I believe that the educational process should involve the creation of objects for consideration - things to reflect on, things to help others better understand what we understand, really a way to capture and present our current educational achievements knowing that it is a work in process. As a learner, particularly as a graduate student, I frequently found that the things that we created held a lot of potential educational value. Certainty as a faculty member, a facilitator of educational processes, I found that the things that we created during a class were always more interesting and valuable than the things the textbook publishers created for us.
So, why is so much of the work we are doing with open educational resources about being publishers and not so much about being learners and teachers? I am not suggesting that the creation of formal courseware is not valuable or an appropriate starting point. After all, we all understand what courses are and have a general idea of what a “good” course should look like, which should make the successful production of downloadable courseware a small leap from the creation of downloadable textbook. Practically, this in itself reduces some barriers to education, advances the state of the art of educational practice, and impacts the cultural norms of educational communities. The major achievements of our current OER efforts include the creation of the expectation of somewhat selfless sharing, the potential formation of community, and, if licensed property, the opportunity to provide that community with the raw material for creative adaptation.
Obviously, I am not complaining. I am just wondering what’s next. As educators thinking rigorously about open educational resources and launching open courseware initiatives, are we thinking about how non-course materials can be designed, developed, and managed to maximize their usefulness? How do these types of materials fit into the OER taxonomies that are under development? How do we identify “opportunistic content” and make it most useful? In what ways, beyond distribution and licensing, are we doing what publishes do not do?
