Assignment #7-1 for WAOL Open Education Resource online class.

1. Pros & Cons of
Open Source
Education
Dr. Susanne Weil
Centralia College
Prepared for WAOL
Open Education
Resource online class
Assignment 7-1
May 13, 2015
Honey Bee on Sunflower Fronds

2. Benefit #1:
OERs Are
Affordable
• Community College students
often can’t afford textbooks
• This means that many will
not buy them.
• In turn, lacking course
materials leads to students’
not succeeding.
• When instructors use or
create open source
materials, students can
afford to access materials –
because they are free.
Honey Bee on Double Narcissus

3. Drawback #1:
Some materials
can’t be found as
OERs.
• Some course materials are
copyrighted and not
accessible without
permission or payment.
• This is particularly true for
literature courses, many of
which must require
canonical materials.
• For example, this instructor
has found no OER edition of
Gilgamesh, the fundamental
building-block text of her
Non-Western World
Literature course.
Honey Bee on California Poppy, WSU Bee Field Days, June 2011

4. Benefit #2:
OER offers
instructors &
students many
modes of materials
Instructors can build OER
course materials from a wide
array of online sources:
• Texts
• Videos
• Photographs
• Websites
• Art works
• Existing courses
• And more… Italian Honey Bee on Sunflower

5. Drawback #2:
Paralysis by
Choice
* As with all things World Wide
Web, instructors must carefully
monitor quality of materials. As
the saying goes, when you cast
your net into the WWW ocean,
you’ll get some tasty fish, but
also some old boots. . . .
* This costs instructors time, so
planning a course using OERs
means budgeting plenty of lead
time, something CC instructors
often don’t have. Honey Bee Scales Sunflower

6. Benefit #3:
Students can
preview courses
more easily.
• A savvy student who is
course-shopping can sample
materials and decide more
easily if the course will be of
interest and whether its
materials will be
comprehensible.
• A faculty member can
effectively “market” his/her
courses more easily, helping
with enrollments.
Bee Drinking at Poultry Waterer

7. Drawback #3:
Students may not
be skilled at course
assessment.
• Just as faculty must sift and
sort OERs for quality control,
so too must course-shopping
students.
• Some students who are well
aware of their interests,
strengths, and weaknesses will
benefit from the option to
search available OER courses.
• Less savvy students may find
themselves daunted by the
wide array of options and less
able to assess quality.
Carnie on My Hand

8. Benefit #4:
OERs’ accessibility
promotes
democratic access
to quality
education
• OERs – as the educational
wing of the “sharing
economy” – can be the
answer to levelling the
playing field of access to
higher education.
• By their nature, OERs are a
superb fit for the community
college mission.
Bees Hiving In, June 2009

9. Drawback #4:
Pirates Gonna
Pirate
• Just because sources have
Creative Commons licenses
does not mean that all users
will honor those licenses and
give attribution as requested.
• Thus, intellectual property
still can be pirated.
• Of course, given the sharing
focus of those who are
participating in OER, many
may not be very concerned
about this. Seeking the Queen

10. Benefit #5:
OER opens vistas
of creativity
• Faculty can be as creative as
they dare as they create
academic menus from OER
ingredients.
• For example, this instructor
– just because of taking this
online course – now has a
Flickr account & is preparing
to inflict swarms of honey
bee photographs upon
unsuspecting Internet users.
• Now this instructor has
found treasure troves of art
works, online texts, videos, &
more to enrich course
presentations.
• So, thank you, Boyung &
colleagues!
Honey Bee Entering Double Narcissus

11. Drawback #5:
Vistas of creativity
= endless ways to
spend one’s time
• This pedagogical worker bee
is now going to be even more
glued to the computer
screen, sifting through the
myriad sources available.
• Eyeglasses prescriptions will
proliferate.
• But then, that creates
employment, so it’s all good.
• Thumbs up, OER! Honey bee with orange pollen packed into corbiculae