Here is the argument in a nutshell. "The low usage rate of OER is often linked to the question of quality," write the authors (19 page PDF). "There is an unmanageable variety of OER materials and repositories, so that teachers are confused when choosing materials." However, there is "no widely used instrument for evaluating OER that has been systematically developed and meets scientific quality criteria." Hence, the authors propose an Instrument for Quality Assurance of OER (IQOER) and also "a quality assurance process agreed with all stakeholders." Ah, but if only there were actually a single definition of quality for all resources. The sort of model depicted in this article (pictured) speaks to a very specific type of resource. But there are many types of resources - books, videos, images, multimedia, games, simulations, more - and many applications and contexts of use. And even more - a lot of the time good enough is way better than nothing at all, which raises the possibility of quality initiatives actually worsening the user expperience.
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