Benjamin Franzen (Director), Copyright Criminals, (2010), IndiePix Films, [Youtube]

The week 3 of EPSY408 takes on social cognitivism pointing to various thinkers starting from Lev Vygotsky, expanding on cognition in terms of human relationships, culture and community. One such contemporary practice I see is that of remix culture making use of Open Education Resources.

What is Open Education Resources?

Open Education Resources (OER) is, according to the definition by UNESCO (2019), as "learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others" (p.5).

Wiley and Hilton, defined the foundational characteristics of OER as below;

• Retain - the right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage).
• Reuse - the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video).
• Revise - the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language).
• Remix - the right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup).
• Redistribute - the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend).

And proposed 'OER-enabled pedagogy" (Wiley and Hilton, 2018).

The copyright permissions of OER often utilize Creative Commons License, so that users can find explicitly to which extent it can be adopted.

How does OER relate to 'the social mind'

In examining the changing dynamics of online education spurred by Covid-19 pandemic, Cope and Kalantzis point to the limitations of traditional textbook invented by Petrus Ramus in the 16th century. While textbooks enabled the teacher to refer to anything and everything else in the world, or exophoric reference, their synoptic feature reduced the complex realities in to a single authority with lecturer playing the role of epistemic authority. Therefore, little room is left for learners to interpret, take their part in meaning making. Given the current and future landscape of information, where the demand for mental process of analyzing, evaluating and critical synthesize information is increasing especially with the use of digital technologies, the traditional assumption of education as a 'transmission' of knowledge is becoming obsolete.

OER provides not just access to teachers and learners but also a foundations for collaboration. One example, Liberated Learner, is a compilation of OER programs produced by students, faculty, and staff at Trent University, Brock University, Seneca College, University of Windsor, McMaster University, Cambrian College, and Nipissing University, in Canada, published under CC-BY-NC license.

Along each the learning modules, Liberated Learner has a music playlist learner can listen to, hand-picked by the students in music major, the project was collaboration of people from diverse backgrounds. The whole project was a collaborative efforts, so students co-designed the program.

Unlike MOOCs that were designed for mass production (Cope and Kalantzis, p.14), OER in practice, provides basis for teachers and leaners to collaborate with each other in a collaborative manner.

Remix, Open Culture Elsewhere

In lifeworld, everything is a remix. For example, the act of DJs can be seen as a meaning making, citing from vast knowledge in the history of music, sampling and synthesizing such information into contemporary sense to be interpreted by the audience.

Reference:

Wiley, D., & Hilton, J. (2018). Defining OER-Enabled Pedagogy. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(4). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.19173%2Firrodl.v19i4.3601

Unesco.org, (2019). Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER). (2019).

https://www.unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/recommendation-open-educational-resources-oer

Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis, "The Changing Dynamics of Online Education: Five Theses on the Future of Learning,” pp.9-33 in Foreign Language Learning in the Digital Age: Theory and Pedagogy for Developing Literacies, edited by Christiane Lütge, London: Routledge, 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003032083-3.