In activity 1.3, we are asked to read and comment on a paper about Open Scholarship, also variously referred to as Open Educational Resources (OER). In particular, the authors suggest four assumptions about open scholarship. (My notes are in the text boxes.)
While I would agree with Veletsianos and Kimmons that there is an assumption that open scholarship can seamlessly support a more democratic education, I might go further than them in my critique of the extent this is possible. It might be illuminating to look at publications about open scholarship in terms of how many women, people from ethnic minority communities and people from less developed countries, in particular, actually are involved in this field of scholarship.
Too often, there are sets of outcomes which are publicly circulated while an invisible set of outcomes are far more influential in academia. For example, when interviewing for lectureships, candidates may be asked about teaching and management skills and qualifications, but it is the list of research publications which is the real means to an appointment.
Generally in digital scholarship and teaching, it seems to me that there is a lack of acknowledgement of human social input. Time spent engaging with students or with colleagues on forums is often not realistically quantified; if it were, the actual cost of engaging in digital scholarship would have to be counted as much higher.
Comments
Assumptions & Challenges Comments
I love your comment about "white men" - and the femist theme coming up in the forum. The VLE Review we just performed at work had 3 top providers present and almost all of them were white men. One brought a woman that spoke one inaudible sentence. I agree about the quantifying of engagement and human cost, it is time consuming and of great value to students from the teacher but in anywhere other than OU (if there in some cases it is discretionary) and students will expect it as part of their course fee - I certainly did on H800 and found out that the tutor had 5 hrs a week to engage or mark TMAs and she chose the later so it was a bit leaderless. Being it is from 2012 things have changed, accelerated? OU seems very bent on OER. (Would you object to my posting your text and my comment to the forum thread to share in sequence it more widely? I find it stressful to remember where I read things if not in the list of plan to keep a blog for my archive but provide it in both places so others see it)New comment
Delighted if you would like to share and comment further on my post, Denise
I actually wrote it just before all the media uproar about Weinstein and harrassment at work. It's interesting to see how this has hit the news and the rather lame reactions to it: "Oh dear! but what can I do?" from many men, who have discovered suddenly that sexism is something ordinary men do every day, rather than unusual behaviour only by Chauvinist Pig Monsters, LOL.