[Oer-community] Introduction to the discussion

Tim Cook timothywayne.cook at gmail.com
Wed Oct 6 19:33:46 MDT 2010


Well put Rory.  

It is an interesting side effect of human nature that only those *very
few* malicious people will actually cause problems.  Experts tend to be
passionate about a subject.  Guess what, they are also the same people
that tend to contribute their time to things like OER. When $$$/book
sale is at stake and critical review isn't in an open community; not so
much.  Just my observations anyway.

Cheers,
Tim




On Wed, 2010-10-06 at 19:15 -0600, rory wrote:
> Kimberly,
> Why is it so important that we have peer review for OERs? We have had
> proprietary learning content used for centuries with no peer review.
> Not all of it is "true" nor was it all worth sharing. Who decides what
> is worthy for proprietary content?
> Answer: usually the teacher or the department; 
> How?  Ans: Usually by what is available. Or by the idiosnycracy of the
> instructor. Or, by a myriad of other methods.
> Criteria? Ans: Usually none other than what is available and it seems
> like the same as what the instructor learned by. Or other reasons, few
> of them based on pedagogical considerations.
> 
> So, the answer for OERs may very well continue the same except that
> there is a growing movement for better pedagogy especially with using
> online OERs so there seems to be an improvement.  I think that
> improvement will continue, but we will still have poor quality
> content, but with the availability and access of more and more
> content, we will have more opportunity to choose and not be dependent
> on  one or two choices of availability, but a whole range, as will the
> students. If they don't like the teacher's choice they can find other
> materials on the same or a similar subject online.
> 
> Interesting!
> All the best.
> Rory
> 
> 
> On 10-10-06 6:52 PM, Kimberly Wescott wrote: 
> > 
> > 
> > A Utopia worth striving for!.  I struggled a bit with "all" though.
> > I've actually been troubled for some time with the idea of peer
> > review for OER.  Not all that is created is accurate or "true" (for
> > want of a better word).  Nor is all that is created worth sharing -
> > Aye, there's the rub.  Who decides what is worthy?  How?  By what
> > criteria?  I know I may be leaping ahead a bit here.  But, this
> > issue is deserving of much debate I think. 
> > 
> > Kimberly
> > Houston, TX
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
> -- 
> Rory McGreal
> Associate VP Research
> Athabasca University
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Oer-community mailing list
> Oer-community at athabascau.ca
> https://deimos.cs.athabascau.ca/mailman/listinfo/oer-community

-- 
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