Tijdens de Open Education Conference presenteerde Andreia Inamorato dos Santos van de Open University UK een interessant paper over de discourses of Open Educational Resources (OER). Hierbij gebruikte ze ook nadrukkelijk het boek "The World is Flat" van Thomas Friedman:

Saying that the world is flat means accepting the view that the playing fields are levelled and that competition and collaboration are now more fine-grained; they happen not only on a societal and institutional levels but also amongst individuals.

In het beeld dat Friedman schets passen de OERs ook. OERs zijn gratis beschikbaar online voor iedereen en op elk moment. Hiermee krijgt iedereen de beschikking over deze kennis. Haar conclusie is echter dat dit nog niet gebeurd is:

The educational playing field has not yet been levelled by the open content movement as many suggest and expect. By analysing the discourses of the field, we point to some of the possible reasons:
a) most OER initiatives are still based on Web 1.0 and take up a one-sided approach to content provision,
b) OER initiatives can draw strongly on institutional discourses that aim to raise profiles, leaving to a second plan the commitment to offering true possibilities for the knowledge construction, its regionalisation and use/re-use by its potential audience,
c) some OER initiatives might not have yet decided the position they would rather take faced with the various discourses and agendas of the field.

Ze zegt er zelf ook duidelijk bij dat er absoluut nog meer onderzoek nodig is om dit meer diepgaand te analyseren en daardoor beter te begrijpen.

Downloaden: paper, presentatie, geluidsopname van presentatie

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