Benefits and Challenges of Open Educational Resources

By Caroline Swansey

Benefits

Free Education!

● In the United States, as well as some other countries, the cost of education is far from being small. The cost alone can be the biggest reason people continue to be undereducated.

● Education = power to make better decisions● We all benefit from more people making better

decisions

Low commitment research/education

● We some times would like to learn about a variety of things without having to commit to signing up for a course

● Allows for educating oneself here and there, even if we don't have the time to be on a class schedule

Decreases the emphasis of money being the only driver of research

● Without the need for convincing publishers, scientist might see the benefit in publishing research that may not be on the frontier of science.

● Scientist are often pressure to publish work that reveals something with great certainty or novelty, while research that shows more of the same results or greater uncertainty might not get published, though I would argue this still is important science.

Reaching a wider audience

● Being accessible online, in addition to being free, will most certainly allow for work to reach more people. The more people can read journal articles, course materials, etc. the greater our society's education will be as a whole

Global education

● Our world would benefit from a global educational platform

● Cultures see things differently and could provide great feedback to each other, potentially helping to increase respectable ties between cultures.

Challenges

Who checks the Quality?

● Although peer review may be possible, how much peer review will truly happen

● Will unreliable information be removed or kept?● How are institutions kept accountable for their

work posted on OER?

Too much information

● It seems when we have so much information to choose from we just choose to indulge in what we already believe

● Science can be contradictory and leave us to reject it altogether if we don't understand why we might have contradictions

Could be an avenue for corruption

● As we read about the possible lack of funding in the future, this begs the question of how to keep profit driven companies to control the information that is provided to the world

● Some science may be influenced by profit, so how can we keep profit driven science out of OERS

Relies on technology

● Perhaps this challenge may be unimportant, but are we aiming at a future which disregards the importance of face to face and/or first hand learning.

● How will instructors, peer reviewers, etc. continue to find paying jobs.

● What about people who don't have access to technology

What will be the checks and balances?

● Who and how can these resources be policed to have reliability and quality?

● How much will these resources encourage people to think critically, with an open mind and good ethics?

● Who will check the effects of the resources and who will be in charge of creating a balance?