Thing 17: Open Educational Resources
The 23 things digital site describes Open Educational Resources (OER) as a form of sustainable educational development. What this basically means is OER provide free educational resources for anyone to use provide provided they credit the content creator (in this case the SSSC). These resources come in many different forms including presentations, modules, entire courses, text documents, videos, graphics, sound and much more.
This is clearly a fantastic development as it removes a multitude of barriers to enter education as an adult. However, as far as I am aware there may still be a digital barrier as these resources can only be accessed online. Barring that exception OER’s remove most barriers to education.
OER is extremely important to me in my role as a research intern for the digital learning team within the Learning and Development strand of the SSSC. As work relating to digital resources makes up a considerable proportion of my work plan. I have therefore spent a lot of time completing OER and online resources such as the 23 things digital and other Open Badges provided by the SSSC. Aside from this OER can also be useful to improve and learn new skills I need for job and also help me in my continuous professional development.
There are several potential limitations to OER. These include; quality control, digital barrier, lack of proper interaction between student and teacher, copyright issues, language and cultural issues and sustainability issues.
As OER’s are free online resources with no guarantee of oversight/regulation the quality of these resources may differ greatly. As while the OER provided by the SSSC are of no doubt a high quality not every OER will be created by a public body such as the SSSC where maintaining high quality is of central importance. There may be many organisations that create OER for a variety of reasons which do not include high quality learning as an important factor. This means OER could become a roulette game as opposed to a guaranteed source of high quality education.
As mentioned above there is also a digital barrier to OER as an individual must not only have access a computer, tablet or relevant device to use OER but also a reliable internet connection which is far from a guarantee in many parts of the UK for both financial and geographical reasons.
A vast majority of educators would argue the importance of face to face teaching when educating individuals. These is clearly a concern for many people as OER will almost entirely have no face to face teaching as an aspect of this learning (however this could be incorporated to it by any organisation who wishes to use OER).
There is also a potential copyright issue, as these are free to access there may be an issue of a company creating an OER that appears almost identical to a pre-existing paid resource. This could clearly create many legal problems which could have considerable financial issues.
There is also language and cultural issues as there is no guarantee that OER will cater to different languages or cultures. For example this could create an issue of OER being un accessible for non-english speakers and therefore creating a further barrier to equality.
Finally, as the creators gain no financial benefit from creating these resources there may be little incentive to maintain the resources and keep them up to date. This could create a sustainability problem as many OER may be out of date and not fit for purpose.
