Hi @oemb1905 - Excellent points. Its ironic that a profession like teaching which is founded on the act of sharing knowledge is so closed in the real world.
Yep - we still have some work to do in opening education for the benefit of humanity!
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Which is why I prefer the copyleft CC licensing alternative - doesnât fully protect against the practice of enclosure but sends an important message.
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My first degree is in Librarianship, so I was introduced to the copyright legislation. I still remember that miserable and suffocating feeling of âkeep the knowledge for the eliteâ.
Luckily when I completed my studies, I had the chance to work in an inquiry team of the University of Macedonia (Greece), where I was introduced to Open Source Software, and through that to all the open communities. How relieving⊠I felt that I could start breathing again. I finally found a way to share my thoughts/artifacts and use other peopleâs stuff in an easy and ethical way.
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Hi @annakrassa
Great to see you here again at OERu - Welcome!
There are significant parallels between the Free and Open Source Software movement and OER - in fact the 4Rs are derivatives of the âessential software freedomsâ which predated OER and Open Access.
Thanks for sharing.
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As an educator open resources matter as they provide free access to knowledge and make knowledge affordable given that most resources are exorbitant and have some restrictions. Personally,I encourage my students to utilize them to improve their chances of passing. I have even referred them to websites such as Khan academy and other open resources repository.I have given them CDs on Open Educational resources.
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@gmatebele Welcome to our OERu forum site! I can see that youâre a committed educator - sharing knowledge freely.
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âOpenâ really matters to me as an educator. It can be frustrating to me, researching and wanting to give the latest quality information in my lessons, only to find really good content is not available. It is just as frustrating to students I imagine, who search to find relevant information on a chosen topic, and find just what they need is locked awaiting subscription.
I mostly refer to database article searching. I have found that when these walls canât be bypassed, there are other ways to glean some information. When you have the title of an article you want, entering this into google sometimes will bring up other databases where more of the article is provided. Alternatively, another writer may have extracted key points that you can use if they appear a reliable source. It requires a bit of investigation and deduction, but when things are not open we have to be extra creative if weâre not willing to pay.
Education should be free according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/), and database searching is certainly done for educational purposes. The publishers of research articles tend to be industry publications dedicated to the education and advancement of their profession. However when it comes to higher education, freedom only extends to accessibility on the âbasis of meritâ. Therein lies the wall.
Agreed, this is a real, but temporary challenge imo. As educators we can continue to lobby policy-makers to adopt the open licensing policy where research and educational materials funded by public money should be released under an open license.
The UNESCO general conference in November this year will be tabling an OER recommendation which among other things will encourage member states to consider open licensing policies of this nature.
Candidly - taxpayers should not have to pay twice for their education materials ;-).
I hope youâre right. I completely agree with the last sentiment about double payment. Its to societyâs advantage to have open access to education materials rather than education being seen as another competitive business at a learning level. That sort of construct trickles down and can also drive students to be reluctant to share resources if theyâve had to find their own way around roadblocks.
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Totally - I can see valid and legitimate reasons why individual learners may not wish to share. For example, working on a concept business idea. The freedom of choice bit is important.
On the other hand, my youngest daughter is finishing up her teaching degree. Notwithstanding our NZGOAL provisions regarding open licensing of Crown Copyright - she was still required to purchase the hard copy curriculum resource published by the Ministry without digital copies being available for free. Feels out of balance to me ;-).
Yes, the context matters too of course.
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Good point - eg patient anonymity for students writing up assignments in the health sciences.
Hi everyone,
I would like to talk specifically about open access to research publications. In the context of a study on methods for describing the use of data used by the researcher during his or her research, in addition to the fact that researchers disclose very little of their method (in compliance with the new GDPR rules), a question on the publication of research data was raised. Why canât the researcher, who must accurately describe his research methodology, publish his or her data (in compliance with the law) for replication purposes? In this sense, I think that the concept of open access does not only stop with the exchange of results but also of methods and tools used.
There is still a strong sense of intellectual property that the researcher is afraid to question or lose by disclosing everything.
