2 The Open Education Movement

Education is essential to advancing society. It’s how we pass down the wealth of human knowledge and equip the next generation of leaders, innovators, and citizens.

While technology and access to information is forever expanding, our systems for sharing information in education have not caught up with the potential of mid-21st century technology.

Instead, the educational materials market is held captive by legacy publishing models that actively restrict the dissemination and innovative use of resources in a world that craves educational opportunities. Textbook prices have continued to rise rapidly, leaving too many students without access to their required materials. Digital offerings from traditional publishers come laced with access restrictions and expiration dates with little savings in return, and print editions are too often out of date by the time they hit the shelves. Last but not least, access to these offerings and to technology continues to be hampered by the economic and social divide.

For too long, our educational systems have operated with a fundamental disconnect between practices left over from the analog world, and the vast potential of technology and the Internet to support more affordable, effective teaching and learning.

The movement for Open Education seeks to close this gap.

Open Education encompasses resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment.

However, Open Education Practices  (OEP) and Open Education as a movement “can also include the open sharing of teaching practices and aims to raise the quality of education and training and innovate educational practices on an institutional, professional and individual level” (Conole & Brown, 2018). Open Education is not only about resources, then, but also the practices around a shared goal of equity. This is not to say that Open Education or OEP is perfect and in and of itself it is flawless and good. As with any movement or practice, it is the practitioners and the work that they do that leads to positive outcomes and change.

Why Open Education

• Textbook costs should not be a barrier to education. The price of textbooks has skyrocketed more than three times the rate of inflation for decades. College students face steep price tags that can top $200 per book, and K-12 schools use books many years out of date because they are too expensive to replace. Using OER solves this problem because the material is free online, affordable in print, and can be saved forever. Resources that would otherwise go to purchasing textbooks can be redirected toward technology, improving instruction, or reducing debt.
• Students learn more when they have access to quality materials. The rapidly rising cost of textbooks in higher education has left many students without access to the materials they need to succeed. A study conducted over multiple years by SRI Education in concert with 38 colleges across 13 states and focused on courses using only OER, found “that students who took multiple OER courses on average earned more college credits over time than otherwise similar students who took no OER courses” (“OER at Scale”).
• Technology holds boundless potential to improve teaching and learning. Open Education helps teachers, learners and institutions to fully explore this potential. Imagine a biology textbook that incorporates COVID-19 in the chapter about viruses, or a math tutorial that incorporates local landmarks into word problems. Imagine a lecture attended by hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, or a peer-to-peer exchange between Canadian students learning Mandarin with Chinese students learning English or French. All of this and more is possible when the pathways for technology in education are fully open.
• Better education means a better future. Education is the key to advancing society’s greatest goals, from a building a strong economy to leading healthy lives. By increasing access to education and creating a platform for more effective teaching and learning, Open Education benefits us all.

  Attributions

  The majority of the text in this chapter has been remixed, revised, and adapted from:

  “Open Education” on the SPARC website and is licensed under CC-BY 4.0.

  Additional information is from:

  Conole, G., & Brown, M. (2018). Reflecting on the Impact of the Open Education Movement. Journal of Learning for Development, 5(1), 187–203

  Griffiths, R., Mislevy, J., Wang, S., Ball, A., Shear, L., Desrochers, D. (2020). OER at Scale:
  The Academic and Economic Outcomes of Achieving the Dream’s OER Degree Initiative.
  Menlo Park, CA: SRI International.