This week in Introduction to Open Education I was introduced to the course materials on the 5R’s, Creative Commons, and Open Licensing. This is territory that I’m comfortably familiar with, but there’s always something new to learn. One of the ideas that emerged for me, and admittedly it’s been brewing, is the need for a change in how I choose to license and share my work. I have wrestled of late with the ever-growing phenomenon of “open washing” particularly among panicked for-profit publishing companies. I have a less-than-generous view of what publishers are playing at regarding OER.

My example for this post is Cengage’s new OER website (probably an unthinkable concept for them not long ago).  I downloaded the Cengage paper called Open Educational Resources (OER) and the Evolving Higher Education Landscape. I had to trade my name, email, and institution for the privilege of downloading it, so already not open.

The following paragraph from the paper is an example of what alarms me about for-profit positions on OER, Cengage states,

In the 2014 Babson survey, participants judged the quality of OER to be roughly equivalent to that of traditional educational resources. OERs were deemed to be more current than traditional publishers’ resources, while traditional resources were deemed superior in the areas of range of subjects, range of materials for each subject, resources mapped to learning outcomes, and trusted quality. Overall, 31% of those who had an opinion on OER rated their quality as excellent or good, versus 56% who rated traditional resources as excellent or good (Cengage, n.d.a.).

Cengage seems to be deliberately misstating what the 2014 Babson survey reported. Either that, or they’re misreading the graphs (neither option instills confidence). What Babson actually reported was that among faculty members that had used OER, – and that’s the only subset that matters for purposes of the comparison of OER to traditional resources – the majority of faculty members found OER either the same or better than traditional resources in every category. See Figure 1 below. And Cengage’s additional statement that “Overall, 31% of those who had an opinion on OER rated their quality as excellent or good,” was actually 76% excellent or good if you remove the 59.2% of faculty members that “did not know,” e.g., did not have an opinion, see Figure 2 below. It’s possible I’m missing something, or that I’m wrong, so I have included the graphs for you to read. Please let me know.

Why would Cengage want to mislead educators about peer perceptions comparing traditional and OER resources? Here’s my hunch. Where Cengage claims to be adding value to OER as part of its sales pitch is in curation (trusted quality), range of materials for each subject, and resources mapped to learning outcomes. Convincing educators that OER somehow fail in these categories makes a business case for Cengage to curate and supplement OER for $25 USD per student, per course (Cengage, n.d.b.).

The kind of OER repackaging that Cengage is engaging in requires the foundational resource to have a CC-BY license. I’m not convinced that CC-BY-SA would pass muster for repackaging, but there’s probably an argument publishers will try to make. If the resource were CC-BY-NC, however, for-profit publishers would not be able to include it in their firmly closed commercial products.  While I want to be generous with the work I create, I most certainly do not want it to land in a publisher resell (or a for-profit journal either). Going forward, I’m using CC-BY-NC for my work. Non-commercial is not a complicated license to figure out. Others cannot sell my work, period. Outside of commercial sale, folks can go ahead and use it, if it’s of interest.

This may not seem like a big deal, $25 per student is way better than $115 to $160 (Cengage’s premium Biology textbook pricing), but Cengage’s low-cost solution is only on the table because the highly questionable for-profit publishing practices of the past few decades have contributed to the problem-solving that OER represents. Cengage’s open washing reaction is clear evidence that there is a rising tide of high quality, no-cost, adaptable open resources emerging that learners and educators are ready and willing to use. I want resources to be easy and well-curated as a contribution to educator workload, but it probably doesn’t need to cost $25 USD per learner, per course, probably.

References

Allen, I. E. & Seaman, J. (2014). Opening the curriculum: Open educational resources in U.S. higher education. Retrieved from http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthecurriculum2014.pdf

Cengage (n.d.a.) Open for Learning [webpage]. Retrieved from https://www.cengage.com/oer#value

Cengage (n.d.b). Opennow [webpage]. Retrieved from http://www.cengage.com/institutional/opennow

This post is by Jenni Hayman licensed under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.

As a long-time admirer of open education and the use of open educational resources (OER), I like to begin conversations about openness by probing whether the person I’m talking with has defined open education for themselves, or heard it defined by others. I am always curious to know what it means for them. Open education is an amazing and chaotic concept. Like all movements, practices, frameworks, philosophies, disciplines, etc., there are many different aspects to open education that are always “open” for interpretation and expression. The diversity of what open education means for people is one of my favourite things about it!

For me, open education is a practice that involves critical reflection about who creates knowledge, and who controls its dissemination in traditional, closed, and system-constrained methods of education. My open education practice also includes deep considerations about how digital, Internet-enabled, community-based, equitable, inclusive, diverse, and unconstrained (or at least less constrained) forms of human learning take place. Open education in my world is a near constant internal and external dialogue about how I might simultaneously learn, share, and support the learning of others. I spend a lot of time observing systems, educators, and learners to better understand the subtleties of “education” as a social construct. Open education can be as complex for me as reading and discussing decades of learning theory, and as simple as finding and sharing an image with an open license.

A boatload of what open education means for me stems from my privilege as an employed person living and studying in North America. I acknowledge and respect the far more pressing need for open educational practices to create equitable access to learning in marginalized and severely under-supported systems around the world. I both hope, and check in, about whether or not what I’m doing in open education is useful where the need is greatest. What I don’t know about this need could fill volumes. I keep listening and learning.

There are two hashtags in my title for this post. I’m taking the Introduction to Open Education edX course as a community member in two different communities. The first, #OpenEdMoocCanada is related to my connection to a Canadian higher education community of practice called the Open Rangers (yes it is extremely awesome and fun). The second #OpenPL is related to research I’m conducting with Kristina Peters, one of the leaders of the U.S. GoOpen movement, and Rebecca Heiser an online instructional design practitioner-researcher. We’re interested to learn more about what open education means for PK-12 educators, and whether or not the format of an open course (the edX MOOC) is an effective place to engage in professional learning about the use of OER in primary and secondary school contexts. Welcome to open education! It can be everything all at once.

For those that are just beginning to explore what open education means for them, there is usually a driver. A common driver at the moment is a personal or institutional wish to embrace open educational resources (OER) such as open textbooks, as a cost savings for learners (or in the case of PK-12, the driver is often cost savings for districts). Another common driver for explorations of open education is empowerment. This can be the personal empowerment of a learner to explore, learn, and share learning about what interests them, and also the power of an educator to revise and remix learning resources to align with local contexts and needs. These are all great reasons to start thinking about open education!

There are a few webpages that I like to use to introduce Open Education, they are easy reads. If open education is somewhat new for you, I encourage you to explore these and the many Internet places that talk about open education. If you haven’t done it before, start to form an idea of what open education means in your personal and professional contexts. I’d love to hear how you describe what you discover.

Capetown Open Education Declaration +10

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition): Open Education

Open Education Consortium: Open Education Information Centre

United States Department of Education #GoOpen: Open Education