Topic 4- Resource Interuse

The four-part test is used to determine whether a particular teaching method or teaching activity belongs to OER-enabled pedagogy. From my study life, I have several instances which meet the criteria of OER-enabled pedagogy. The first instance is Wikipedia. Like the article explicitly acknowledges, Wikipedia meets the standard of OER-enabled pedagogy. Personally speaking, using Wikipedia is a natural and positive move, especially when I found it necessary to look up some background knowledge that needed in my courses. The second instance is what we students of EDCI 339 course are doing at WordPress. One of the course designs for EDCI 339 is to allow students to experience and practice the concepts of the articles we read, mainly the concept of open learning, in blogs as the shared platforms for open learning. Also, We students have access to the sample portfolio made by previous cohorts.
If I am about to become a teacher, I may or may not design some contents or activities that pass this four-part test. This response was triggered prudently rather than randomly, due to the facts that OER-enabled pedagogy must handle various expected and unexpected details. The first detail is that not all subjects get well along with OER-enabled pedagogy. Most of the social science subjects, such as education, sociology, education, English, fit relatively well with OER-enabled pedagogy, largely because most of these subjects are highly open-ended and subjective. This reason explains why students in English course are granted “sample essay” and why we EDCI 339 students can read the sample portfolio from previous semester. In other words, in social science context, the performance of previous students could positively influence that of latter students. Additionally, social science courses have relatively low “knowledge thresholds”. Nearly everybody in the world can participate in some subjective discussions, like “Is current Canadian government good or bad” or “online courses vs in-person courses”. Under this scenario, open learning functions well because every participant in open learning can view some arguments that mentioned by others. Similar examples are the replies to other EDCI 339 students, as well as the meeting of MBA students.
Natural science courses, however, are usually profound and require relatively high “knowledge thresholds”, thus not fitting nicely with OER-enabled pedagogy. The article did mention an instance where elementary school students, who were stuck in figuring out the sum of degrees of a triangle, benefit from “worked examples”. Admittedly, the effect of “worked examples” is positive in elementary school level. But, how about the calculus problems in college level? Now suppose that one college student does not have strong prerequisite knowledge in math. In real world, nobody else can help him out, even if this student has access to abundant resources from OER-enabled pedagogy, such as numerous “worked examples”. Because of the very weak association between previous students and latter students, it is even not necessary at all for natural science or engineering professors to publish courses in open-learning setting.
The second detail that needed to be handle is that, like the article mentions, the actual costs of open learning may be much higher than expected. Together with the points above, it is simply not worth it! The third detail is that college students are taking several courses, so do they really have time and energy to explore some OER-enabled materials?
Moreover, the article itself gives some hints: “Six years later, there have been more than a dozen studies, most of which have found OER to have a small positive impact on learning (Hilton, 2016).” Only small positive impacts are indeed reasonable, because OER is just one factor that influences students’ learning. Other important factors include, but not limited to, students’ self-efforts, strictness of instructors, school level, year of standing, and course difficulty. Overall, the development of OER-enabled pedagogy is superb positive to education enterprise, but OER-enabled pedagogy, a complementary method in my own reflection after reading this article, can hardly be the most dominant factor that determines students’ learning performance.

Wiley, D. & Hilton, J. (2018). Defining OER-enabled Pedagogy. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 19(4).