Great point. US higher education is cost-prohibitive at the middle and top and digustingly underfunded at the bottom/open access end. I do think widespread OER will make a difference - I hope we can pair it with some other, much-needed reforms too.
As a library professional in a college setting I can see why open matters. Knowledge has been locked up and may only be bought with a price. Our college has gone completely digital with Covid. Our students our struggling to find the information they need even with the access we give them to our paid subscriptions and e-books. The irony is we have vasts amounts of information at our fingertips but only those who can afford it can have access to all of it.
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Its never too late to implement more sustainable practices in higher education. Speaking personally, more than a decade ago I resigned from all Editorial Boards of proprietary journals. I will not review any articles that are not published under a free cultural works license. Of course, I refuse to publish anything under all rights reserved copyright.
I appreciate that this will be hard for young academics building their careers - but slowly the numbers favouring open publishing are increasing.
Hi @Jody_M
The OERu has a good number of OER-based courses that are fully online. If any of these fit your local college curriculum needs, please feel free to use them.
When we talk about āEducation to Allā or āRight for Educationā or education as a constitutional obligation, then āopennessā with āinclusionā is required for the democratization of education.
Openness in education covers a wide range of innovations and reforms; and advocates flexibility to the learner regarding to entry, exit, pace, place of study, method of study, choice and combination of courses, assessment and course completion, etc.
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Paywall is a metaphor for exclusion to maintain the power and privilege of a minority. Structural reform is essential if we are to progress, perhaps even survive as a species. Democratic cultures depend on education to maintain themselves. This has been recognized since the 18th century. Today, democratic cultures are under siege and it is no coincidence that this happens just as education systems are in crisis. Whether that crisis is engineered or not is beside the point.
Open education is essential if we are to overcome the challenges facing us today on a global scale. These challenges are existential. So, yes. Open education matters.
The rising cost of Higher Education in the US is the direct result of public policy directed at restricting access for ideological reasons. The solution to it is political, not economic. OER is a good alternate model, though it may end up mimicking the broken system it is intended to supplement. There are also serious pedagogical challenges that are not addressed merely by a ānot for profitā model of materials access.
Iām no expert on public funding policy of Higher Education in the US, but would be interested to know how many public funded institutions in the US provide tuition-free access to OER-based courses, with an assessment only option at significantly reduced fees. I appreciate the complexities because at most US institutions, faculty own the copyright of their teaching materials - but there is something wrong in the system. Public funding does not equate to openly licensed education materials.
Iām curious to learn more about the pedagogical challenges you refer to. My reading of the research does not report any significant difference with regards to well-designed remote asynchronous learner compared to face-to-face teaching.
Our data shows that the ānot-for-profitā model for OER-based courses is an order of magnitude more cost effective than any for-profit alternative, and I would include traditional public funded institutions in the mix. Keen to see the data - weāre not mimicking models of old, we plan to sustain the future :-).
I believe most HE institutions in the US would not be motivated to give credit for OER-based courses since, in our for-profit model, transfer credit will always represent a revenue loss for the crediting institution. Many institutions cap transfer credit or penalize it by not counting it in a GPA for this reason.
Yes. Some 90+ years of research comparing face to face to remote asynchronous models confirms no significant difference. Pedagogical change requires more than a change of medium. One of the more commonly cited risks moving online in response to the pandemic was the tendency to replicate face to face broadcast models online, and indeed, there is evidence that this has happened frequently. Some schools stick to their old schedules and even require students to wear their uniforms when online. I heard a the teacher of a family memberās online class calling roll yesterday.
I work with HE teachers who have moved to Emergency Online Teaching and who insist on continuing to deliver lectures and Powerpoints and who ask about how to monitor who is āpaying attentionā by controlling students cameras, speakers, and mics remotely. Surveillance is necessary in broadcast models since students have nothing in particular to do. This replication happens because people do not know the affordances of the technology and the medium, but also because they do not care about it - they want to do what they do, insisting that what they do is the best method because it is the most common method - against all evidence to the contrary.
It would be a shame to focus OER only on cost-benefit.
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Well said Mark - and I concur, a narrow focus on OER cost-savings would be a shame. Iām more interested in the freedoms which underpin our work for more sustainable futures.
