Ursula Pike

Question #5: What do you think is the biggest benefit of Open Education and what do you think is missing?

The open movement has solutions for problems and issues that higher education is trying to address. Whether it’s funding issues or student engagement or accessibility and, of course, equity. OER is a great tool that can be used to address all of the problems that colleges are trying to figure out how to solve. OER has a lot of potential because you don’t have to have a PHD to create an OER. The number of people who can work on solutions is large.

The biggest thing that’s missing is data. There’s not enough disaggregated data on OER outcomes for students. Gathering data is tough because even one class that uses OER is different from the same class using a different OER. It’s messy. But there’s a lot of data that can still be gathered and as individual colleges or programs measure student outcomes and disaggregate that data to connect with student outcomes, there will be a clearer justification for the use of OER.