OERs in Business EducationOERs in Business Education

Richard Atfield and Steve ProbertHEA Business, Management, Accountancy

and Finance Subject Network

Project outline (O4B)Project outline (O4B)• OMAC strand project• BMAF are working with five HEIs

– to repurpose for open release many of resources originally produced in relation previous BMAF projects aimed at supporting and improving academic Continuous Professional Development (CPD ) activities in support of the Professional Standards Framework (PSF).

• Aston University• University of Dundee• University of Glamorgan• University of Liverpool• Southampton Solent University.

This presentation…This presentation…• will explore some of the social, political and cultural

aspects of moving the thinking from and “institutional” weltganschauung or “worldview” (Checkland, 1981) to an “open” one.

• It is intended that this presentation will offer a different perspective – that of the resource-creators; rather than the perspectives of institutional IPR “gatekeepers”.

• This (it will be argued) requires a critical perspective

Methodological approachMethodological approach• Mostly accidental, some purposeful investigations• In my role as Project Consultant, I…

– have attended all project meetings– asked questions at the meetings etc.

• However, I have had several one-to-one discussions with the project participants in HEIs to explore these ideas– Initial approach was “interpretivisitic”– However, a critical approach became necessary

OER Institutional “worldviews”OER Institutional “worldviews”• Institutional perspective:

– Market forces / Competition / fees– Resources as IP (added value)

• Open perspective– Government funded– Community owned– Resources as public goods

Resource-creator (and user) Resource-creator (and user) “worldviews”“worldviews”

• “Paid for” resources are good– Much effort assumed in production

• “Free” resources are of dubious value– Little effort assumed in production

• This can be described as an exchange-value perspective

• Relates to Marx’s “object fetishism”

ConclusionConclusion• The OER adoption issue is more deeply-seated than

a an interpretivisitic approach would imply• “How can it be any good if it’s free?” (Project

resource-creator, April 2011)• A critical perspective can help to understand the

barriers to OER adoption

Commodity fetishismCommodity fetishism• “The mystery of the commodity form, therefore, consists in the

fact that in it the social character of men’s, labour appears to them as an objective characteristic, a social natural quality of the labour product itself… The commodity form, and the value relation between the products of labour which stamp them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. It is simply a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things… This I call the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.” (Marx, 1867, cited in Bottomore, 1991, p. 463).

Commodity fetishismCommodity fetishism• “[T]he existence of the things qua commodities, and the value

relation between the products of labour which stamp them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent things endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the commodities with the products of men’s hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.” (Marx, 1867, p. 463)

ReferencesReferences• Bottomore, T. (Ed.) (1991) A Dictionary of Marxist

Thought, Blackwell, Oxford• Checkland, P. (1981), Systems thinking, Systems

Practice, Wiley, Chichester.