OER and Social Justice

I have been struck by many of the ideas I've read this week. Thinking back on my long learning journey from primary school to now, I would like to talk about these touching points in combination with my past.

This week's reading mentioned that OER can be customized to better meet and serve students' learning. In my opinion, this is why OER can bring the best benefits to learners' learning. Think about my past, how many of my textbooks have been wasted. The answer would be a lot. Often an expensive textbook has only a few units or even a few paragraphs that are used in the classroom. Some textbooks won't even be used at all. In other words, you can do just fine in this course without the book. This is not an exaggeration. I still have a handcraft book in my bookcase, a textbook that was required for my Makerspace course when I was in my master's learning. The fact is that the textbook was never used in that class even though it was a great book. So was that Makerspace class boring? No, it was an interesting class and the teacher taught me a lot of interesting experiments. In this case, I think maybe it is just that the class does not need the book because the teacher is absolutely capable of delivering the information well and interestingly on his own. Looking back, I think the money I spent on textbooks was not worth it. If OER could have been implemented earlier in my learning, maybe I would have had a textbook tailored for me and maybe I wouldn't have felt that my textbook was useless. Also, I do not need to use my spare time to find other materials to supplement my knowledge because I believe the OER textbooks have well summarized the knowledge I need. OER is justice and it brings students better study.

this week's reading also mentioned the idea about many people only look at the potential of college students having money to pay for tuition, books, food, and housing, but ignore the hard work behind that money. As an international student, I feel this deeply. In fact, international students need to face many challenges when studying in the United States. International students must be full credit students (9 credits per semester), must live on campus, and must not look for a job outside of campus. This means international students have to pay expensive tuition and accommodation fees and have not the ability to earn money outside of school. They also need to buy expensive textbooks, so the cost for international students can be enormous. For these reasons, many of my international friends work many jobs in the school alone. Even so, their income is still very low. The reason is that they are required not to work more than 20 hours a week. During the COVID-19, a week becomes less than 10 hours. I can feel the pressure behind this because I am also one of the international students. The reduction of expenses brought by OER may not completely solve the troubles of international students, but it can well relieve some of their economic pressure. This reduction of pressure may enable some international students to devote themselves to their favorite study more easily and happily in the United States.

Watching! Here comes the readings!

• Baker-Smith, C., et al. (2020). #RealCollege 2020: Five Years of Evidence on Basic Needs Insecurity.
• Ikahihifo, T. K., Spring, K. J., Rosecrans, J., & Watson, J. (2017). Assessing the Savings from Open Educational Resources on Student Academic Goals. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(7).
• Martin, M.T., Belikov, O.M., Hilton, J., Wiley, D., Fischer (2017). Analysis of Student and Faculty Perceptions of Textbook Costs in Higher Education. Open Praxis, 9(1), 79-91.