OER will replace well developed publishing models and their high quality work

Open Educational Resources are produced in various ways, same as traditional materials and can be subject to review process the same way. Quality management of OER can be as robust and professional as possible or it can be done after publication because open licenses allow to do that (which is impossible with closed resources and textbooks).

There are scenarios proving that OER are not replacing but completing educational market. In many countries like Netherlands and Belgium OERs created by teachers for teachers are almost as widely used as textbooks. Global publishers like Pearson are making services like search engines for OER and commercial resources combined.

Many OER projects are supporting developed publishing models and quality management in production. Some of them are even developing innovative models, better suited for the creation of modern, online focused resources.

Open educational policies on national and institutional levels (like on universities) are a key part of making openness a part of a bigger publishing process. Those policies are changing the model of how resources are available (under open conditions) but at the same time they are often based on same authors and creation procedures as before. Most of OER’s are produced that way. Others, like teachers materials, did not have any formal quality management and were reviewed during their usage. The change is not happening in quality, but rather in rights that can help more people to access, spot and improve resources. This part of social and peer review is also very important for education, with the leading example of Wikipedia. With growing numbers of resources, quality improvement and tens of sister projects Wikipedia proved that openness is not only important during creation process but also during review and teaching critical literacy skills.

Want to know more?

The Changing Textbook Industry, The Disruptive Competition Project (DisCo)

Horizon reports on K12 Education, New Media Consortium 2014