Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Doing OA

Ken Udas, Doing OER and OA: More Questions than Answers, Open Students, May 12, 2008.

... Are enough people using OA resources?

Apparently, there is a lot of OA material available, and I assume that there are a lot of OA articles being read and referenced. But is OA being used to directly and positively impact educational access and outcomes? Why or why not?

Is asking “What does it mean to Do OA?” a meaningful or important question?

I ask this because of a fantastic posting that Amee Godwin of OER Commons recently made, titled On “Doing OER”. In this post Amee talks about Open Educational Resources less as things and more as processes. This is a powerful and engaging direction, because it connects creation, use, and re-creation in a cycle, poking at some of the underlying principles of an ecosystem that supports the economics of “openness.”

So, is this an important question relative to OA? Has it already been asked and answered and I missed the conversation?

Are there parallels between OA and other forms of OER?

Of course, the answer is Yes, but are the parallels relevant to the questions posed above? What can practitioners of OA learn from practitioners of OER, and vice versa? ...