First, I recommend you read Boone’s post, as I don’t want to re-state his exploration of both Gardner’s and John’s Open Ed 09 thoughts here. I think there is definite tension between individualism and communalism, especially in context of creativity. Such tension may be culturally inherited, or it may be endemic in our brains. I.e., we need to work in groups/tribe to survive; we want to claim individual power and perpetuate our own unique genes. It’s much deeper and richer than that.

…

As I sat in on John’s Thinkubator session I recalled how recently I had reluctantly agreed to author a full white paper collaboratively through Google Docs with a colleague. For a while we both were very sensitive to the other’s contributions–”do you mind if I enhance paragraph 10?” or “I’m going to rework your section on X, is that cool?” We were very courteously practicing the golden rule.

After a while, however, the insistence of the deadline and the necessity of coherence required us to abandon courtesy in favor of efficiency, and thus we diminished both of our individualizations of the article. We ended up with a decent article, produced in probably 75% (not half) of the time it would have taken just one of us to produce it. Do I feel like I own that document? No. Do I feel I co-own it? Yes. Do I want to take credit for it? Kind of, because in doing so I’m taking credit for someone else’s work, including their flaws. Did the structure of the project support our objectives? Yes, but I certainly wouldn’t adopt a collaborative approach for all, not even most, of the documents I author. I’d rather more closely tie my identity to my individual work, and that means making my exact contributions extricable from the original.

…

On a loosely related note, I was searching for an image for a presentation the other day, had exhausted CC licensed images on Flickr or Google, couldn’t find anything on the paid license site I subscribe to, and was seriously contemplating just stealing someone else’s IP. I should preface this by saying that CC and the availability of open-licensed works has allowed me to respect other people’s © IP more appropriately (OK, I know some of you want to pick the Copyleft fight with me, but some other time). But as I was looking at this ideal image, contemplating swiping it and using it, a shudder of confusion and regret came through me, and I realized, twenty years ago I wouldn’t have thought twice about appropriating the image.

No, I would not have just taken it.

I would have made my own.

Which led me to wonder, by refuting closed licensing, does openness provide a path that is “quicker, easier, more seductive”, yet diverts one away from creativity, innovation, and individual growth through distinguishing effort?

The internet is a rebel and a bully, threatening to destroy the established system of education that dictates how we learn. Shocked? Well, this is a good thing any way you look at it. The internet will transform the way you and I learn. It will provide a customized and individual learning experience. Okay, maybe the “internet” alone won’t start the revolution, but it definitely facilitates it. Producers of educational media content already provide fully customizable websites that utilize learning management systems that let you choose what you learn, when you want to learn it. … this means that you get more bang for your buck. Which is more than you can say for the “established” educational institutions that just bark out education in hopes that you’ll keep returning. The future of education online is bright. The things we do with the internet can transform education. It can transform the world.

…

Here is one scenario:

UVU gets rid of the physical school except for one building used to house administration and an office for each teacher. Each teacher is provided with computers, webcams, microphones and other equipment. The teachers now have resources to teach lessons live, record them, and archive them for students to view at a later time. Teachers also have virtual office hours where they can chat with students, they all use email, and have personal LMS tracking their own progress. (customized and specific to the school; and better than Moodle or Blackboard) Students collaborate online.

For those of us in ed tech, nothing here is really new, but there is a palpable frustration re. the absence of teachers’ use of very basic networked technologies. This is the future he’s talking about; when I was an undergrad over 12 years ago I wanted many of the same things! Speaking of being frustrated with teachers, what he said next really grabbed me:

[I] don’t think that enough effort is being put into developing the tools that would empower us as students…

The implication here should have been obvious: if the teachers are not satisfying the students needs, at the very least students should be given tools they need to empower themselves.

Process

In order to notify faculty of open publishing, during the CTL design process faculty will be asked to sign the BYU OER Participation form. This form will:

• Describe the BYU OER project and the mission of CTL
• Acknowledge BYU ownership of IP produced by or in conjunction with CTL
• Explain CC By-NC-SA license
• Describe possible OER usage

Faculty who sign the BYU OER Participation form acknowledge the aforementioned and may choose to have their name (along with BYU and CTL) attributed to the OER. Faculty may opt out of attribution or not sign the form, however such refusal will not alter BYU’s ownership of CTL-produced IP or CTL’s ability to publish and share the CTL product as OER.

