Are We Asking Too Much of OER? A Conversation on OER from OE Global 2023

This paper examines the pervasive discourse of disruption in OER literature by recounting a facilitated conversation hosted at the 2023 Open Education Global conference held in Edmonton, Alberta. This dialogue used Bacchi’s “what is the problem represented to be” (WPR) approach to structure the conversation in four movements. The first movement problematized the concept of OER by discussing the educational challenges OER supposedly addresses, such as the high cost of textbooks. The second movement considered the genealogy, historical development, and philosophical underpinnings of OER. The third movement accounted for the disruptors within the OER movement, exploring what OER have disrupted and discussing if disruption is even a legitimate goal of OER. The fourth and final movement pivoted to examine resistors and forms of resistance to OER, including the protection of intellectual property rights, copyright concerns, and Marcuse’s idea of repressive tolerance. This single conversation generated a small but important piece of social intelligence within a much larger dialogue about open education, open pedagogy, and OER during a time of flux (characterized by intense politicization, the relentless progression of educational technology, the intensification of marketization, and the growing popularity of all-inclusive textbooks). This social intelligence can be used to guide the next transition phase for OER development. While the conversation does not offer tidy solutions or even clear recommendations, it does suggest that the next wave of OER practitioners would always do well to focus on the goals OER can achieve, not what they hope to disrupt.