As an educator and also as a masters student openness matters.Currently writing an article for my TMA on OER policies and finding relevant materials have been so difficult as most of the materials i need are behind paywalls.
āOpenā matters to me for more than one reasons. However, keeping in view the current (pandemic) situation, these are the two reasons that I feel are the most important:
- It is only āopenā education through online means that can keep the disease at bay to a certain degree by ensuring social/physical distance.
- Since āopenā implies the accessibility of a large number of people who are āwilling to learn/studyā but cannot do so because of financial, and in some cases, cultural constraints, it will empower them to a great extent in realizing their ambition. Further, keeping in view the UN proposed SDGs, education plays a major role in deciding the success of other goals.
I can see both sides. Money and time has been invested in research, peer reviews and reputable publications which need to be recognized and rewarded. But slapping copyright on a powerpoint presentation, which I have seen, is extreme. Iām an advocate for open access it empowers the creator and learners. Science is a bout sharing and I can see it now in the medical fraternity sharing data, research etc to combat Covid19. Open access creates opportunities for both educators and learners. Iām not a teacher but I work with faculty in higher ed who often b become frustrated when they want to create a dynamic online course only to have restrictions place on their choice of materials and resources. The learner loses and the greater learning community loses.
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Thanks for your contribution, and I agree - copyrighting educational materials is extreme especially when the purpose of teaching is to share knowledge 
.
An interesting side note - all slideshow presentations will by default be āall rights reservedā unless the creator physically applies an open license or dedicates it to the public domain. Unfortunately - copyright is automatic - authors donāt need to apply it 
.
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Open does matter for me. I have seen staggering amount invoices for case studies and other contents, which requires to be available free of cost to learners. If the learners canāt understand the existing gap in the domain then how can they expand there creativity, innovation and motivation to bring significant changes. In digital context the only concern is establishing authenticity of information content. A mechanism may be developed to evaluate the quality of consulted work.
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I think it is a good thing that we retain copyright for anything we create in a physical form. Then weemphasized text** have the power to share it openly, and be able to make things available to learn from and build upon. The ownership rights of copyright have been used to control access and build profits by traditional publishers, and the decision to make things openly available is certainly working towards solving world problems and creating equity to education. But I donāt think this should necessitate giving up the rights to ownership by the creator. Ownership is a way of retaining credit for the value of the creation.
In my experience, teachers who use resources created by themselves or adapted/combined/remixed with other existing materials have better results in students learning that textbooks. We also know that many teachers donĀ“t have time enough to prepare all contents from zero. But there is A LOT of contents already created!! The idea of teachers sharing their materials would benefit all their colleages, but if they are also allowed to copy and modify it, it would really make a difference, because these open materials could be updated, adapted, translated, and would be more useful for many people, who can enrich them and redistribute again. Besides, other teachersā feedback on my material through their modifications, will definitely teach how to improve them!
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Always like Stephenās quiet yet effective advocacy of open content and licensing. Sometimes I try to reduce things to a very practical and simple viewpoint - sharing content which in turn is experience is simply doing what is right in an educational sense. I donāt necessarily believe that all pulbications across the board shoud be open and free - a good novel is worth buying, a good CD, a good DVD, all powerful venues of learning; but when it comes to educating our children and grandchildren then open is right.
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In this case, the registration process is required for the open course provider to document the learners, evaluate the learning process and learner achievement where, in the end, the registration data is used to fill in the free certificate of completion.
I agree with the definition of the word āopenā from the Commonwealth of Learning (2020) which refers to a commitment that removes any unnecessary barriers to access learning. In my opinion, the registration process as long as 100% free access and free certificate of completion is not a barrier. If there is no registration, how and from where can the provider complete data and provide the free certificate of completion to the learners?
I also agree with this definition which is why any learner can access all OERu course materials without registering an account to access the materials.
In the event that a learner would like to acquire free digital badge for participation - yes, then registration is required for providing the name on the certification.
Why should we deny and lock access to the learning materials for learners who may not be interested in the certification?
There are many reasons why a learner may choose to remain anonymous - for example, a ādisadvantagedā learner finding out if university education is for them, without the barrier of public failure.
If registration is required for access to OER materials - then for all practical purposes they are closed.