This was originally posted to Robin DeRosa's blog [https://edtechbooks.org/-HFz] on November 20, 2015.
I am writing this from OpenEd15 [https://edtechbooks.org/-enZ] in Vancouver. And this is a call to my like-minded compatriots spread across our conference rooms here, but also to the tweeps and digitalactivists I’ve worked with online over the last two years. After three days of sessions focused on reducing textbook costs, creating all-OER degree programs, generating data analytics for OER, and producing open textbooks in just four days, I am ready for some good, old-school mutiny. It’s a loving and grateful mutiny, since this conference energizes, inspires, and provokes me. But nonetheless, I’m ready to fling some ideas overboard and see this ship steer in a new direction.
Don’t get me wrong. I am here in Vancouver because I am deeply committed to reducing textbook costs. Wait. Scratch that. I don’t actually care about textbook costs. I care about access, broadly conceived: access to ideas, access to pathways to contribute to knowledge, access to research so that we can collaborate and build. Fundamentally, I don’t want to be part of a movement that is focused on replacing static, over-priced textbooks with static, free textbooks. Textbooks, if we don’t re-theorize them, have generally (just) been repositories for the master’s ideas. Students absorb textbook content and achieve “mastery.” (Call it “competency,” whatever.) Making textbooks more affordable is not high on my list of things to do. Here’s what I want OpenEd to help me figure out how to do instead of lowering textbook costs:
I don’t think that advocating for a pedagogical approach to OER makes me radical or an outlier. But my sense is that the movement is cohering around the “gateway” of open textbook adoption. But don’t worry, I am told, once we hook ’em, we can slip in the pedagogy!
No. No!
That hook is going to puncture our foundational beliefs about the power of open.
I am calling for a (radical?) pedagogy caucus, a core, self-identified group committed to placing pedagogy at the center of the OpenEd movement. I am going to stop apologizing for my sense that textbooks are the wrong way to pitch open.
Open doesn’t need a pitch because open is not for sale.
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