Forum reply 6
To: Leyla
Dear Leila,
Thank you for your questions! At first, I wanted to say that after perusing Knox’s (2013) critiques, I had a strange feeling about OER concept, but then I thought that even he himself said that this movement has a lot of advantages and despite its weaknesses, it is necessary and it can be significantly improved. I was puzzled about why he does not delve deeper into making detailed recommendations. He focused on 5 disadvantages and he quoted Foucault extensively, which made the comprehension of this research article even more complicated. In my view, OER has more benefits than flaws, and it will continue to develop in future.
Post-reflection: When the pandemic started, I was in despair. It was a miracle that I remembered about Eventbrite. Later, I told myself how I could forget about this magic wand. It has a lot of free online events ranging from learning languages, seminars, conferences, to yoga sessions. I strongly recommend all my students to use this site. For instance, it has free conversational clubs, book clubs, tutorials, and trial lessons. I cannot pay 75 dollars per hour for tutoring (I know exactly because I had to pay in 2017, I could pay only for 2 lessons), but in Eventbrite I can get access to free lessons, exactly as OER proposes. I am thankful to this site creators and teachers who make seminars at such uncertain time as now.
Forum reply 6
To: Justyna
Dear Justyna,
I was thinking about your questions for some time. You really made a good point about marketization and commodification of education, which is mentioned by Knox (2013). I think that if we judge the way Coursera is set up, it certainly has the idea of marketization. Excellent quality courses, which can lead to employment, require a fee, whereas totally free courses have basic topics, which can be a waste of time. Coursera with their big enrollment numbers resembles a factory. Also, prior the pandemic one could use the sources from a course ( FutureLearn) as long as they wanted, but now after the course finishes, a learner loses access to the sourced and to restore them, they have to pay. In my view, education is always connected with politics and OER can be a carrier of political ideas. It carried the idea that certificate is important, so it promotes credentialism. Unfortunately, the absence of the teacher makes things only worse in such online platforms. On one hand, students are relatively free from teacher’s ideology and they should learn from each other and they will rely more on themselves. However, on the other hand, for example, studying chemistry without a teacher can ineffective and frustrating on such online platforms. Self-directed learning, especially in initial stages, is hard and it will require a lot of time and practice to develop critical thinking.
I recommend you reading the article by Almeida (2017) to find answers to some of your questions. She states, “OER can also lead to the exploitation of knowledge producers, can reinforce a Western-centric perspective that leads to forms of educational colonialism, can confuse autonomy for liberty, and can privilege a neoliberal formulation of education that precludes real social change. In a vacuum, OER are impotent and so is abstract, decontextualized rhetoric about the promise of the OER movement” (p.15).
Post-reflection: Despite all disadvantages of OER and Coursera in particular, I am happy that such opportunities appeared. I think that the main point of learning is to get knowledge and OER can give more access to people who want to study, but cannot afford to pay high fees.
Almeida, Nora. (2017). “Open Education Resources and Rhetorical Paradox in the Neoliberal Univers(ity).” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 1, no. 1 DOI: 10.24242/jclis.v1i1.16.
Knox (2013) points out that OER movement aligns with the ideas of marketisation and comodification of education, therefore seeing learners as human capital.