The document discusses the philosophy of openness and open educational practices. It introduces concepts like open access, open licensing, and open educational resources (OER). It discusses how openness enables collaboration, innovation and sharing of knowledge. The document advocates for open textbooks and OER to promote inclusion and equitable access in South African higher education by reducing costs for students. It highlights how open practices can help address economic, cultural and political injustices in the education system.

1. The Philosophy of Open
By Dr Glenda Cox
Open access seminar series, University of Pretoria
16 November 2018

2. This presentation:
• Introducing the Philosophy of Open
• Discussing the Opens
• Collective Openness
• Individual Openness
• Why open now?

5. http://www.moddou.com/
Open EDUCATION:
No cost to the user/student
Degree of openness depends on rights of the licence
that the creator of content has granted to the user.
Application beyond single classroom or institutional
context (legally enabled by open licensing).

6. Open is most often used as an
adjective as in ‘open access’.
We need to move to having open
as a verb.
Biswas-Diener argues “in the first
instance the word open is equated
with free as opposed to its more
accurate meaning in which it
includes greater potential for
collaboration, innovation and
localisation” (2017:259)

7. Open is based on the philosophical view of “knowledge as a
collective social product and the desirability of making it a
social property” (Prasad & Ambedkar cited in Downes, 2007:1)
Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

8. Open is not giving away knowledge

9. “Open Movement”
The Open Movement
Open Source Software
Open Access
Open LicencesOpen Science
Open Society

10. Open Educational Practice
“the creation, use
and reuse of open
educational
resources (OER) as
well as open
pedagogies and
open sharing of
teaching practices”
Cronin, 2017

11. Key value propositions of open educational
practices
● Conceptualise alternative epistemic views on educational issues and
curricula.
● Create OER collaboratively with colleagues or co-create with students.
● Circulate or share these OER with other colleagues or students.
● Open these up for critique by others so that they can be quality
assured and possibly recognised for formal certification.
Source: Hodgkinson-Williams (2018)

12. Photo by Lubo Minar on Unsplash
Openness as a means of
alleviating student financial
burden
Obama administration support for
Open Textbooks in the USA
OER movement saved students in USA and Canada
USD1 billion over the past five years
(https://sparcopen.org/news/2018/1-billion-in-
savings-through-open-educational-resources/ )

13. Photo by John Schnobrich on Unspla

14. Collective
Photo by M. B. M. on Unsplash

15. Photo by Руслан Гамзалиев on Unsplash
Individual philosophy of open

16. My PhD main research question:
What are the relations between culture, structure and agency and how
does this influence contribution and non-contribution of OER by
academics in a Higher Education institution?

17. Culture
Interplay
Structure
Agent
“How does structure influence agency?”
Social Realism (Archer 2003)
SOCIAL CHANGE

18. Ultimate concerns
Ultimate
Concerns
Projects Practice
...Individuals develop
and define their
ultimate concerns,
those internal goods
that they care about
most (Archer 2007:42)
...develop course (s)
of action to realise
that concern by
elaborating a
project...
Translated into
a set of
practices

19. Who are the contributors of OER:
Altruism as ultimate concern
(Global South)
Ambitious, confident and self-
assured
Multi task:
research and teaching
Technical ability (not essential for
contribution)
Social media use (not essential for
contribution)
Who are the non-contributors of
OER:
Altruism focused on the
classroom (Concern)
Belief in the value of teaching
Critical of self and society
Range of Technical ability (not
essential)
Most no social media use
Findings: Academics at the University of Cape Town

20. Why Openness matters in SA
Higher education

21. Fees must fall, Picture by Ian Barbour; Wikimedia, CC BY-NC-SA
https://www.flickr.com/photos/barbourians/22697273532/in/photostream/

22. Curriculum
change in
Higher
Education in
South Africa
What Knowledge? Whose
Knowledge?
Representativity
Exclusion and inclusion
Positionality
Gaps, silences and absences
Invisibility
Marginalisation

23. Potential of Open Education
# feesmustfall
Economic dimension
# Rhodesmustfall
Cultural dimension
Political dimension

24. Social Justice (Fraser, 2005)
Fraser’s concept of social justice as “parity of participation”
Dimension Injustices
Economic Maldistribution
of resources: economic inequality
Cultural Misrecognition
attributes of people & practices
accorded less respect, status inequality
Political Misrepresentation
Lacking right to frame discourse

25. OER and Social Justice Framework
(Adapted from Fraser, 2005)
Dimension Injustices Ameliorative (Affirmative)
response
Addresses injustice with ameliorative
reforms
Economic Maldistribution
● Intermittent power supply
● Inadequate access to
computing devices
● Expensive and/or poor
connectivity
● Only digital OER
Redistribution
● Printed OER
● Easy and cheap to download
● OER available in various
formats, including Open Source
Software
● MOOCs where the resources
are OER
OER Use
Hodgkinson-Williams & Trotter, (forthcoming)

26. OER and Social Justice Framework
(Adapted from Fraser, 2005)
Dimension Injustices Ameliorative response
Addresses injustice with ameliorative
reforms
Transformative response
Addresses the root causes of inequality
Economic Maldistribution
● Intermittent power supply
● Inadequate access to
computing devices
● Expensive and/or poor
connectivity
● Only digital OER
Redistribution
● Printed OER
● Easy and cheap to download
● OER available in various
formats, including Open Source
Software
● MOOCs where the resources
are OER
Restructuring
● Stable power supply, adequate
access to functional computing
devices and affordable and stable
connectivity in rural
environments in particular
● Government and/or institutional
funding for OER creation,
adaptation and dissemination
● Mechanism for acceptance of
OERs or MOOCs as micro-
credentialsOER Use
Hodgkinson-Williams & Trotter, (forthcoming)

