Past weeks I have been learning about OER – Open Educational Resources. It is a vast field and OER touches on several aspects within the realm of education. One aspect that caught my interest is how OER challenges the traditional academic publication system. Along with publishing something questions about such as copyright, validity, authority, rigor arise.

The traditional ecosystem of academic publication is centered around av few publicists which represent a level of rigor as well as an audience. These publicists share power in the ecosystem of academic publication with the funding arrangement as with money follows the research and publication possibilities. Hylén draw parallell to feodal times. Note that the publication way to the audience mainly goes through rigor. Funders want their money to result in publication which have them invest in mostly rigor research rather than innovative or tentative research. Rigor makes research take small but super secure steps as opposed to mentioned innovative and tentative research where new ideas are tested and brought to light.

OER on the other hand represent another ecosystem that promotes innovation, new ideas and open discussion. With the internet as infrastructure anyone can be a publisher with jeopardization on rigor but promotion of the new and brave. Anyone can contribute to make a theory more rigor, or a method more effective. The process of learning and finding new knowledge within OER is held by the “peasants” than the “feodal lords”. The landscape of publishing has widened from closed and centralized to include open and decentralized.

This learning process that OER supports holds not only the traditional researchers “thinking mind”, but also the networking “passionate body”. Oddon, Hughes and Lupton maps interesting learning aspects within networked learning. Depending on where, what and how the learner can develop personal skills ranging from reflexivity and openness to others, to production of new skills and improved teaching skills. I have been teaching in higher education in the field of music performance for several years, and the subject was/are a challenge to the traditional academic fields. Music bings out feelings (to be brief) that in many cases are to complex to decifer to words and objective logics, but still necessary to make us feel part of a social situation or being wordless defined by the musical expression. The traditional production of knowledge focus on objective theory and logic and often discriminate the subjective cognition and human complex expressive system. It seem that engagement in OER (or OEP, Open Educational Practice) offers a fuller set of stimuli that activates a composite learning process.

As with the struggle for music as academic subject, OER and OEP have may yet to be accepted as a learning and publishing concept and infrastructure. But the infrastructure will most likely not fall into decay, and the concept give a range of stimuli between the humans involved. The challenge is to find a discussion between the closed central and the open decentral as we need both rigor and brave.

Hylén, J. (2007). Open Educational Resources: Opportunities and Challenges. http://www.oecd.org/education/ceri/37351085.pdf

Oddone, K., Hughes, H., Lupton, M. (2019). Teachers as Connected Professionals: A Model to Support Professional Learning Through Personal Learning Networks. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/126741/8/4082-Article%20Text-30714-1-10-20190724.pdf

Volgsten, U., & Pripp, O. (2016). Music, Memory, and Affect Attunement: Connecting Kurdish
Diaspora in Stockholm. Culture Unbound, 8, 144–164. Retrieved from
http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v8/a11/cu16v8a11.pdf

Long, N. (2013). The Power of Music Issues of Agency and Social Practice The Significance
of Music and Musical Practice. Social Analysis, 57(2), 21–40.
https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2013.570202

Kramer, L. (2011). Interpreting music. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Open Educational Resources – Rioting the Feodal