Technology

(The following is hypothesis only at this stage)

CTL OER products will be stored on a publicly accessible BYU OER web site (powered by Equella). The web site will:

• provide search features based on title, description, and other metadata
• list OER by topic or academic department
• attribute OER to BYU, CTL, and faculty contributor(s)
• demonstrate OER
• ? support direct linking to instances of OER
• support downloading of OER as modular packages
• ? provide source code or raw data of OER where applicable
• ? support community interaction by allowing user
• ? allow registered user commenting on OER
• ? allow registered user keyword tagging of OER

SPARC provides a form that faculty can sign and send with manuscript publishing agreement we need a NSF mandate to automatically

This Week’s Challenge

Figure out how to put Center for Teaching and Learning resources into a library for open sharing.

1. Faculty disclosure in CTL process
2. License recommendation / “default” IP policy with override for third party publishing
3. Figure out Equella thing for publishing

Jon Mott recommends Equella for publishing platform. Equella is a CMS built by post-Bb guys, The Learning Edge International (JMS: Is it CMS or LMS? Sounds like the latter). An experimental Equella environment is available at BYU. “Activity assembler” available for sequencing LOs. Bill Lundt can talk about it.

(JMS: All these LMS innovators [GoCourse, eInstructure, Equella] had better consider what their “moat” will be to beat out Bb, D2L, Angel, Moodle, etc.)

IP Licensing

In context of CTL “walk-in” center, What license do we recommend? (JMS: Is CTL able to license materials? Does BYU have/need a process for approving CC licensing? I suppose we will find out…)

Perhaps CC By-NC (I am currently anti-SA, but that might change).

Dr. Wiley suggests SA may not be terribly meaningful. John Hilton gave a good case study, paraphrased:

If I publish By-NC then someone takes and remixes the content, s/he is not obligated to release under By-NC because of lack of the SA, so could a derivative version be licensed as By and then commercialized? Seems like the answer is yes.

(JMS: This sounds like a good thing to me as a creator. I only want to disallow commercialization of copies, but not necessarily of significantly altered works, remixed works, or derivatives.)

Justin: If NC then Creative Works Office doesn’t have to get involved(?)

(JMS: When in flow workers seem exceedingly efficient. How do we foster a work environment that inhibits interruption of workers’ flow?)

Documentary Filmmaker’s Guide to Fair Use

Here’s what we’re going to claim as Fair Use. If anyone has a problem with it, they can deal with us as a whole.

Movement amongst higher ed institutions in the works to apply Fair Use to media held within an OER (without altering the license of the © work).

Fair Use

1. Purpose (educational non-profit)
2. Nature of copyrighted (e.g. factual vs creative works)
3. Amount and significance
4. Impact of the use on potential market

BYU Center for Teaching and Learning Walk-In Center

• Anything within scope of employment belongs to creator.
• Anything created with any additional BYU resources, such as CTL staff, belongs to BYU.

CTL OER as default: we will share, but faculty may opt-out. Would such a form hurt the culture of BYU? Justin suggests a one-time form to opt-in.

CTL has 40-50 new projects a month, e.g. scanned images, PPT backgrounds, Flash animations, video, et c.

What about intentionality? Capture directions for use? Do we preserve teaching info as metadata? CTL Tracker tracks information. What about forum/discussion area for teacher-contributed suggestions for use? Could be. I’m seeing this like a Podcast on a blog platform.

(JMS: The CTL Tracker sounds like a great way to start and track a new project. Sounds like my original course design mapping app, but better. I wonder what software they use? Something home-grown? We need one of these, similar to our dP but more expansive, updating everthing such as Google Spreadsheet. How could dP be mod’ed to facilitate this?)

Independent Study might be able to contribute 10hrs a week to uploading OER to platform.

We could/should also go back in time to get permission on existing materials because there are so many great materials. Also, we could get MBA students working on case studies, Engineering students working on problem-based learning scenarios. (JMS: I’m feeling overwhelmed by the availability of resources her.)

(JMS: At UVU could we get a temporary blanket approval for OER from the President’s office, e.g. to say, From May 2009 – April 2010 we authorize all UVU-owned, DE-developed learning materials to be licensed under a CC license for use as OER. Renewable with signatory.)

(JMS: Seems like the first hurdle that we are skipping is getting BYU approval for CC licensing of CTL materials. Will this be done from CTL up?)

Seth: wants to go back to Equella and the importance of metadata. I agree, but the technical aspects of this seem far more easily manageable than the licensing process, which frightens me.

