up non-the-less. We fail to see that we are loosing our freedom as it relates to effective and efficient educational practice. Not to mention the role we play in assisting with the erosion and missed opportunities in Fair Use and Fair Dealings.
The distinction here is between educational practice and content production. Instructional designers have long confused the two. For an educational practitioner (and a student) there is more usable content than we could possibly need for education, more is good and more will come. Most of the good stuff is already openly accessible and in many instances copy-able! The communication channels around it all are open too, why would we want to limit our options with some complex and practically irrelevant detail about copyright, effectively giving ourselves another form of lock in?
As a content producer it is a diffferent story, we need more content with less restrictive copyrights, but even for us it is less of an issue now with linking and embedding, not to mention how quick it can be to simply ask for permission.
In short, OER can be a distraction and can lead us back to content centric thinking that is not the real issue we need to be talking about. OER should stand for Open Educational Reform (appropriating that from Alex Hayes), where we talk about access and equity, connectivity, relevence, flexible assessment, and efficiencies. I am increasingly trying to look at the OER services like Wikieducator more for their platform feature sets relevant to what I need to do, and less (if at all) for its stunted content and contradictory ideas about freedom.
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November 13, 2008 at 2:58 pm
The Dark Web of Online Education « Impressions Scholarcast
[…] a comment » Once again the post, Do we need Open Educational Resources (OER)?, by Leigh Blackall puts forward a point of view with which I immediately resonate: Our educational […]
November 13, 2008 at 8:09 pm
davidmcquillan
I agree with you to a degree. For your field – online education – the volume of quality content on the web is truly enormous. With this in mind why would you bother with the creation of OERs.
This is not true for all disciplines however. In my field – massage therapy – there are very few. Even in areas that we share with many other health professions – anatomy and physiology, clinical reasoning, etc. there are relatively few. It’s true that resources are developing every day in these areas, but as yet we are a long way from the abundance that you talk about.
November 13, 2008 at 9:56 pm
leighblackall
Google search “anatomy and physiology“, Revealed 2,900,000 results… with better trained librarians who know how to use RSS and tagging, they could be helping you filter all this to a point that you would be able to review it more productively.
November 13, 2008 at 9:58 pm
leighblackall
Yikes! “massage therapy” gets 9,710,000 results..
November 13, 2008 at 10:01 pm
leighblackall
yep, you’re right.. “educational development” gets 46,200,000
November 13, 2008 at 10:33 pm
davidmcquillan
9,710,000 massage therapy, but how many of them are actually worth using? Not many.
There are some good A&P resources out there, I know. I still haven’t found an anatomy resource that has the level of detail that we need.
November 14, 2008 at 10:56 am
leighblackall
Well, I think that’s where a skilled librarian might be useful.
November 15, 2008 at 3:54 am
Mike Caulfield
OER production is essentially a token we use to talk about increased democratization of participation. I think in general approaches which boost OER production and use end up boosting participation, so I don’t worry too much about the focus.
I would say the one place that that is not true is when too much money is spent on individual OER production — on the assumption that we will create “the intro to philosophy course to end all intro to philosophy courses”. THat misses much of the point. If intro to philosophy is important, I want to be able to see 80 different ways of teaching it. That’s the only way things will move forward.
I also feel the language of reuse is increasingly becoming an issue. There’s a manufacturing model at work there that is not applicable — or is applicable only for OER as product and not OER as activity.
Final point — for situations where there really is no adequate OER — say a front to back five lesson explanation of energy economics for town managers — I don’t mean to disparage the power of OER as product. It can change the world — but when all the gaps are filled we’ll still be producing OER, because the synonym of OER as activity is conversation.
November 15, 2008 at 7:27 am
leighblackall
Nice one Mike! So in a sense, the mashup that Brian talks of is OER in many ways, because it enables that process of renewal and reversioning. The trouble I have is with the copyright (dogmatism). On the one hand it is very useful, not just for production of content, but for providing a limitation that forces creativity, including the process of teaching. But on the other hand it becomes a rod up your back. So if OER is better understood as an activity, I wonder if we should spear a change from Resources to Reform?
November 18, 2008 at 11:11 am
Open Content is So, Like, Yesterday : Ruminate
[…] content already.This is demonstrably untrue, as any instructional designer could readily tell you. There might be 3 million google results for “anatomy and physiology” but that has nothing to do with the availability of good, useful, quality materials. We are nowhere […]
November 18, 2008 at 11:57 am
leighblackall
Dave, I was thinking about my pointer to the millions of resources and realise that to people who are not privy to our offline conversations relating to this, they might read into me as saying, “see the millions, no more needed”.. I am saying that only in relation to what Brian Lamb says and in relation to mashup and to what I always say about networked learning. We’ve talked about it offline, but in light of the trackback before this comment, I better attempt to put it here.
Of course its true that most of those millions in the Google search results are to unusable content – especially for training. But those millions are potential nodes in your networks. lets say a great many thousand of them are bloggers, and a few hundred of them are active bloggers.. how do you break into the right ring of web loggers that is the network that will support your particular approach to teaching massage therapy? Clearly a general Google search is going to get you no-where close. A Google Blog search might get you closer. A Youtube search might turn something up worth making connections on, as would del.icio.us searching and browsing.. not to mention the history pages of related Wikipedia entries etc… The real point I’m making is to be trying to build a network much like the one you cite around educational technology. Connections with information, with other people who connect with that information, and best of all – with people.
I’ve done this sort of networking around topics other than educational technology. I’ve done it around music, graphic design, art and product design. I’ve done it around local gardening, sustainability and permaculture. And I’ve done it on things about building. I haven’t tried to build such information and communications networks around massage therapy though, or anything health related. Basically, I think there is a generic skill set to be explored in this networked learning, and is something that a librarian could/should offer services in… ultimately, once the teacher is set up with initial help from librarians – they become the primary filter for their students and help their students get set up.
So, in relation to my challenge on OER.. I just don’t think OER gives us much extra in the way of networked learning than what the wider Internet gives us already.. and I think that’s the point Brian Lamb is making also.
November 19, 2008 at 4:01 am
Phil Ker
I could not agree more with the comments about content – this emphasis in our educational offerings is the bane of our lives. But if the OER playing field is being overrun with content providers then lets make a concerted effort to change the focus. Two areas where there heaps of potential exists are in develping assessments and teaching and learning strategies.
On the assessment front there are opportunities for collaborative development of assessment strategies for particular outcomes, then the assessment tools themselves , extending to item banks. How good would it be to develop validated item banks for everything we offered? These could be of the objective testing variety or more qualitative tools such as in basket exercises or case studies. Or do these already exist?
Similarly, for t & l strategies there is plenty of scope to identify what could be done to develop student learning for given outcomes, then to build particular resources such as case studies.
At an institutional level – which is where I am most interested in the power of OER – I feel that we are more likely to build teacher interest in using OER if we work on those areas which can immediately benefit teacher workloads. Content does not do that, for the obvious reason that our teachers already have content in abundance. On the other hand, assesment and “lesson” design is where the real graft occurs on an ongoing basis.
November 20, 2008 at 7:29 am
leigh
Great thinking Phil. I’m connected with a few people who share an interest in this idea.. to date our efforts in this area have been very tentative and unsure.. I feel emboldened by your post and it brings clarity. When I get back from Tuvalu I’ll focus on getting the closest examples we have of this, into the light.