Publishers Challenge Quality Of Open Educational Resources28/05/2013 by Intellectual Property Watch 5 Comments Print This Post By Kelly Burke for Intellectual Property WatchThe International Publishers Association (IPA) has published a paper that raises questions about the quality, sustainability, and public funding of Open Educational Resources (OER).While the paper notes that these resources are valuable, it points to a lack of accountability in keeping OERs up-to-date and defining their role alongside professionally-published resources. IPA is proponent of strong copyright protection, and could see a threat from opening up the lucrative textbook market.“We are sceptical however about the capacity of OERs to provide high quality content in core curriculum subjects in the longer term,” the paper said. “An over-reliance on OERs will endanger the quality of school level education until a number of challenges related to extensive use of OERs are addressed, especially sustainability, quality, and efficacy.”The IPA’s OER paper is available here [pdf].Related Articles:Publishers Urge European Commission To Reject Google’s Competition Proposal Genetic Resources And Traditional Knowledge : Getting The Rules Right For Agriculture: A Key Challenge For WIPO’s IGC International Publishers Demand Egyptian Government Stop Attacks "Publishers Challenge Quality Of Open Educational Resources" by Intellectual Property Watch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Geoff Cain says 28/05/2013 at 11:21 pm An over-reliance on commercial textbooks can also lead to the increase in school costs. The only time the costs of textbooks has ever come down was in response to open education resources. The whole point of OERs is that the best of them are created by and for the community that will use them. A math textbook created at a college, by the math dept. will be able to account for the particular needs of the local students in ways that commercial publishers just can’t do. You may also want to check out a posting I did a while back called “The Myth of Commercial Textbook Reliability.” http://cain.blogspot.com/2011/03/oer-myth-of-commercial-textbook.htmlReply
Rory McGreal says 29/05/2013 at 11:58 am ALL the arguments that the IPA use against OER are in fact arguments supportive of OER and against commercial content. I have reversed references to OER and commercial publishers to demonstrate this. The IPA position can be better argued in support of OER. See my Anit-IPA position paper:https://landing.athabascau.ca/blog/view/311544/the-anti-ipa-position-paper-a-reply-from-an-educator-to-the-international-publishers-association-position-paper RoryReply
Brian Ausland says 05/06/2013 at 9:59 pm “The International Publishers Association questioning the appropriateness of making public funds available to OER is equivalent to the LA dodgers questioning the appropriateness of making baseball gloves available to opposing teams.Reply
[…] in many MOOCs have come under scrutiny in recent months, with questions being raised about the general level of quality and sustainability of OERs. This is a valid point – who will monitor and update these OERs in the same way that […]Reply
[…] not-at-all-shocking FUD, the International Publishers Association has issued a paper challenging the quality, […]Reply