High-quality open educational resources that are freely shared and improved upon have enormous appeal, but they’re not a reality yet—and may never be.
Open educational resources (OER) have been on the cusp of arriving for more than 15 years, but somehow they never do. So what’s the holdup?
In the post, Tom Berger posits that teachers aren’t onboard, with good reason. At the same time, OER are not going away for budgetary reasons.
I think Stephen Downes’s response is spot on in this discussion.
My thinking here is that so long as you think of OERs as teaching resources, they’re never going to work. They should be thought of as learning resources. Encourage students to find them, share them, and make them (that was one of the core ideas behind the first MOOC and it was co-opted out of existence).
Downes elaborates on this:
Maybe we need a new concept. I’ll go out on a limb and give it a name – OERSS. Open Educational Resource – Student Sharing. Or Open Educational RSS. Take your pick. It’s open resources found, created, used and shared by students. The real open educational resources.
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paul martin
June 5, 2018 at 8:05 pm GMTSomehow I cannot see ss doing a good enough job. They might do a good job but I bet we would soon be having the identical conversation subsequently for obvious reasons; such as even the best teachers are still learning their trade so how is a novice going to upset the applecart
William Ian O'Byrne
June 5, 2018 at 9:21 pm GMTAgreed. I think it’s also a discussion about this not being baked into the DNA in pre-service/professional development opportunities from Pre-K up through higher ed. There isn’t a lot of support, or understanding about what/how to integrate/utilize #OER
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