While reading the paper, Openness and Praxis: Exploring the Use of Open Educational Practices in Higher Education by Catherine Cronin, I considered the ramifications of how Open Resources would affect students in post-secondary institutes and how the educators would utilize the materials. From first-hand experiences, I know how expensive textbooks and resources can be and how that impacts students’ already limited budgets. For the educators, assigning a costly resource must be made worthwhile with expected readings, but I feel an amount of skepticism when the required texts are written in part, or wholly, by the instructor at hand. It reflects a conflict of interest, as I see it, and I have heard it described it as “profi-teaching:” a blend of ‘profiting’ and ‘teaching.’
On the other hand, I can see how a teacher could advance in their own study and profession to the point of writing all components for their class, but then I wonder how much of it is in alignment with the educational expectations set out by the post-secondary institution or if it more closely favours their own agenda. Regardless, a little part of me always pauses for contemplation when learning that a required text has a direct endorsement to the instructor’s wallet.
Free Resources?!
Back to the article. While reading Cronin’s work, I was drawn in about the educational resources being freely available at hand and online with absolutely no cost to the user!
Except… are they entirely free?
I chose to explore the ‘open as free’ concept further because I was intrigued upon reading how “[in some] cases, while resources are technically free, they have an opportunity cost to the user in the form of personal data and usage data” (Hodgkinson-Williams & Gray, 2009). I know only a fraction of the impact of personal data collection and usage, but I do know that it can be taken and stored, then sold to companies to use for various reasons including tailored marketing. What this means is that data can be sold without the explicit consent from the user, which could be deemed unethical as it can raise concerns involving privacy.
The article examines the various means for Open Educational Resources (OERs). Within the article, I found this conceptual map of the OERs helpful to for the comprehension and categorization for the broad term ‘content:’
Perhaps you too will recognize some services included in the map, as I noticed Wikis, Moodle, MIT OCW (after reading this article about it), Internet Archive, Google Scholar, and Creative Commons. It appears more clear to me to view it laid out in a visual format how the categories are organized and what resources reflect their purpose on the internet.
While the term can be rather vague and defined individually by separate educators and institutions, below is a table from the same article by Hodgkinson-Williams & Gray (2009) that lays out the attributes of ‘openness’ from several perspectives:
I do suggest reading through the article to gain a better understanding for yourself. I recognize that I’ve only scratched the surface for OERs and have more to learn. If interested, please take a look at this short video below to gain a better understanding.