Comments on: Open Education and OER is like …?

By: Tracy Rosen

Tracy Rosen — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 13:33:30 +0000

To add to the mix…I’ve often thought of OER as folkloric. Stories we share with each other that change as they get passed on, taking with them some of the passer-onner.

By: JohnR

JohnR — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:41:25 +0000

@David – oddly enough this is the first step in expanding on a conference proposal that us CETIS folk submitted recently (Li, Lorna, Phil, and myself) – hopefully it’ll move on form here.
@Scott – what i’m trying to do, and we’re hoping to develop, is to take a relatively light hearted look at some of how the OER and OpenEd communities (ourselves included) talk about what they do. It builds off of the CETIS conference backchannel chat that Lorna blogged about (I’ll edit the link into the above text in a minute). I think that I increasingly feel the tension in style between the big and little OER approaches – though both have their place -they work with very different models (and I hope I’ve poked fun at both equally). I agree that individuals and institutions/ organisations need to articulate their own metaphors and models – hopefully this ‘catalogue’ may play a small part in a more thoughtful approach to this.

By: Scott Leslie

Scott Leslie — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 19:33:48 +0000

John, nice post. I think it is very useful to look at the metaphors we use. Where I differ only very slightly is encouraging people to develop their own (cf. my “open educator as dj” talk, inspired very much by earlier talks from Gardner Campbell.) Because, implicit or explicit, we all have a metaphor, some understanding or model, that underpins our relation to openness, teaching and learning. I’m not such a big fan of thinking of metaphors as right or wrong; the ones we choose and use stem in large part from who we are and our past experiences, the contexts we find ourselves in and the histories we bring. What I do think is useful is, like you’ve done, to then make explicit our metaphor and see what it can teach us, both about the subject we’re applying it to, both in its match and its difference, and about ourselves.

I’d also like to offer that, for me at least, I’m more interested in looking at the metaphors as they apply to the “open educator” or “open learner” rather than “OER” (and to a lesser extent “open education” or “open learning”.) Doing so helps individuals situate themselves in relation rather than try to totalize “OER” or “open education” as an entity or coherent system, which I believe it neither is nor is helpful to try to make it so.

My $0.02. But hopefully understood as not a criticism of what you’ve written here; I do think there is a lot of useful exploration to be done in how people conceptualize both openness and the teaching and learning process and that a good deal of insight can be garnered from the metaphors they use. Cheers, Scott

By: Rethinking the O in OER : Information Environment Team

Rethinking the O in OER : Information Environment Team — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 17:51:44 +0000

[…] I’ve been thinking about models for OER, and for learning repositories. Its with uncanny timing that John Robertson at CETIS has published a post on OER models and metaphors. […]

By: dkernohan

dkernohan — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 16:44:26 +0000

Thanks John, nice post. I’ve blogged on similar issues here http://dkernohan.posterous.com/the-oer-spin-doctor-on-the-wheels-of-steel

I’d love to see a conference session on this issue. A good metaphor (or a range of good parallels of practice) would be very useful in helping OER establish itself.