27. Intersectionality
the interconnected nature of
social categorizations such as
race, class, and gender as
they apply to a given
individual or group, regarded
as creating overlapping and
interdependent systems of
discrimination or
disadvantage (Crenshaw,
1989)
https://iwda.org.au/what-does-intersectional-feminism-actually-mean/

28. Potential of Open textbooks in SA

29. Models of textbook provision
Print textbooks Print open
texbooks
Digital
textbooks
Digital Open
Textbooks
Digital
Analogue
Full
Copyright
Open
licensing
A form of
copyright
provision
where
permissions
for use are
granted up
front
Materials are
usually free
to the user,
or have a
minimal cost
Source: Czerniewicz (2017)

30. What are open textbooks?
Open textbooks are
● open access materials (usually digital)
● published under an open licence
● in formats that provide for the integration of multimedia,
● remixing of various content components
● and printing and redistribution.
Open textbooks provide academics with a means to build on openly published materials produced in other parts of
the world (particularly when using platforms that are designed with this affordance in mind), while integrating a
more localised approach in terms of the examples used as well as the assessment activities.

33. Project general objective:
To contribute to improving inclusion in South African higher education
by addressing equitable access to appropriate and relevant learning
resources.

34. DOT4D: Advocacy
● Landscape survey of intellectual property (IP) policies at South Africa’s 26 public
universities.
● A series of meetings and discussions with interested academics and managers,
government and other statutory bodies, such as DHET, USAf, CHE and HELTASA in
order to inform and support the policy-making agenda around open textbook
publishing and implementation in the South African HE sector.
● The IP policy landscape survey and case study research component (which
encompasses an institutional landscape survey of open textbook publishing at UCT)
will provide a data-informed approach to articulation of a authentic operational
definition of open textbook publishing in South Africa.

35. Key stakeholders in DOT4D advocacy activity

36. Boundary Partners
• UCT academics
• UCT institutional
managers
• UCT Library
• UCT students
Stakeholders
• Academics SA HE
institutions
• Managers SA HE
institutions
• Government bodies
• Transnational
bodies (UNESCO,
COL)
• SA HE students
• Open Textbook
publishers
DOT4D
project

37. Global South voices

38. #openmustrise
#southvoicesmustrise
#opentextbooksmustrise

39. Student voices
openstax
We visited Rice University and spoke with students about their perspectives on free
textbooks. Check back tomorrow to see another student’s perspective. #ForStudentsForever

40. “Open is a gift on offer. Like any gift, it is
up to you whether you think it is
worthwhile to accept it. We only ask that
you consider” (Biswas-Diener & Jhangiani,
2017:6)

41. Further reading:
http://roer4d.org/
ROER4D edited volume: http://www.africanminds.co.za/dd-product/adoption-
and-impact-of-oer-in-the-global-south/
ROER4D published data sets:
https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog/ROER4D
Twitter: @ROER4D
@dot4_d

42. References
• Archer, M. S. (2003). Structure, agency and the internal conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Biswas-Diener, R. 2017. You Can’t Sell Free, and Other OER Problems. In: Jhangiani, R S and Biswas-Diener, R. (eds.) Open:
The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science. Pp. 257–265. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5334/bbc.u. License: CC-BY 4.0
• Cox, G, Trotter, H, Hodgkinson-Williams, C, Arinto, P, Cartmill, T and King, T. (2018) Surfacing agency and power: A social
realist perspective on select findings from the ROER4D projects. OER18, April London, Englan
• Cronin, C (2017). Openness and Praxis: Exploring the useof Open Educational practices in Higher Education. IRRODL 18:5.
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3096/4301
• Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalising the intersection between race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination
doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. Retrieved from https://philpapers.org/archive/CREDTI.pdf
• Czerniewicz, L (2018). Open Textbooks presentation to Universities South Africa. Slides on request.
• Czerniewicz, L (2018) Unbundling and Rebundling Higher education in an age of inequality. Educause Review. Retrieved
from L https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/10/unbundling-and-rebundling-higher-education-in-an-age-of-inequality
• Fraser, N. (2005). Reframing justice in a globalizing world. New Left Review, 36, 69–88. Retrieved from
https://newleftreview.org/II/36/nancy-fraser-reframing-justice-in-a-globalizing-world

43. References continued
• Jhangiani, R S. 2017. Open as Default: The Future of Education and Scholarship. In: Jhangiani, R S and Biswas-
Diener, R. (eds.) Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science. Pp.
267–279. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bbc.v. License: CC-BY 4.0
• Jhangiani, R S & Biswas-Diener, R C. 2017. Introduction to Open. In: Jhangiani, R S and Biswas-Diener, R.
(eds.) Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science. Pp. 3–7. London:
Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bbc.a. License: CC-BY 4.0
• Hodgkinson-Williams, C., Arinto, P. B., Cartmill, T. & King, T. (2017). Factors influencing Open Educational
Practices and OER in the Global South: Meta-synthesis of the ROER4D project. In C. Hodgkinson-Williams & P.
B. Arinto (Eds.), Adoption and impact of OER in the Global South (pp. 27–67). Retrieved from
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1037088
• Hodgkinson-Williams, C.A. & Trotter, H. (forthcoming). A social justice framework for understanding open
educational resources and practices in the Global South, Journal of Learning for Development.
• Walji, S. & Hodgkinson-Williams, C. (2017). Understanding the nature of OEP for OER adoption in Global
South contexts: Emerging lessons from the ROER4D project. Presented at OER17, 5–6 April 2017. London, UK.
Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/ROER4D/understanding-the-nature-of-oep-for-oer-adoption-in-
global-south-contextsemerging-lessons-from-the-roer4d-project