The end of teaching as we know it - slideshow
I hope this bold statement by Professor Rory McGreal, the COL/UNESCO Chair in OER at Athabasca University in Canada, gets your attention and persuades you to read on. You can read the full post here.
I agree, partially, with Rory on this one. Where I differ is in my belief that we all have choices, especially as educators. We can choose to tuck our heads down, stare at our screens, edit our documents, in short, go on with our business as usual. We can continue to submit articles to journals managed by publishing companies that are in the business of learning for profit, we can publish like crazy in closed circuits of rhetoric because we know there will be financial rewards, we can close our eyes to the brave new world out there that is asking us to change.
Of course, we have a choice.
 A day on the internet
 A Basic Guide to OER |
But there is a growing band of pilgrims who are following a new pathway in education (yes, the metaphor is deliberately evangelical!). In each conventional university, higher education institution or school there will be a group of teachers and academics, small at first but expanding each week, who are called to a new philosophy, one that considers education as a free and open resource for all. I have heard it said that the University of Stellenbosch has pledged funds to reward academics who publish on open scholarship. I applaud this innovation and sincerely hope that Unisa can follow suit. No-one denies the compelling allure of financial reward for publishing articles, chapters in books and monographs. What we need is an institutional push that encourages more and more academics to use open publishing resources for the simple reason that they disseminate knowledge quickly, reach more people and have a potentially powerful social impact. Be honest, how many people do you think read your article once you have managed to publish it in a conventional journal? Five? Twenty-five?
Now think of the power of social media. If you remain unconvinced, check out this link on the power of the internet.
As is customary in every field of study, there is confusion and contention around the definition of terms. I prefer to call OER (Open Education Resources) the blanket or umbrella term for a range of initiatives. These initiatives or branches of OER are:
- Open Scholarship: Changing the way we think about research and doing research by making our research open to all;
- Open Learning: learning materials available freely and openly for adoption, adaptation or remix;
- Open Content: ‘the broad term for free sharing of intellectual property online’ quoted in the Mail and Guardian article.
- Open Access Publishing: usually refers to the worldwide electronic distribution of peer-reviewed journal literature in order to give free and unrestricted access to it (Guidelines for Open Educational Resources, 2011, COL);
- Open Licence: a standardised way to grant permission and to state restrictions to accessing, using, repurposing, reusing or redistributing creative work (whether sound, text, image, multimedia, etc.) (ibid. COL. 2011);
Neil Butcher has produced A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER) (Butcher, 2011, published by UNESCO and COL) which should be standard reading for anyone interested in open educational resources.
So, to rephrase Rory McGreal:
We all have choices as educators: let’s choose wisely, intelligently and ethically by making our work meaningful for not just ourselves, or our immediate colleagues, or for the money we may get if we publish, or for future promotion, or for our academic reputations, but for those who may not be able to be part of an elitist insider group but who still deserve to have access to knowledge. Let’s go OER!
Pamela Ryan
