Who opens online distance education, to whom, and for what? : A critical literature review on open educational practices

Lee, Kyungmee (2020) Who opens online distance education, to whom, and for what? : A critical literature review on open educational practices. Distance Education, 41 (2). pp. 186-200. ISSN 0158-7919

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Abstract

In the previous era of open educational practices (OEPs) based around distance teaching, its actors and their target group were clear to define: open universities and disadvantaged learners. In this new era of OEPs linked to digitalised open educational resources (OERs), there are multiple actors and beneficiaries of OEPs. This critical literature review examined a large volume of scholarly narratives about OEPs in online distance education contexts, by asking a simple but important question of “who opens online distance education to whom, and for what?”. The results suggest that despite the growing importance on the social mission to “make education for all” among diverse actors, there is a lack of clear understanding of the actual process of OEPs in real-life HE settings and it is rather unclear how those actors actually serve disadvantaged learners. The article suggests that we refocus our OEP effort on opening HE to the disadvantaged and collecting real-life stories of OEPs and the disadvantaged.