Open Educational Resources Everywhere!

I was really excited to see that we are covering open educational resource (OER) sites this week.

Why?

Because I am working on a group project for my other course, and we are designing a lesson on OER! The readings and resources that we have touched on this week have been really helpful to my research. My portion of the project is focused on the history of OER, and the Caswell (2008) article was very helpful in that regard. Obviously there has been some development in OER since 2008, but this article really helped me understand some of the foundations of the movement.

One notion that I noticed runs throughout the literature on OER is the idea that through technology, we have the ability to democratize education. In Reiser and Dempsey's (2018) Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology, they writes about ideas and thoughts being public and inclusive, in that they are easily shared and used by many people at one time. On the other hand, they describe books, journals, and other physical objects containing knowledge as  rivalrous and excludable. By rivalrous they mean that only one person can use them at a time, and by excludable they mean that access to that book is restricted by proximity, ownership, etc.(p. 317). They then go on to argue that digital media is more akin to ideas and thoughts, because they are both nonrivalrous (many people can use them at one time), and nonexcludable (anyone anywhere can access them). For this reason, some have drawn the conclusion that digital educational resources should be free and open to all, and that would open up educational opportunities to those that might not have access to them otherwise.

I think this is an interesting notion, and one that was also highlighted in the Caswell (2008) article. It does seem like a wonderful idea to allow curious people to access stores of collected ideas and knowledge, removing financial barriers and time constraints of formal education. However, I also think that it can easily become complicated. As the other readings from this week have shown, copyright and fair use issues can become confusing, and difficult both to adhere to and govern. Also, how do we ensure that open resources retain their quality over time? Finally, can we really trust that all learners are  ready to engage in these materials with little or no guidance from an instructor? Or is it potentially dangerous to allow open access to materials that might be easily misunderstood?

What do you think?