Critique of Open Textbooks

Sean Eddy has published a critique of the book Opening Up Education and open education in general in PLoS Biology. He critizes the book as being “more manifesto than explanation” and that most OER is “sketchy, incomplete, and unsatisfying.” From the article:

“Remix,” “collective wisdom,” “Web 2.0”—many of these essays ride a bubble of popular digital punditry enthusiastically but too uncritically. Many technologists today are infected with an idea that “community is king,” that high-quality content will rain down freely merely because we connect digital communities openly. This confuses ways of sharing ideas with ways of creating ideas. It is a kind of magical thinking that has much in common with the cargo cults that cut landing strips in the jungle and carved radios from sticks in hope that more sophisticated beings would parachute technological artifacts down upon them.

Thanks to Ezra -ez- Nugroho’s blog and Laurence Moran for providing the chain of links to find this article.

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