Open educational practices

I made a video recording for Core Ed while I was at the Ulearn conference in New Zealand last month. They sat me in front of two cameras, and asked me to talk off the cuff, no script, about something that I was passionate about. It didn't take me long to think up what I wanted to say and I'm pleased that I did it in one take (Core Ed were pleased too, because minimal studio time and editing were needed!). I spoke about Open Educational Practices, (including Open Educational Resources and Open Scholarship) a subject which I am learning more about all the time as the movement grows and gains traction. You see, the idea behind open practices is that anyone can gain access for free, at any time and in any place - courses, software, ideas, knowledge, people... OEP requires everything to be open - for access, scrutiny and repurposing. So whether it's licensing agreements such as Copyleft or Creative Commons, or open access journals, or even massively online open courses, the open educational practices are gaining ground and influence in the academic world.



It's not going to be easy to change a model where knowledge has become a commodity though. Too many powerful people and organisations stand to lose a lot if everything becomes 'free' and open. But things are changing slowly. The publishing houses who once had a strangle hold on academic journals are beginning to lose their grip. Some are having to change their business models. Google Reader and Google Books for example, are giving us all more than a glimpse of the pages of just about every book that has ever been published. And open access journals are opening up knowledge for all without payment. So when a student comes up against a paywall - what will they do? They will go elsewhere of course - to the free versions that are out there on the web. I know many colleagues who now refuse to publish their research in traditional journals - only open access will do for them. Traditional journals can be slow to publish, there is often a backlog of journals articles and too few issues to put them in, and citation frequency from open access journals can be more rewarding. These refusnik colleagues are growing in numbers too, and so are the open access journals to accommodate them. Is this the start of the end for traditional academic publishing? Watch the video and then tell me whether you think I'm on the right track about OEP, or whether I'm barking up the wrong tree. After all, that's exactly what open scholarship is all about....


Open educational practices by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.