Stephen Downes writes about the ways in which Open Educational Resources often get framed in the context of publishing (as in, “OER isn’t as successful as traditional publishing”). He writes that the goal of OER is not institutionalization, but rather the the defense of our ability to share with one another.
How does this article address your understanding of OER?
That is interesting. First of all, didn’t know he publishes stuff on blogger!
I agree somewhat, OER is not simply a drop-in replacement for something else - “just take textbooks, make them all openly licensed, access to education solved”. But I don’t understand if he is saying that there shouldn’t be some purpose behind open education or OER? At the end of the day we want better outcomes, and as part of getting to those outcomes, we need access to resource, altered power structures, clear understanding of when and how we can re-use and share.
Comparing it to the software development world, sharing source code has many different goals (being able to fix bugs, distribute and share software, inspect what the software is doing, jointly develop common infrastructure), not one specific one (build more successful corporates).