For this discussion the organizers did not pose a question, instead, they asked for responses to the following provocation developed at OER18.

To be honest, OER sometimes feels weirdly colonial. Does it create a power differential because of those who have the ability to creating things and make them available to those who do not have, instead of empowering those who do not have to create for themselves and their own contexts, while also being able to support that work, and those doing it, monetarily?

Sava Saheli Singh (read the full post)

I know a lot has changed socially since 2018, but it feels like this reflection is even more relevant now. I’m writing to reflect on the creation of OER and traditionally published educational materials, and on the use case for OER.

Open Educational Resources (OER) require a lot of time to create and maintain. And unlike what can happen in open software, there’s not the same amount of social capital and patronage that is bestowed on the creators (even if it can be pretty paltry in open software too). Which seems to lead us to a place where the creators of OER are only people with job security and time, sometimes with support from their workplace. With less and less people having job security in academia¹ to work on OER, it is concerning to think about who will create them, and what role their privileged positions may have on the content. It is concerning to think of the people who would have much to contribute, but are unable to based on what they have access to. We also need to be aware that pushing for any open initiative without nuance around exploitation, colonialism, and the fact that some knowledge should not be made freely available, is irresponsible.

However, these concerns are true whether we look at traditionally published educational materials or OER. Traditional publishing has also resulted in excluding people without institutional affiliation, people who have English as an additional language, people who do not have post-secondary degrees, and along other lines of oppression like race, class, gender, ability, etc.².

A large benefit of using OER is that the material is free of cost for students, who are routinely asked to pay hundreds of dollars per semester for required materials, and who regularly choose to go without material because of the cost³.

What this suggests to me is that OER is not immune to the larger social problems around who gets compensated for educational material creation, or who has opportunities to create content. It does still bring benefit to students in comparison to content they have to pay for. We (as promoters and creators of OER) do still need to take a hard look at the world we’re creating and take the original poster’s call for support and empowerment seriously.

1. In 2018 it was noted that 54% of appointments were limited-term contracts in Canada. President’s Message / The growing precarity of tenure-track positions in Canada | CAUT ↩︎
2. Privilege & Bias in Scholarly Publishing – Critical Race & Ethnic Studies 101 (Alamri) – LibGuides at University of California Merced (ucmerced.edu) ↩︎
3. Commercial Textbooks Present Challenges ↩︎

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