Tracker creates a new folder for each project. When project is completed it creates an archive folder. Completed product is moved physically and project folder is deleted. Is there a readme? No, you find data through the Tracker. Tracker stores faculty information. (JMS: How would we do this with dP? Is it built-in?) JMS: Could tracker take stored info and spit out a readme? Why not?

Could we provide both final file and source file(s)? 4 Rs. These would be uploaded/handed off to (OER) librarian for archiving and indexing. (JMS: Does DE need to get UVU librarians involved? Who is the institutional librarian at UVU? Jean D’emall might be or might know.

(ClassTop’s plugin uses Facebook to reuse OER and create self-organizing learning communities.)

Do we need to actually ask faculty to opt-in, or does this wrongly imply that faculty own the materials (in conflict with BYU IP policy)?

In an opt-in form we articulate that the materials are BYU owned under IP policy and that faculty acknowledge this when opting-in. We would do so as a professional courtesy, for even though faculty do not own this, they think they do. We are at the early stage of nurturing a cultural shift towards openness. Baby steps.

Is that Tracker software open source? (JMS: I might be able to mod it as suggested if UVU can have a license to the software. Will follow up at CTL afterwards)

Clarified that we will draft the document for CTL to request upper administrative permission to license ALL CTL-products as OER.

Spend Thursday as a group writing proposal document.

Class has moved from Know and Understand to Analyze and Apply.

I proposed to Dr. Wiley that we’d benefit from a rogue,

…a versatile character, capable of sneaky combat and nimble tricks. The rogue is stealthy and dextrous … capable of finding and disarming traps and picking locks. The rogue also has the ability to “sneak attack”enemies who are caught off-guard or taken by surprise…

Wikipedia: The Rogue (Dungeons and Dragons)

The nimbleness and ability to pick locks to “open” treasure fit my objectives. For example, when I was looking at the OLI I was annoyed at how the OER was locked-up by the technology, and asked myself, “How would I break this free?”

Rogue

The Rogue utilizes digital material production and web dev skills to obtain, reuse, and remix OER, using stealth and cunning to unlock and re-release OER materials that may be guarded or trapped by publishing technology.

To illustrate how this would fit, I took a stab at rewriting the rogue’s Quest 1 (based on the same artisan quest):

Employ espionage and reconnaissance on the following OER projects, noting the types of media predominantly used by each site. Evaluate the reuse/remix potential of the media, looking at openness of structure, code, security, source availability, semantics, license compatibility, etc. Review a sufficient sample of courses per site to gain accurate insight into their habits and routines. Write a substantive blog post that puts forth strategic directions for the re-release and reuse of the sites’ media with special attention to unlocking those OER that may be imprisoned by CMS or final format software.
…

On Twitter the idea quickly showed that other possible OER character classes might be beneficial, including the barbarian (I already know a few of these)!

]]> http://flexknowlogy.learningfield.org/2009/02/03/oer-rogue/feed/ 1 http://flexknowlogy.learningfield.org/2009/01/29/ipt-692r-notes-thurs-jan-29-2009/ http://flexknowlogy.learningfield.org/2009/01/29/ipt-692r-notes-thurs-jan-29-2009/#comments Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:41:09 +0000 Jared Stein http://flexknowlogy.learningfield.org/?p=444 I was dizzy with excitement and inspiration from today’s live class meeting of Intro to Open Ed course, and so with lots to mull over I chose to walk back the University Mall in Orem where my car was parked. The weather has begun to warm here in central Utah, and I had music (The National) and a book (Kaku’s Hyperspace) to ease the trip, but half-way there I wimped out and grabbed the next bus.

Discussion with Russ Osguthorpe of BYU’s Center for Teaching and Learning

Russ to class: Why and how should BYU CTL open the many digital learning objects and materials created over the years?

Dr. Wiley notes we will tackle this as the guild Challenge 1. (JMS: Initial thoughts: if it’s open licensed and open sourced the increasing momentum of the open ed movement might drive usage if the task or cost of structuring and organizing the mass of learning objects is too high, consider flat, unstructured with folksonomic metadata [e.g. anyone can search; registered users can tag].)

Scale of higher cost of development. Royalty pay-off of quality content through publisher, e.g. Virtual ChemLab is high-quality, in-demand, and proprietary. Pearson carries and distributes, pays royalties to BYU.

