OERlabs Openbook/Expert questionnaire OER (Student Participation)

Promoting openness in the university context? by Juliane Ressel

Reflections about my research work with and about Open Educational Resources

Almost a year ago, as part of the Humboldt Project at Zeppelin University - a student research module linked to and supported by a teaching chair - I first became involved with Open Educational Resources (OER). Due to my specialization, I approached the OER phenomenon at German universities from an (educational) sociological perspective.

From the results of the partially standardized and narrative interviews, in which I was allowed to ask actors of the OER debate about their individual approach to OER, a discrepancy between the knowledge about and the experiences with OER could be worked out as an interesting impulse for the current debate: Although the actors who professionally deal with OER in the course of research or administration are genuinely better acquainted with the phenomenon and can demonstrate a corresponding professional or scientific knowledge, a third of the interviewees have never used or created OER. The same applies to me and presumably many other students: Receptive media use dominates the university context; knowing something about OER does not automatically mean changing (remixing) existing OERs or even producing new ones.

Following this point of view, not everything can be problematized with a group of actors who have to gain OER competences while the others already have them, but it is asked how each deals with OER individually. If from now on no distinction is made between OER experts and laypersons, a differentiated investigation of the potentials of OER in the higher education landscape is absolutely necessary in order to create greater awareness and acceptance for OER and, in a further step, to win teachers and learners for the use of OER: Assuming the primacy of technology and its power to change per se is clearly not enough here. But in which direction would the debate have to shift if OER were nothing special any more, i.e. if the medium itself no longer made the difference?

Such a change of perspective enables a reflected position in the current OER debate and puts the individual actors, their individual dispositions of perception, evaluation and action, as well as the framework conditions constitutive for university practice, in the foreground. Bourdieu's Habitus Theory (cf. Bourdieu 1982; 1979), expanded with the figure of the medial habitus established in media pedagogical discourse (cf. e.g. Kommer 2010), and asked:

1. How does the media habitus of the individual affect the creation and use of OER?
2. Which structural framework conditions are conducive to open teaching and learning spaces with OER?

OER will be explicitly examined as an object for discussion and as an occasion for rethinking or even changing everyday routines in studies and teaching. The focus will be on the underlying social (action) practices in order to understand the importance of an open attitude - according to Wiley (2010) constituted by the central values "sha-ring, giving, and generosity" (p. 20) - and to sensitize the participants to the associated open practices of cooperation and sharing in teaching and study. Because: A glance at the relevant literature on the beneficial and inhibiting factors of knowledge sharing reveals parallels to the framework conditions currently being discussed in the current OER debate.

This reveals the real challenge in the debate about open educational practice: an open attitude of the actors towards OER and thus towards collaboration and cooperation in the context of higher education. The media habitus of the teachers affects the creation and use of OER to the extent that the incorporated disposition systems of individual patterns of perception, thought and action guide and limit the actions of the teachers in relation to OER. It requires a reflection of these attitudes and positions in order to deal constructively with such media challenges. Legal and organisational prerequisites in particular are among the conducive framework conditions. So that not every teacher has to be an expert in licences from now on, information and support offers can lead teachers towards a sovereign, creative handling of free licences and open educational offers. In addition, a clear positioning of the universities on the topic of OER, support tailored to the needs of the addressees through non-monetary incentive systems and the development of social practices through a culture of sharing are beneficial. The aim is to create and design physical and symbolic spaces in which teachers and learners can engage with OER in their own work. These exemplary starting points can sensitize for the self-evident handling of OER and test open practices in the university context.