7.3: What is Open Education
- Page ID
- 282508
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\(\newcommand{\avec}{\mathbf a}\) \(\newcommand{\bvec}{\mathbf b}\) \(\newcommand{\cvec}{\mathbf c}\) \(\newcommand{\dvec}{\mathbf d}\) \(\newcommand{\dtil}{\widetilde{\mathbf d}}\) \(\newcommand{\evec}{\mathbf e}\) \(\newcommand{\fvec}{\mathbf f}\) \(\newcommand{\nvec}{\mathbf n}\) \(\newcommand{\pvec}{\mathbf p}\) \(\newcommand{\qvec}{\mathbf q}\) \(\newcommand{\svec}{\mathbf s}\) \(\newcommand{\tvec}{\mathbf t}\) \(\newcommand{\uvec}{\mathbf u}\) \(\newcommand{\vvec}{\mathbf v}\) \(\newcommand{\wvec}{\mathbf w}\) \(\newcommand{\xvec}{\mathbf x}\) \(\newcommand{\yvec}{\mathbf y}\) \(\newcommand{\zvec}{\mathbf z}\) \(\newcommand{\rvec}{\mathbf r}\) \(\newcommand{\mvec}{\mathbf m}\) \(\newcommand{\zerovec}{\mathbf 0}\) \(\newcommand{\onevec}{\mathbf 1}\) \(\newcommand{\real}{\mathbb R}\) \(\newcommand{\twovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\ctwovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\threevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cthreevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\mattwo}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{rr}#1 \amp #2 \\ #3 \amp #4 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\laspan}[1]{\text{Span}\{#1\}}\) \(\newcommand{\bcal}{\cal B}\) \(\newcommand{\ccal}{\cal C}\) \(\newcommand{\scal}{\cal S}\) \(\newcommand{\wcal}{\cal W}\) \(\newcommand{\ecal}{\cal E}\) \(\newcommand{\coords}[2]{\left\{#1\right\}_{#2}}\) \(\newcommand{\gray}[1]{\color{gray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\lgray}[1]{\color{lightgray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\rank}{\operatorname{rank}}\) \(\newcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\col}{\text{Col}}\) \(\renewcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\nul}{\text{Nul}}\) \(\newcommand{\var}{\text{Var}}\) \(\newcommand{\corr}{\text{corr}}\) \(\newcommand{\len}[1]{\left|#1\right|}\) \(\newcommand{\bbar}{\overline{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bhat}{\widehat{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bperp}{\bvec^\perp}\) \(\newcommand{\xhat}{\widehat{\xvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\vhat}{\widehat{\vvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\uhat}{\widehat{\uvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\what}{\widehat{\wvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\Sighat}{\widehat{\Sigma}}\) \(\newcommand{\lt}{<}\) \(\newcommand{\gt}{>}\) \(\newcommand{\amp}{&}\) \(\definecolor{fillinmathshade}{gray}{0.9}\)"Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which ... copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers" ("Open Access").
Open Education is a movement to provide educational resources, tools, and practices that are free of legal and financial barriers to use and re-use. Simply put, it's an effort to create and provide educational materials that can be freely accessed, freely shared, and freely edited. This has a number of benefits including reducing the cost of class materials and textbooks. However, there is a great deal more to it than that!
"Open" resources allow for educators to customize content for their courses. Instead of relying on for-cost textbooks that have a rigid perspective, open education resources (or OERs) can be customized to represent student views and cultures. They can be adapted to perfectly fit a course or to include different elements that enrich the content or consider equity needs.
Open content is reflected in higher education in a number of ways, sometimes using different terms or acronyms such as OER. At California Community Colleges, ZTC (or Zero Textbook Cost) is often used in a way that's almost synonymous with open education resources. Many courses are labeled as ZTC to show students that they have been designed so that students have no costs to pay for course materials.
What Does This Have to Do With Information Literacy?
A part of being information literate is knowing where and how to find information. The "open" movement extends well beyond education. In many ways, the internet is one of the biggest supporters of open information. While not all online information can be described as "open", the internet provides a vast amount of freely accessible information sources. It's also important to understand how information is being shared and developed.
Open research is another part of the movement. Scholars from every academic field are working to make their research more freely accessible. Open access journals exist to publish scholarly journals and share that research more freely. Open research also helps to diversify the voices that are heard in academic research.
Challenges to Open Access of Information
There are a number of challenges to providing information that people can freely access. First and foremost is the cost! We can assume that most people have, at some point, accessed information on the internet; but is it really free?
Cost
Websites and videos are created by people. That work takes up time and often that work is performed as a part of their job as a part of an organization of some sort. Hosting websites and content also costs money. The amount of data you need to host online and the amount of people visiting your website increases the cost to host that resource. So where does the money for this come from?
- Ad revenue
- Donations
- Subscriptions
These are a few examples of how people afford to provide information on the internet. Creating and hosting a video on YouTube is free for the creator and for the user, but then the viewers have to watch ads.
This causes a very similar problem for open education. Educators and researchers generally do not want to use advertisements, as it makes their content seem less reputable. So websites hosting open content have to find money elsewhere. This is often through donations or through requiring the researchers themselves to pay for publishing their articles!
Accessibility
Accessibility, or the ability of people to be able to view and/or use something, is a key concern with information. Particularly with providing "open" resources, we want people to be able to access them without barriers. Common barriers to information access include cost, technology access, technology proficiency, or personal disability. Without the resources of big companies paying for resources to be created, it can be challenging to ensure that the information we put out there is accessible.
Discoverability
A big part of accessibility is finding the resources in the first place! If you cannot discover a new source of information then you certainly can't access it. Tools like Google tend to prioritize certain types of results, often favoring large publishers and creators that already have a big audience. Open content creators and publishers are essentially small, indie creators. It's a challenge for them to compete for visibility!
Licensing
In order for a work to be "open", it must be properly licensed or in the public domain (a state in which a work belongs to the public and is not protected by copyright law). An open resource is one that someone can share, edit, and even use to create a totally new work. Whenever you create something in a tangible form (such as recording a song, taking a photograph, painting a picture, or writing a book), you immediately have author's rights to that work. Those rights include control over the distribution (sharing and access) of your work, use and reuse of your work (whether someone can use it or reuse it in their own projects), and the right to be acknowledged and credited for your work (this is part of why we cite sources!).
In order for someone else to be able to use your content, you have to agree to let them. This usually involves a licensing agreement of some sort. This is also why social media platforms like TikTok have user agreements that require you to give up some of your author rights. They literally could not legally share your videos if you didn't. In the next section we'll talk more about author's rights and licensing. The ability to license works in a way that makes them "open" is vital to open education, as it allows educators to customize and create free educational resources such as textbooks.
Sources
- "Open Access." wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access. Accessed on 26 Sept. 2024.