Equity in OER Publishing by Josie Gray
OER Content
Josie Gray
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Topics covered in this section
Let’s talk about content, what is actually in these resources? What are they teaching? What knowledge is being represented and how? Are diverse people, perspectives, and experiences visible, and if so, how are they portrayed?
This question of content is one that I am currently finding the most interesting.
OER as content
In open education, there is a lot of focus on how OER can increase access to education. This makes sense, especially when comparing OER to commercial textbooks. OER are digital (which makes them easy to share) and free. Anyone with a device, internet access, and the knowledge of where and how to search can find and use these resources. However, putting something up for free online does not mean a resource benefits everyone the same, and I’ve been finding quite a lot of literature critically looking at OER as content.
Some of this critique questions the presumed value that OER advocates put on “access to information,” that by putting information for free online in the form of OER is making the world a more equitable place by increasing access to education. People making this critique are referencing the rhetoric used to promote OER as having a value globally and benefiting people in “third-world” countries who can access the resources for free.
Do OER make the world “flat”?
In 2005, Thomas Friedman published a book called The World is Flat. This book argues that the rise of the internet and access to personal devices has “leveled the playing field” in the world’s economy, meaning that everyone has equal opportunity, regardless of where they live.
Andreia Inamorato dos Santos (2008) takes this metaphor of “flatness” and asks if access to knowledge (through OER) helps “flatten” the world and make it more equal for everyone. She argues that Friedman’s argument is a fallacy because it does not consider broader economic and cultural factors, and that this fallacy can be found in the open education movement. She writes:
There is no consideration of the resources and skills that are essential at the very minimum to benefit from OERs, such as the access to a computer connected to the internet and a level of computer literacy that would enable the individual to search for these resources on the web… Access to content is good, but access to content that is meaningful, didactic and localised could be even more useful for the ones who truly lack education opportunities (p. 8).
Andreia’s argues that access to knowledge alone does not make the world a more equitable place. It matters what language the material is written in, it matters if the content is appropriate to an individual’s context, it matters what options a person has to access that content.
In 2013, Jeremy Knox published an article titled, “The limitations of access alone.” In th