The three articles for this week’s reading all focus on the importance of an open learning environment as well as equal and easy access to information and learning material for all students.

In the first article, Chapter 1 of A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students, the author outlines the concept and emphasis of “Open Pedagogy”, focusing on Open Educational Resources (OERs) [1]. She argues that two foci of open pedagogy and OERs are accessibility and faculty agency.

I find these very relevant to my life as a university student. Firstly, in respect to accessibility, traditional textbook-based learning environment has sometimes put strain on my learning experience because the textbooks are often so pricey that i have had to save hard for them. Still I consider myself lucky because I have been able to afford them, after all. This could, and probably has, been a real problem for students with more difficult financial situations. Those student would not be able to access the necessary knowledge and information for learning. In fact, a survey of 22,129 college students in florida shows that 64% has reported not purchasing a required textbook “because of its high cost” [2]. In this case, accessibility is neither easy nor equal, and is common even in developed countries like the US. If OERs are more widely adopted and incorporated into everyday higher educational system, this problem would be partly mitigated because the pool of knowledge needed for learning is no longer limited to the form of an expensive textbook, but a network of information that could be free or at least much more affordable. This opinion is echoed by a lot of other research and papers that encourage the use of OERs in higher education. In a journal by Jhanigiani and Biswas Diener, it is argued that most OERs are either “freely available” or at least “low cost”, which help “drive the market towards a lower price point,” making education more accessible for more people regardless of their financial situation [3].

Furthermore, when school faculty incorporates the concept of OER and open learning, it takes agency in helping us as students to not only consume knowledge, but also create and contribute to it. This is evident in this course, where instead of only reading certain materials and writing papers, we get to see other students’ reflections on the materials and comment on those, fostering a collective and interactive way of learning from not only the materials but also each other.

However, one of the problems I could see with the advocacy of OERs in the current educational landscape is how scholars and schools are going to realistically get compensation and/or funds for their intellectual properties and research results. Academics isn’t free, at least not yet; apart from making money, the reason why higher education and its learning materials are often expensive also includes having to pay for intellectual properties and researches. Of course these could be funded by the government and charity organizations as well, but they might not be enough.

In the second article, the author begins by describing a funny yet ironic incident that portrays the unfortunate and ridiculous case where digital redlining was used, and how it hindered student’s access to important information for learning [4]. But perhaps more alarming is the fact that this inconvenience not only exists, but also exists to unequal extents in community colleges versus in more research-based universities. This speaks to a deeper inequity, as community college students are often those with more modest financial backgrounds, and “higher” university students often come from more affluent families. Different extents of digital redlining may be widening this gap. Similarly, unequal and often difficult access to learning information is also a huge problem in the aboriginal people living in remote areas of Australia, as demonstrated in the third article [5]. The authors also suggest a more open educational environment and style to address this problem as opposed to the traditional classrooms of today’s mainstream structure to ensure a more successful outcome.

In conclusion, there is much to be desired from today’s higher educational system, and the significance of cultivating an open learning environment should be more widely acknowledged in order to encourage more equal and easier access to knowledge and information. However, there are also important realistic considerations that should be undertaken to balance the ideal with reality.

 

 

 

Reference:

[1] Mays, E. (Ed.). (2017). A Guide to Making Open Textbooks With Students. Rebus Community Retrieved July 16, 2020, from https://press.rebus.community/makingopentextbookswithstudents/chapter/open-pedagogy/ [chapter 1]

[2] Hilton, J. (2016). Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64(4), 573-590.

[3] Diener, E., Diener, C., & Biswas-Diener, R. (2017). Open-source for educational materials making textbooks cheaper and better. Open: The philosophy and practices that are revolutionizing education and science, 209-217.

[4] Gilliard, C. (2019). Digital Redlining, Access, and Privacy. Retrieved July 20, 2020, from https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/digital-redlining-access-and-privacy

[5] Kral, I., & Schwab, R. G. (2012). 4, Design Principles for Indigenous Learning Spaces. In Learning spaces: Youth, literacy and new media in remote Indigenous Australia. Acton, A.C.T.: ANU E Press. Retrieved July 20, 2020 from https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p197731/html/ch04.html?referer=&page=10#toc_marker-11