“Education for all” is one of the most important goals which is needed now more than ever before. Educational resources, therefore, should be open to everyone. Digital media and a connective online environment constitute the best preconditions for making education accessible without institutional, infrastructural and pecuniary or commercial obstacles. However, open educational resources (OERs) also constitute major challenges in terms of how information and knowledge can be processed and circulated without barriers. Web-based forms of connective teaching and learning requires particular media cultural skills in order to collaboratively work in an open online environment. Besides accumulating materials that are offered under free for use licensing or using open source technologies OERs also refer to media educational practices as they are required for the use of, but also determined by connective online media. That applies in particular to contemporary forms of “platformized” communication, content production, distribution and reception in an information economy that influences media educational practices as well. Thus, OERs also imply media educational practices that are increasingly tied to the logic of platformization of the web and its particular forms of online communication or connective teaching and learning, respectively.
The SIG aims to
- further analyze today’s online educational resources and applications to provide critical reflections on the conditions of the “openness” of educational media in a platformized connective media environment
- foster collaboration between media scholars and educational professionals to develop, improve and distribute OER within our own fields
If you are interested to join our discussions and activities in this field please feel free to contact the SIG members:
Stephan Packard, Sven Stollfuß (see contact details below)