This week we read the article “ Assumptions and Challenges of Open Scholarship” (Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2012). It was interesting reading. Open scholarship has enormous potential to transform education, but a need to further evaluate the practices is imperative. Veletsianos and Kimmons (2012) identified four assumptions about the open scholarship approach. These assumptions are:
Seeks the ideals of democratization, human rights, equality, and justice
Features the importance of taking part in the online world
Promotes connections with people who increase our exposure to different ideas and beliefs that can influence us.
Allows scholars to do their job more efficiently.
However, each assumption presents challenges that open scholars need to be aware of to overcome. For example, the foundational ideas of open scholarship seek equality and social justice in education but are the open scholarship practices aligned with these values?
One form of open scholarship mentioned in this article is adopting open education, including open educational resources (OERs). According to UNESCO, OERs are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium that resides in the public domain that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation, and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. OERs can support social justice and social inclusion as long as they are designed using these principles. OERs that include these principles of equity and inclusion might include multiple perspectives in their materials and lessons, address social inequality, and recognize the impact of power and privilege (Chandler et al., 2021). Those who design OERs should intentionally include these principles.
I like your emphasis on designing with equity and inclusion. It seems that OERs are usually focused on bringing high quality content to students without cost. Remembering that there are other principles that should be included will increase their quality and their reach.