A critical take on OER practices: Interrogating commercialization, colonialism, and content
Published | October 2015 |
Journal | In The Library With The Lead Pipe |
Country | United States, North America |
ABSTRACT
In BriefBoth Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Access (OA) are becoming more central to many librarians’ work and the core mission of librarianship, in part because of the perceived relationship between openness and social justice. However, in our excitement about the new opportunities afforded by open movements, we might overlook structural inequalities present within these movements. In this article, I utilize some of the useful critiques OA has generated to inform the discussion of OER creation and practice. I then hone in on the conversation around OER specifically to suggest starting points for how librarians and other LIS professionals can construct more thoughtful OER practices.
Keywords | colonization · critiques of OER · inequality · invisible labour · learning objects · librarianship · OA · OER · open access · Open Educational Resources · pedagogy |
ISSN | 1944-6195 |
Refereed | Yes |
Rights | Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) |
URL | http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2015/a-critical-take-on-oer-practices-interrogating-commercialization-colonialism-and-content/ |
Export options | BibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar |
Viewed by 170 distinct readers
CLOUD COMMUNITY REVIEWS
The evaluations below represent the judgements of our readers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cloud editors.










Click a star to be the first to rate this document
▶ POST A COMMENT
SIMILAR RECORDS
A critical take on OER practices: Interrogating commercialization, colonialism, and content
Crissinger, Sarah
Both Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Access (OA) are becoming more central to many librarians’ work and the core mission of librarianship, in part because of the perceived relationship between openness and ...
Match: crissinger, sarah; commercialization; interrogating; colonization; inequality; learning objects; librarianship; open access; open educational resources; pedagogy; united states; north america
Teacher educators and OER in East Africa: Interrogating pedagogic change
Wolfenden, Freda; Auckloo, Pritee; Buckler, Alison; Cullen, Jane; et al.
This study examines the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in six teacher education institutions in three contrasting East African settings – Mauritius, Tanzania and Uganda – all of which had previous ...
Match: interrogating; oer; open educational resources; pedagogy
OER outreach for newbies, part I: What I would do differently
Crissinger, Sarah
My library, in partnership with our Center for Teaching and Learning, recently launched a faculty stipend program for faculty interested in either replacing their traditional course materials with OER or sharing their ...
Match: crissinger, sarah; oer; united states; north america
Finding Free OER Textbooks Online: Untangling the Web
Walters, William H.
Although Open Educational Resources (OERs) can help reduce costs and maximize access to instructional materials, academics face significant problems in identifying good OER textbooks. This can be traced, in part, to the ...
Match: oer; open access; open educational resources; united states; north america
OER outreach for newbies, part III: Embracing the messiness
Crissinger, Sarah
This post is the third in a three-part series devoted to OER outreach (here are the first and second posts). I’ll use this post to advocate for more transparency from the library open education community in order to ...
Match: crissinger, sarah; oer; united states; north america
OER in and as MOOCs
Czerniewicz, Laura; Deacon, Andrew; Walji, Sukaina; Glover, Michael; et al.
This chapter reports on the investigation into the production and rollout of four Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa, and on the experiences of the educators ...
Match: oer; open educational resources; pedagogy
OER reaches ‘inflection point,’ and states are leading the charge
Tate, Emily
Special report: Changes in policy, perception and technology are propelling Indiana, Michigan, Utah, Washington and other states to build digital libraries for open educational resources.
Match: oer; open educational resources; united states; north america
Wrangling Open Educational Resources
Cuillier, Cheryl
Presented at 2014 Arizona Library Association Annual Conference, Scottsdale, AZ / Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are free to use, customize, and share. There’s a goldmine of ...
Match: oer; open educational resources; united states; north america
Teaching with OER during pandemics and beyond
Van Allen, Jennifer; Katz, Stacy
Purpose
Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning materials openly licensed so that others may retain, reuse, revise, remix or redistribute (the 5Rs) these materials. This paper aims to raise awareness of OER by ...
Match: oer; open educational resources; united states; north america
School districts to use openly licensed online content over textbooks — officials
Lestch, Corinne
The agency announced Thursday that 10 school districts will replace at least one textbook with openly licensed educational content. Copyrighted materials created with federal money will also be open.
Match: oer; open educational resources; united states; north america