To finish, I would like to share this resource that interested me a lot : https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/
Clément
Hi ClĂ©ment - thanks for highlighting the open science concept in our discussions - which to date has not featured much in our forums. Open Science is more than open sharing of data and touches on the potential for open peer review and sharing of âmethodological toolsâ through open source.
As a side note and by way of example, the OERF is currently coordinating a national study in New Zealand on the affordability of textbooks.
- The survey instrument is a derivative of a survey that was openly licensed.
- Anonymized data will be shared openly for the benefit of future researchers in this space (GDPR compliant as well as ethics approval has been obtained for this purpose.)
- All research reports will be published under free cultural works approved licenses.
Totally agree - we should be doing more open science. Its more sustainable!
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Open science is a new concept for me, and I fund some interesting links to share
- Call for action on open Sciences : https://f-origin.hypotheses.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/1244/files/2016/06/amsterdam-call-for-action-on-open-science.pdf
- Political action : https://www.opengovpartnership.org/ : Education is also by sharing actions between politics and society.
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Open learning enables students to have greater control over what they learn, where, and when. OERs enable students to tap into and explore a field of study in a more approachable, cost-effective way and opens up a world of learning to those who may not have access. Open learning is about more than making resources accessible to learners - much content is already âopenâ on the internet . Perhaps the role of educators will be to facilitate learning and the development of skills in finding, analyzing and applying content, rather than the delivery of content.
A resource I found useful:
https://teachonline.ca/trends-directions/beyond-open-educational-resources/how-open-and-free-content-transform-post
Well said! Looking at open education from an educatorâs perspective - for me it represents a return to the traditions and purpose of education - specifically to share knowledge ;-).
Does open matter for you personally? Share your reasons why open does or doesnât matter for you.
Yes, open matters me personally. I am one of the members of the faculty in Bangladesh Open University. Consulting and dealing with educational materials are part of my daily work-life activity. The restriction/limitation of copyright interrupts me in exploring educational resources for diverse purposes. Here, most of the educational institutions have inadequate resources due to high price of subscription for research journals. Although, some of them do subscribe, yet subscription permits access only for enrichment of educational experience of the learners and faculty members. For, subscription always doesnât allow reuse when the material is copyrighted. As the scope for resource availability is very narrow, many of us have to depend on resources that are shared digitally on internet.
âMaking a resource open for âany type of useââ and âsharing it digitallyâ are two different things. In my opinion, free resources are valuable because they may contribute indirectly in building concept for creation, adoption etc. But, open resources are excellent to me in the context of pedagogy, because faculties and learners can build creative works on it directly.
What can we learn from the current state of affairs regarding access to scholarly knowledge? What advice do you have for the future of learning in a digital age?
At this digital age, many resources are available on the internet, and the cost of copying, pasting and sharing those should be almost zero. Unfortunately, we canât do this always because of various types of restrictions, i.e. copyright restrictions, restrictive technologies, etc. Moreover, sometimes we must purchase books online for a certain program to get access for limited time only, but canât even print, cut, paste and share the book. In most cases, we can overcome these restrictions by payment.So, still, in the age of digitalization, the cost of education, especially, for formal education has become more expensive. In fact, the paradigm of shifting towards learning materials from print to digital has not reduced the price of education.
Most of the great researches are funded by government. So, government should have some control over those. Government money is the public money. In my opinion, educational/research materials should be open for public use and every country should have national OER policy to materialize this.
Yes, open does matter to me. I have spent hours searching for published articles and have been unable to access them due to paywall. It is only now that I learnt that there is an unpaywallâŠ
Open should provide anyone from whichever strata you are and whichever nation you belong to equal access to learning materials. As a teacher educator, I have seen many of my students stuck without being able to access the particular piece of information they need to support or reject their stated hypotheses.
Open also would give students (like me) to pursue their learning at their own pace without compromising on their other commitments.
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I agree with most of the comments. I work both in publishing and communications and sometimes it feels like my head will explode dealing with permissions.
One thing I hadnât noticed is that while open sources further creativity, scientific development and so many other things, it also allows for enhanced communications. Simply getting permission to translate something into another language can be a daunting and expensive task.
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