Iterating Toward Openness

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

There’s great news out of the recent UNESCO meeting in Paris, where member states unanimously adopted the draft Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER). First, and it will surprise no one that this is the first item on my list, is the definition. This dramatically simplifies understanding what is and isn’t OER.

OER 153

OER Advocacy Resources Accessibility 153

Iterating Toward Openness

AUGUST 31, 2022

This article started out with my being bothered by the fact that ‘OER adoption reliably saves students money but does not reliably improve their outcomes.’ ’ For many years OER advocates have told faculty, “When you adopt OER your students save money and get the same or better outcomes!”

OER 195

OER Outcomes Comparison Study 195

Iterating Toward Openness

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

The sense I got is that reducing textbook costs isn’t enough anymore, the advocacy has moved on to eliminating them. For many years now what people call OER advocacy has actually been “zero textbook cost” advocacy. OER advocates may see their national policy work backfire much sooner.

Policies 83

Policies OER Advocacy Education 83

Iterating Toward Openness

APRIL 25, 2019

I spend most of my time doing fairly tactical thinking and working focused on moving OER adoption forward in the US higher education space. In this vision of the world, OER replace traditionally copyrighted, expensive textbooks for all primary, secondary, and post-secondary courses. My end goal isn’t to increase OER adoption.

OER 79

OER Course Company Smartphone 79

Iterating Toward Openness

MARCH 10, 2020

I posted the first installment yesterday, explaining how a fundamental failure to understand copyright makes the definition of OER in the new UNESCO recommendation nonsensical. In this second installment, I want to describe how it appears that many in the OER community have taken their eye off the ball.

OER 78

OER Advocacy Course Report 78

Iterating Toward Openness

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

[Back in 2012 – 2013] I was impressed (like many others I’m sure) with how Wiley was able to frame the cost-savings argument around open textbooks to build broader interest for OERs. I fear it is OER wanting it both ways. The question we must each ask ourselves is – what is the real goal of our OER advocacy?

Accessibility 90

Accessibility OER Pearson MOOC 90

ProfHacker

NOVEMBER 23, 2015

I realize I only have a biased slice of the conference based mainly around tweeters I know who (I realize now) mostly have similar stances as mine on openness (Phil Hill and Mike Feldstein in their keynote made a good point about how utterly useless this kind of social circle is for advocacy). I don’t think #FedWiki is perfect, though.

OER 40

OER Wiki Conference Advocacy 40