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

[Pat Lockley]

I hear what you are saying. That sentence about the coalface does seem a
bit 'chippy' when I read it back. But, in fairness, I think the work you
are doing is in danger of giving MOOCs a good name. My understanding is
that you are making those links back to the advances made by OER.


Our MOOC lives on afterwards as an OER - and everything within it is either
PD, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. Nothing NC. Is it linked to OER, well I doubt if I'd
never seen OER i'd have done it, but as some one who believes in a public
university, and by public as in access, I think I can see how a MOOC fits
into the same ethos of access.

I don't think academics aren't committed to OER - just look at Nottingham
Vet School, or various Oxford academics still making OER long after the
funding has gone. What the issue would seem to be is "research academics",
who would seem to have different priorities, but then, I would assume they
are supposed to remain as a neutral observer and so on. The fact a movement
exists, or is notable, suggests something worthy of research.

I do lots of open stuff out of my own pocket and time. I'd not say I was
involved in an OER movement, or an OER activist. However I am concerned,
with things such as a new definition of openness and by people drawing
lines that all we are doing is ostracising people, or giving people the
idea they aren't doing enough. The term open practice concerns me as it (to
me) means you are part of a culture, when you might just want to license
your work and then forget about it.


On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 1:50 PM, Mick FM <mick at flossmanuals.net> wrote:

>
>
> On 22/08/14 13:20, Pat Lockley 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.
>
>  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?
>
>  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.
>
>
> I hear what you are saying. That sentence about the coalface does seem a
> bit 'chippy' when I read it back. But, in fairness, I think the work you
> are doing is in danger of giving MOOCs a good name. My understanding is
> that you are making those links back to the advances made by OER.
>
> I guess this chippyness serves to show that there are different interests
> and strands at play here.
>
> I tweeted Soenke at xm-labs to get his input as he really made me think
> about this issue when we were doing the Open Video workbook sprint.
> He came back with a couple of tweets.
> https://twitter.com/xmlab_news/status/502736325486051329
>
> "tough one, as different (and contradictory) political strands exist w/in
> oer, some of them linked to social movement agendas"
>
> & "pol import of oer in rel to the agendas its serves - economic /
> environmental justice (right to know etc), tax justice etc"
>
> I guess a lot of us are familiar with tensions between activists and
> academics in many circles.
>
> But maybe this is getting to the heart of the issue here. Maybe something
> becomes a movement when there ARE different strands and agendas that end up
> pulling in the same direction. Differences are put aside and things start
> to get a bit difficult, complex but also interesting with lots of
> synergies.
>
> I agree with you and Lorna, that this is still happening but that it seems
> to be moving on. As you say that's in the nature of academia, but I feel a
> frustration about it that I think goes beyond activist chippyness but I'm
> struggling to explain why I think it's valid.
>
> Thanks for your thoughts,
> Mick
>
>
>
>
>
>
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