As I came into this course with a reasonable idea as to what OER is (the term), and some of the issues surrounding the use of such resources, my initial reflections have been prompted by the higher level issues and concepts.
It is good to see a strong presumption in favour of OER amongst the course participants, but then we're likely to have been at this end of the spectrum anyway, rather than sceptics. That is not to say that scepticism is not still the prevalent mode in a lot of areas, and particular with senior managers, and education authorities. I am disappointed that Scotland, where I live, has not yet declared a committment to the principle of OER at a governmental level, and we look for our politicians to do so.
Listening to Bishop Tutu certainly made me think about the issue of OER within the context of the needs of developing countries and that was something I hadn't considered before. The debate here has always tended to be national, and in terms of the needs of our own learners. But I see now that there is a much bigger picture to be considered here, and therefore if anything that has strengthened my committment to the principle of OER. I was always a huge admirer of Bishop Tutu, and to listen to him makes me wonder just what could have been achieved in a country which he led.
One new term for me was Personal Learning Environment, and I enjoyed the process of setting that up pre-course. I had not really thought of that term before, or come across it and it does seem a very relevant one in an age of a 2.0 consumer-driven web. I was also interested to hear that some institutions have created software which allows students to set up a PLE within an institutional framework and I would like to learn more about this.
I come from the vocational education sector, a Further Education college, teaching vocational qualifications to students from 16 to 60 and beyond. I think that is why some of the thinking and terms in the debate so far have struck me as coming very much from a Higher Education (university) background. In the colleges we have always shared materials within certain groups, and there is far less sense of personal ownership of materials than we tend to see in universities. In turn we tend to deal with a very wide range of learners, some with extensive support needs, some who already have degrees, and every shade between.
I would therefore say that the debate so far, and the introductory materials I have seen, have highlighted my own reservations. Simply making materials freely available, and putting an emphasis on co-construction of materials, and the learners freedom to use, re-use and reconstruct source materials, is not enough for some and perhaps many of our learners. We need to recognise that not everyone is capable of using open-resources well, and driving their own learning. I think we need to teach those skills first, and that this needs to go hand in hand with freeing the source materials.
The intial resource materials of this course, the videos and debate have made me want to think about and discuss the qualifications which I believe must surround our use of OER, and the need for clear support structures. I look forward to having that debate. I would like answers to the questions, what are the limits of OER, how can we usually adapt these within our teaching at all levels, and how should we train learners to work with OERs?
However, I stand solidly behind the core principle of OER, and I think these first stages of the course have reinforced me in that belief.
John, thanks for this thoughtful post. I agree that whilst there is an intuitive sense that sharing must be the right thing to do where we can, there are still some real obstacles to current methods. One example is that it is often difficult to share the richest resources in a form that can subsequently be edited and adapted by the needs of others. An example would be a short flash movie. Unless you have access to the source material and the software required to edit it then simply having access to an animation that shows roughly what you want but perhaps not from the perspective that your learners want to take, or in the words (tongue) they use does not really get us further. Yes, you could overcome some of this by building your content in open source software, but even that is no guarantee that you have the necessary skills and required other tools needed to run the programme to manipulate the content.
ReplyDeleteThis brings me to one of your later points, this course is beginning to get me thinking about the skills and training we need to provide people with who are going to use and re-use OERs.