Hey everyone! A little over a month ago I started drafting this post and never finished it. This week I wanted to return to it and finish it as it has been on my mind again the past week or so!!!!!
When watching Cable Greens talk on Open Educational Resources from the UVic library for Digital Literacy, 3 things stuck out to me. Open Education Resources allows for numerous new ways of education, it gives the opportunites for students to share and exchange knowledge with other students and it is a way for up and coming learners to save thousands of dollars. Despite all of this I first heard of Open Educational Resources in this class.
The first of my 3 points I am going to talk about is Open Education Resources allow for numerous new ways of learning. What these resources allow for is for one to essentially access knowledge for free without needing any requirement to obtain the information. This can be done with websites such as Creative Commons in which anyone can share their work while maintaining the copyrights to it and therefore not losing any credit. This essentially allows for anyone to research anything they are invested in. I know for myself I can think of times I wanted to research certain topics such as training plans for running but I was unable to gain access to certain knowledge without paying a subscription fee. On top of this, Open Education allows scholars from anywhere across the world to work, share and build off each others ideas. While conducting research on a topic if you came across a piece of work which you just loved, you could use that information while ensuring the author gets credit. You could also change some things and create your own piece while still crediting the original author. This allows for endless opportunities which truly transcends the current education system where only those enrolled at an institution receives knowledge.
My second takeaway is this allows for students to become teachers in a way. Unlike university when accessing certain Open Education Resources, There is no set student or professor. What I mean is in one topic you may learn from someone else’s research but in another topic that same person or anyone else could learn from your research. This allows for each person to serve more then one role in education and with that see knowledge from mulltipule perspectives. I think that if I could practice sharing what I know with someone who has a speciality in a different field than me it would give us both chances to learn more about each others field but our own field as well. This means more knowledge for more people which I am a fan of. I understand you could do the same thing with people in other majors at your university while in person however I know for myself I have very niche interests (certain races, music and events in history) and I don’t actually know anyone personally who could help me with most of these. Open Education allows for me or anyone to find info on their niche interests as it provides a much wider population of people to access and a quick way in finding who you need.
Lastly if implemented on a large enough scale it could save tens of thousands of dollars for an individual. I know for myself most of the money I make goes right into my education. While I believe it is worth the investment I am already in a fortunate enough spot to be able to afford university when many others who are just as passionate as me to learn can not afford to put them selves through post secondary school. Open Education Resources implemented on a large scale could accomplish something I’ve been passionate about for a long time being that everyone is given an equal chance in being able to make their career. Institutions essentially gate-keep knowledge from anyone outside of it accessing it, this means someone could be “qualified” to be let into an educational institution but cant access their research unless they pay a fee in which not everyone can afford. Even after graduating you lose access to research which means you’re than on your own which to me is crazy as learning always changes with time and I believe one never truly stops learning. Open Education Resources gives an opportunity for those who can’t afford education or have already finished their degree to continue to learn from credible resources.
What I had been thinking about over the past couple weeks and made me revisit this post was the fact that if I know I don’t have to pay for university to continue my learning why do I continue to do so? And the answer is obvious, I need a degree to do anything with my education. I let the thought go until it lead to another thought, people will always pay for university because they need the degree to actually do anything with their knowledge. So why gate-keep knowledge? They don’t actually significantly benefit from a financial stand point in my eyes and they could actually further their own research from adopting an Open Education standpoint where they share info between independent scholars and other institutions to collaborate towards solving the worlds problems. At this point the topic goes from simply Open Education to actually speeding up human kinds progress as a group of learners who could work together.
Wow! As you can see Open Education has really got me thinking! If you like me are a UVic Student I would highly recommend watching “Cable Green on Open Educational Resources” through joining Digital Literacy. This video did spark all these thoughts and is without a doubt worth watching if you have access to it! Thanks for reading and I hope you tune in again!