(JMS: Could we, should we balance commercialization and openness? It’s not necessarily an either-or proposition–an open resource could be commercialized by the CC-license holder. But, anecdotes aside, does that approach damage or impact revenues? See RIAA–regardless of the validity of RIAA’s inflexible, exploitative posturing for copyright holders, the fact remains that illegal sharing [undocumented migratory openness?] has critically injured recording industry revenue stream.

(But does the thrivancy of illegal sharing of RIAA IP bolster arguments against the commercial model, and even prophecy the demise of commercial viability of digitizable materials?)

Some projects merit commercialization by providing significant benefit to creator. Reach is farther. Millions of dollars, millions of users.

Other projects may have an audience-impact potential that outweights commercial benefits, e.g. the philanthropic effects of providing introductory vocational.

Need this to be part of every new project process, e.g. starts with the faculty member to opt-in opt-out.

(JMS: Excited by commercialization. Should I try to sell, partnering with UVU, before giving it up for free? It would good to have authentic, first-hand experience on both sides of the argument.)

CTL Show and Tell

Preview of BYU’s Syllabus Builder

Syllabus Builder is similar to an LMS syllabus creator, but far more robust, extensive, and reusable. Draws information re. instructor, classes from campus information system (at BYU this is “AIM”). Some of the pages and prompts:

• Would you like to load in your syllabus from last semester?
• Choose course (from AIM load assignment)
• Choose section
• Import which instructor details and then edit details
• Text & materials (same as before?) ISBNs. (JMS: Link to somewhere, maybe hook in using existing API, eg. Amazon.com, Netflix, choosing from drop-down)
• Grading Scale
• Grading policies
• Participation requirements & policies
• Assignment descriptions
• Learning outcomes
• Plans to pull in program outcomes from wiki (JMS: With UVU wikilearn we too could create a program outcomes page for each program)
• Prereqs (JMS: is this stored in UVU Banner?)
• what days/weeks does it meet?
• Drag and drop calendar/schedule of assignments. (JMS: This could be a Moodle add-on to update assignments etc.)
• Bring in service entities contact info from campus (e.g. Writing Lab, Library) (JMS: could UVU bring this in from Banner? Or the CMS? Or the phonebook?)
• Bring in standard, required policies etc. (JMS: We already do this in our template. Recall the failed Yoshi syllabus template project)

When complete, exports to a separate live server (JMS: e.g. desource.uvu.edu). Can save as HTML or link to “live” page.
(DW: Faculty need to add hyperlinks. Also, Copyright/CC/PD status of the syllabus should be a drop-down. Warn that anyone can see it.)

(JMS: Notes for Ken: SYLLABI are stored as generated PHP files. Default must be “latest” with archives of old based on dates. Brought into course by hardlink. Updated by the professor or course managers.
And what about a LESSON BUILDER?)

Questions

Q: Is this going to be open source?
A: Yes.
Q: If so, when can I get my hands on source code?
A: Don’t know. (But I have e-mail of Tonya Tripp who may put me on a mailing list)
Q: Is AIM homegrown?

Preview of Mid-Semester Student Survey

CTL has gathered evidence that a mid-semester student survey helps improve teaching. Two most important questions: What was most helpful to your learning? What one thing could improve teaching? Open-ended and scaled questions. E-mail goes out to students (drawing, presumably, from SIS–AIM). Sends when the red button is clicked.

(JMS: Could be scheduled with cron)

Preview of iFlipper

Downloads AIM class roll with pictures to make flashcards of students, with algorithm to calculate which are missed the most. Flashcards for everything and anything! (JMS: If Ken wants an iTouch he can earn one by corrabolating with BYU…)

Mentioned a BYU campus-wide content management.

(JMS: All amazing stuff. But most amazing because it may well be open source. Note: invite someone from CTL to present Syllabus Builder et al. at TTIX.)

Looking Ahead toChallenge 1

Propose a solution for CTL (JMS: UVU) to go open with produced digital learning materials and objects.

Challenge 1 is bumped up and begins after next week.

Meta-day – “Choosing”

Classes

Artisan (1), Bard (4), Merchant (3), Monk (2)

Guilds

Join by listing your name and class on the wiki. At least one of each class per guild. I’ve settled on Artisan after no one else seemed interested–very feasible (a relief for my stress level, if not the most challenging or applicable class).

Quests

6 quests; Q5 & 6 are collaborative. Loosely based on “updated” Bloom’s taxonomy: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating.

