The following blog post responds to Marco Chong’s post regarding Open & Pedagogy and Resources
Hello Marco! Well done with this blog post, I really enjoyed reading your discussion about the concept of Open Pedagogy. You did an excellent job connecting OER to your own experiences on how you were pressured into buying textbooks during your schooling in Hong Kong. I also agree that requiring students to buy textbooks – even when they’re still in primary school – is very unfair as it places an unnecessary financial burden on families, especially those who are from lower-income families. Moreover, in your blog post you discussed about how authors of textbooks should be paid through ad’s rather than requiring students to buy those expensive textbooks. Ad’s as a way of gaining revenue for educational textbooks is a great approach. To build on top of this concept, I believe that it would also be beneficial if these authors partner with large educational platforms which require annual subscription plans. In particular, students will be required to pay for access over time rather than buying a full textbook upfront. This would save money on the long run for those students belonging to institutions that are still far away from implementing OER for their students.
All the best,
Sai