Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Why open educational resources are failing to widen access to education

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This blog post summarizes the research in 'Accessibility of Open Educational Resources: how well are they suited for English learners?', but unfortunately that's as close as you'll get to it, since the paper by Irina Rets, Tim Coughlan, Ursula Stickler and Lluisa Astruc is locked behind a paywall inthe ironically named journal Open Learning. Seriously, if you're writing about open education, don't contribute it to a closed journal! Anyhow, the argument offered is that paying attention to text complexity and learning levels in OERs would make them more useful to people, and address the problem of "universal accessibility and use." While I think it's a fair point, I doubt very much that it's even close to the whole solution, and would have preferred to see it presented in a context with other initiatives designed to promote access and use. Image: Educause.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Apr 26, 2024 07:55 a.m.

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