Page - 78 - in Radical Solutions and Open Science - An Open Approach to Boost Higher Education

82 T.Amiel et al. evenmore so if they can alreadyobtain commercial advantages bydoing so.What wouldmake sense is subsidizing—or directing—OERproduction byperipheral or under-resourcedactors.AsDivardinandAmiel(2018)show,thepioneeringpurchase of digitalmultimedia resources under thePNLD in2014 led to a restructuring and strengthening of existing players to cope with this novel demand. The structure of the call, associating the purchasing ofmultimedia to the usual print textbooks meantthattheusualplayersacquired,outsourcedorincorporatedintotheirstructures mechanismsforproductionofdigitalresources—theprogramtendedtofavoralready dominant companies. Before concluding this discussion about the risk of offshoring, a caveat should beadded.Thereasoningmadehereabout this risk issomewhatsimplified:weknow there is an imprecise continuum—and not a binary distinction—between the pro- duction of original material, on the one hand, and reuse of anOER, on the other hand. It is thusperfectlypossible to reuseOERinanauthorlymanner, adaptingand remixing it creatively andwith high context awareness. Similarly, the decontextu- alized use of translated and poorly adaptedmaterial is not a phenomenon brought aboutbyOER,but ratherapractice thatalreadyhappenedin thepast.17Theproduc- tion of originalmaterial is also not a panacea: itmaywell happen that an original material ends up being inferior to an existingOER, particularlywith regard to its content or pedagogical approach.That, however, doesnot negate the fact thatOER alsoopenpossibilitiesformoremechanicalreusepractices,encouragingthembythe cost reduction, andconsequently introducing the risksof technical andpedagogical impoverishment (of the producers and resources, respectively) in subaltern regions andcountries.Therefore,although thereasoningabout the riskofoffshoringshould not beundulygeneralized, and theparticular circumstancesof eachcase shouldbe evaluatedwhendiscussing specificusesofOER, this argument also reveals a trend that canbeproblematic, particularlywhenconsidering itswidescale impacts. 5.4.2 ConcentrationofGains fromCostReduction Asmentioned above, the benefits that OER can offer to societymust beweighed against the risks it implies, such as those fromproduction offshoring. The second type of riskwewill discuss involves the possibility that producers of educational resourcesmightwithhold those benefits, without sharing themwith consumers or thepublic sector. Indeed, inmarkets that are alreadyconcentrated (suchas the textbookmarket in Brazil), competitionmight not be enough to force thosewho reduce costs (through 17Evidently the riskof lackof contextualizationarenot a issueonlywithOER.Contextualization hasbeen a concernwithin thePNLD, through textbooksonHistory andGeography, for example. Still, looking at the recent 2016 purchase of these books, only 10 states were contemplated by specific texts (and some, likeMatoGrosso do Sul and Espírito Santowere not even covered by more general textbooks, such as thosewho discussed theAmazon region or all of theNortheast (Brasil, 2015).