Thoughts from Dec 10 BlueJeans Meeting:
- Open Educational Resources (OER) from prestigious institutions have better chance of sustaining itself for various reasons. First, it is much easier to publish their materials and have the public subscribe to it using their brand name. Comparatively, smaller institutions and start-ups would struggle with getting recognized, or even just being discovered, given their relative obscurity. Next, they would have a larger (possibly funded!) staff to develop and organize their content on a consistent basis, whereas smaller organizations may be updated less regularly due to work-hobby conflicts. A third point, also related to funding, is that larger corporations can channel funds from other avenues to help sustain operation costs of the OER such as the server equipment or buying materials/content rights.
- Another issue with OERs that was mentioned in our discussion was suggested by Michael, where the material carries institutionalized colonial-era ideologies; that most of it was created by the global north and applied to countries in the global south (Paskevicius, 2019). This poses the issue whereby First Nation’s perspectives and traditions are being minimized while students study content from a settler’s viewpoint instead.
- An interesting point which was brought up was how an OER could potentially begin is by local teachers pooling resources that they use to create a database within the school. It then grows into multi-school program through collaboration and contribution inside the district network infrastructure, and then eventually become a fully public OER. While this wouldn’t solve the issue of First Nation’s knowledge being specific to place (ie, the local environment), it would at least recognize their ways of knowing as it should be embedded within active teachers’ pedagogy.