[Open-education] Is there still an OER movement?

Fri Aug 22 12:20:52 UTC 2014

> It feels that there's is a big disconnection between innovative / trendy
areas of open education and the coal-face work of outreach and
implementation. I guess that's the conclusion of the article above. I'd be
interested to know more about projects working to address this.

I feel there is a real problem with statements like this though.

Are innovative / trendy areas not also implementation? Are they not
"coalface" enough? Seems the use of coalface suggests a criticism that
other work isn't proper work?

So I could say, I've run two MOOCs, and helped build some infrastructure
for a third, bug fixed a fourth. The two MOOCs took open education to over
50,000 people, require(d) support every day - evenings and weekends. Feels
pretty full on to me, but then that's my judgement. I wouldn't disparage
something else until I had walked in its shoes.

If the argument is, a lot of academia tends to theory and not praxis,
that's true in almost all parts of it. OER research will be no different.
Inevitably as research tends to need to be new to be published or funded,
academia will inherently move on to new areas, MOOCs being one. OER
research, where funded is obvious to meet certain funding aims or goals, so
the area in which that work is applied may not give time or scope for
engaging and outreach.

On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 12:25 PM, Marieke Guy <marieke.guy at okfn.org> wrote:

>  > It feels that there's is a big disconnection between innovative /
> trendy areas of open education and the coal-face work of outreach and
> implementation. I guess that's the conclusion of the article above. I'd be
> interested to know more about projects working to address this.
>
> Yes!
>
> This is something I've been talking about off-list - trying to engage
> teachers - or basically meet teachers in the spaces where they are working.
> See this post on why teachers aren't using OER in Germany:
> http://education.okfn.org/open-education-germany/
>
> There is an initiative in the UK that is doing this:
>
> http://lccdigilit.our.dmu.ac.uk/2014/05/12/understanding-open-educational-resources-information-for-schools/
> The plan is to educate teachers so they can use OER more effectively.
> Bjorn who works on the project was involved with
> http://oer.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/ORBIT and
> http://oer.educ.cam.ac.uk/wiki/OER4Schools
>
> Marieke
>
>
> This is something On 22/08/2014 10:52, Mick FM wrote:
>
>
> On 22/08/14 09:44, Marieke Guy wrote:
>
>
> One talk I attended at OER14 was about how OER is moving away from
> something academia does to something that is led by practioners. The talk
> was called When two worlds don’t collide: the marginalisation of open
> educational practices outside academia
> <http://www.medev.ac.uk/oer14/87/view/> and used the example of OERs
> created about autism by autism experts and doctors (not academics).  Again
> maybe this isn't a movement, but it could make for a sustainable model.
>
> I suppose there is a question to be asked about whether there needs to
> actually be a movement as such or whether OER work is about something more
> practical - getting appropriate, open licensed resources to those who need
> them. So do we need a community of practice rather than a movement?
>
>
> That's a good article!
>
> It does feel like all the research does suggest that it's time for OER to
> get real and become an embedded tool for communities of practice.
>
> So has the research end of OER movement achieved it's aims? If so, it's
> still seems like there is a big gap between the theory and the practice
>
> For example, at Wednesday's session for Duct Tape Uni in the evaluation at
> the end of the day, one of the community media trainers who was very
> experienced, shared that one of his take-aways from the session was that he
> was happy to have learned about OER and that there were searchable
> repositories available. This was news to him.
>
> It feels that there's is a big disconnection between innovative / trendy
> areas of open education and the coal-face work of outreach and
> implementation. I guess that's the conclusion of the article above. I'd be
> interested to know more about projects working to address this.
>
> So another question for you guys.
>
> Are edu-punk innovators who jump the OER ship to move on to new
> territories before finishing the job helping or harming open education?
>
> nice one,
> Mick
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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>
> Marieke Guy
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