Actually, for a lot of purposes, Borders and the Internet ARE all you need– in one sense the push for OERs helps make this kind of educational material accessible to those who don’t have access to and/or the ability to pay for the content they could otherwise receive. I’m all for the distance learner who can benefit from that kind of content being well provided for.

But I’m with you (and Brian) that there are many other needs as well. What I don’t agree with is that there is enough good content out there, that showing artifacts of process is the same as providing process (in the end, an instructor can use other content but he/she will always be creating their own context), or that for many (including my institution) going the way of open content isn’t the best and most productive way to get to other (some higher level, some not) kinds of sharing…

I think some (by no means all!) of the OER push is akin to the delight folks felt when CD-ROMs first came on the scene and we discovered that all of Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, and Lewis Carroll (plus many others) could fit on a single shiny disc. In other words, there’s a bit of a “shovelware” aspect to some of the open resources. What’s missing is often context, mess, process, read-write opportunities. And with regard to online discussions (mentioned in another post), I think our students have gotten so used to what Lanny brilliantly calls “algorithmic” learning that they can’t see how a messy discussion with fuzzy boundaries can actually make their learning *stronger* than something regimented, ordered, freeze-dried, and easy-to-track.

I need to follow up a remark John Kane made to me when I was up at SUNY-Oswego. He said he’d read a study that suggested student retention of lecture material was actually *greater* when the material was a little less linear, a little less organized, a little more associational or digressive. Presumably the lockstep algorithm march plays into both student and faculty desires in unhealthy ways.

But I digress. Bottom line for me is that OER is a great idea and a necessary educational practice. Freeing our content from LMS boundaries is a wonderful thing. And I am not someone who thinks that process trumps product. Products matter, and they matter crucially. But the culture of education is only as transparent and inspiring as its processes and practices–and I don’t see OER doing enough to make those processes and practices truly open and shareable. Perhaps that would mean taking on certain core contradictions in our present educational practice in ways that we just can’t do right now.

I’m with Jon on this one– there ain’t hardly enough good content (in the traditional sense) out there.

But that doesn’t mean that documents of process and other contextualizing information isn’t also needed nor does it imply that those who work with orgs like OCW or use terms like OERs aren’t also working on opening up that kind of content too, much less that we are unfamiliar with the concept as too many lately are implying.

This, incidentally, is why I am less impressed with Open Yale Courses than the Rip-Mix Learners project. Because Rip-Mix Learners fully democratizes participation in a way that Open Yale Courses doesn’t.

Maybe I’m oversimplfying this, but I don’t think so. There’s a lot of OER out there, but if it’s produced by a small fraction of the population, and particularly if it’s produced by the usual suspects, we have a lot more work to do.

As far as university involvement — either their are unique perspectives in your university that should be part of the grand conversation, or we’re all frauds. I’m not completely ruling out the second possibility, but my operating assumption is the first, and my experience is if there is stuff in a state school of 5,000 students that can change the world as we know it (and I know for a fact there is) there is stuff everywhere that needs to be up, ASAP.

Though I was never crazy about the term edupunk, and I don’t want to be too pointed in this, but how does telling people they can link to regular copyrighted materials fit into that ideal?

Though I was never crazy about the term edupunk, and I don’t want to be too pointed in this, but how does telling people they can link to regular copyrighted materials fit into that ideal?