Open Educational Resources can be described as ‘tools’ for learning that are within the public sphere or hold an Open Access copyright.
as a way to understand how different institutions participate in OERs we individually researched one institution to gain a better understanding of what this means, how it is provided and why it is important. i looked into unesco, researching what they define an OER as and how they practice it.
this ^ is a part of a document/letter that came out this year as a result of a recommendation into OERs that happened four years ago. this outlines what they see OERs as and what they can do; an outline for how this can be implemented. as we talked about our individual research into institutions, we found them all to be very similar and had a strong common basis within each that centres around ‘no-cost, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation, redistribution’.
going through an existing course to see what can be ‘closed’ or ‘open’ was beneficial to explore and to see what works well within learning and what changes could be implemented to create a more accessible way of learning. things like ensuring reading resources can be accessed online and stating where they can be found, utilising free spaces, like study spaces within museums/galleries, where talks, discussions and feedback sessions can happen, also the possibility of any talks or discussions to be recorded so they can reach more people and can be accessed multiple times.
”By promoting ‘openness’ in terms akin to negative liberty, the OER movement has overemphasised the removal of barriers as the principal concern of open education. However, as a result of this focus, there is a distinct lack of consideration for how learning might take place once these obstacles are overcome.” ( (2013) Five critiques of the open educational resources movement, Teaching in Higher Education, 18:8, 821-832, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2013.774354). knox addresses a need to look at an ‘absence of organisation and structure’ that comes with open access learning; how can there resources and groups of information be organised and simple to follow instead of a fragmentary way of learning. this introduces a friction in definition of an OER and what it is ultimately there for. are these a way to ‘widen participation in education with a two-tiered system: those who are guided in their learning by institutional expertise and those who must self-direct’ or is the OER system on par with campus- based education? the latter would have to resolve an inequality to both modes of learning as ‘What they fail to recognise, however, is
that by calling for independent OER learning to be assessed in the same way as campus-based education, those targeted by the OERs are expected to achieve the same levels of attainment without the contact or supervision received by those attending university.’
