Sunday, March 9, 2008

Open Educational Resources: What they are and why do they matter

I agree with the points written by Ilkka Tuomi about open educational resources. I agree that education is not only obtaining knowledge from the source of knowledge or fill out our brain with some new information, but also enable us to act in the frame of information or knowledge that we currently learn. That is why the open educational resources needs to have this soul. Besides that the OER needs to be available to everyone with any social, economic, and skill background. OER also needs to be able to be accessable for everyone at the same time without reducing it's quality. OER is also available for everyone to take part in constructing the content and share it to others. If the OER accomodates all the principles of openess, I believe that OER will change the traditional education system. OER will challenge the traditional education system which is costly , get easily outdated, an not providing enough space for collaboration among learners and space limited ( only a few people from certain place of world at the same time). Attending a course outside the country to benchmark what has happened outside will take a lot of money and time. OER will provide the same quality course of education at the same time for unlimited number of people from any places in the world without spending a lot of money ( if you have basic PC connected to internet). The cost you will pay only the cost for PC which you can be used several times and the cost of internet connection. At the same time you will also be able to collaborate with the other learners as well as the instructors. In collaboration you are not only users but you can also be a creator if you think you have the better ide of what the learning process should be done.
The only questions I have is that the openess in the OER will reduce the value of the product offered. Will this economic values reduce the willingness of people in creating a new things. As the one that has been created will be shared to people for free without royalty. In the market, product is valued by some money that the product can give to the creator. For the open educational resources, how the products can be valued?

No comments: