Who doesn´ t want openness – openness and transparency and sharing and collaboration! Of course, most of us do, and in education as well. There isn´ t much to be said against sharing and discussing.

Last week, I was looking for evidence-based papers on open education resources, in particular in the medical education sector. I was aware that various virtual reality solutions have been utilized there for upwards of twenty years, but was pleasantly surprised to see that there is a lot of comprehensive courses based on various OER:s. Moreover, I was looking for examples of the opportunities that OER-based education offers. I ended up with a list of problems that was rather longer than the list of opportunities.

But that is as it should be. The scientific approach includes a good dose of questioning, doubt and wariness. I was looking for evidence-based research on OER, in scientific education journals, and that´ s what I got.

Of course, there was no time to do even a semblance of a systematic review, but there seemed to be some agreement that controlled studies, comparing students´ learning after they have taken the same course with either traditional methods or OER-based methods, show no particular benefit from the latter. On the other hand, as some other studies suggested, it is difficult, when planning an evaluating study on OER courses, to define outcome measures that would be able to reveal unexpected possible benefits of the course. Thus, there may still be much to be said in favor of various digital solutions. Personally, I would like to study and compare how “the scientific attitude” and/or logical thinking is trained (and evaluated) in traditional and a more group- and OER-based pedagogy. My hypothesis is that the latter has advantages in the possibilities to provide immediate feedback from different people, and the discourse and debate that are so central to what science and scientific development are.

Several of the papers I read discussed the quality of OER-based courses. In accordance with so many other types of development, including evolution itself, Maloney and coworkers from Monash University, Australia, emphasized that educational/pedagogical quality will be improved by exposure to others´ perspective and feedback. Again, I think the possibilities for rapid community-based professional feedback must be one of the great benefits of going digital in the university setting.

Another aspect of quality control – as well as of openness – is in regard to the threat that unqualified organizations may pose, in that some such do offer lectures, courses and even degrees on-line that may at best consist of mere propaganda, and at worst, malicious and/or subversive ideology. Maloney et al touch upon this problem when they suggest some kind of peer-review of OER repositories, which I think is an excellent and necessary idea. On another scale, I read in the New York Times recently that the FBI has been alerted to some kind of malicious hi-jacking of not only Zoom on-line meetings, but also of educational materials. Similarly, there is noticeable concern also in Europe regarding false, and sometimes life-threatening, pseudo-information regarding Covid-19 being disseminated on-line these days. How can we protect our serious and earnest courses from being hijacked, and how can we help educate the general public against fake news and “alternative facts”?

So that´ s people acting with malicious intent. Then there are those acting with commercial intent, with or without an underlying ideology, and often with a perfectly respectable front. Adding the word “University” to your organization adds some respectability, doesn´ t it? I googled search terms “university” and “online” in various combinations with various religious and political organizations, and came up with several interesting hits where at least the healthcare schools seemed more interested in preserving souls rather than health. Business ideas can also be top priority; the infamous Trump University is one example, albeit now defunct. Yet other universities are happy to provide a safe haven for students who cannot bear to leave their ideological comfort zone, be it nationalist, Republican, religious or family – and I would argue that their on-line programs help build those walls around the unsuspecting student.

Just a not-so-extreme example: the Liberty University in the US, run by a fundamentalist Evangelical movement headed by Jerry Falwell Jr., has 90,000 students and offers open programs on-line, in many subjects including health and medicine purportedly grounded in faith and biblical principles (this did not keep Falwell from claiming that SARS-covid-2 doesn´ t hurt young people, and from reopening the campus despite the lockdown, resulting in a slew of infected students). The university does reach out beyond formal requirements and recruits from a diversified base – but it is also part of the business idea that their programs conveniently lead to degrees – and even doctoral degrees – without exams or assessments.

My points are that in the face of world-wide enthusiasm for openness and adoption of on-line educational structures, we have to (a) safeguard the deepest meaning of the concepts “academic” and “scientific” and “university”, (b) intensify attempts to support public awareness of the differences between truths and falsehoods, openness and propaganda –  perhaps in particular in the digital versions that now circle the world with the speed of light – but without enlightening.

Oh, by the way, Monash University are real champions of OER and ONL, with their high-quality academic programs.

Maloney et al Med Educ. 2013 Aug;47(8):811-9. doi: 10.1111/medu.12225