CYOA

New quests may be proposed, and should map into Bloom’s taxonomy. However, Q5 requires pairing; Q6 requires guild.

JMS: How can I match these quests to current UVU OER project? I need an excuse to devote time to the class.

Next deliverable: Quest 1 for character type (Artisan). Report/artifact/blog post. Due 11:59pm a week from Saturday (Feb 7). Jigsaw.

Discussion

What about desires for non-attribution? What if a derivative work reflects negatively on the original creator?

Refer to attribution clause. Requires “a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Adaptation”. Also, derivations “may not implicitly or explicitly assert or imply … endorsement by the author”.

JMS: I think, especially for visual design, a By-ND license is adequate for most uses. Is mere cropping a derivation?

One option: Be “hardcore and serious”: provide a “terms of use” on the site for the license to prevent bad derivations.

Value proposition needed for the institution.

JMS: I should have waited to write that last blog post on sustainability. This topic is too expansive and engrossing for me to summarize in a few hours of reading and writing.

Can a balance of commercial and open products sustain both? Balance as in one-for-one (one commercial, one open), or as in half-and-half (“open” demo and paid full-version, shareware-like). What is the track record for success of this in software?

Justin Johansen’s dissertation study (anyone know Justin’s blog URL?): can opening content increase revenue through conversion model? Students view open content, and then enroll for credit.

If an institution’s “owned” work is either copyright or open, we can ask if it will generate: revenue? pr? good will?

In case of BYU CTL there is no opportunity cost — I think this means that creator wouldn’t have benefited from it through other, non-open means.

Libraries tend to be advocates of openness because of open-access. Randy Olson of BYU library, also Gideon Burton (JMS: Note to self: check out Gideon’s Academic Evolution blog).

Several students expressed skepticism of the deep value of MIT OCW. Seth “pushed back” a bit. My own thinking: Mike Caulfield asserts that transparency is a, if not the key value of MIT OCW. To me, that transparency illustrates potential(s) for the course: What could this course become for MIT? by revealing it’s inner workings and even it’s discrepancies as an online learning resource, how could it be better? And there’s potential with respect to the outside world. Tony Hirst demonstrates some of that potential through his mash-ups using the IMS package as a road map. David Wiley suggested that overlays of MIT OCW might also prove their value, whether that’s through reframing of content as Academic Earth has done, or as linking the path to a degree using OCW as nodes.

The value of these potentials are still confusing to me, and they may simply be “happy accidents” without significant long-term value, but worth noting in conversations that might aim to critique projects like MIT OCW.

University of the People. Not accredited, but inspiring.

Problem of Sustainability

The success of early OER projects such as MIT OCW rely in part on funding, some of it massive. For example, MIT OCW began with grants totaling $11 million, contributed in equal amounts by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and committed $1 million of its own funds during the first two years of the project. Yet such grants may be drying up (ref needed), regardless increasing interest and participation in OER projects will heighten competition for and further limit availability of such funds. On their own few public institutions could be expected to come up with that money, and currently many US institutions, particularly state institutions, are facing budget cuts that threaten to limit, decrease, or prevent local OER projects.

The OER Handbook describes the problem of sustainability in context of successful open source software projects:

In open source software projects, money is raised by soliciting donations, selling manuals, training, software development and providing technical support. While some of these methods can be applied to OER, some can not, and some funding methods remain largely untested. Few of the well-known OER projects exhibit the same vibrant communities of contributors that well-known open source software projects have. This issue is one of the most serious the OER community faces.

Though others have found fault with it I was encouraged by the Cape Town Declaration’s suggestion that the open education movement “[has] the opportunity to engage entrepreneurs and publishers who are developing innovative open business models.” Further, some may disagree and even convulse with the idea of linking OER projects with commercial ventures, even as a means of providing sustainability. As a strong-minded capitalist, I do not. Rather, I look forward to working examples of such innovative business models (e.g. Flat World Knowledge), and anticipate innovative adaptation to what I believe is a fundamental shifting of the (sometimes conflicting, often confusing) relationship between creator/consumer/copyright holder.
However, as the OER Handbook describes, such approaches remain largely untested.

Mainstreaming Openness

At UVU I’ve maintained the mindset that long-term success of OER will depend upon mainstreaming it, integrating the mentality of authoring for OER and the activity of publishing as OER into the normal course development and teaching processes. In taking this position I merely echo what others have said, e.g. David Wiley, as in On the Sustainability of Open Educational Resources (2006), Stephen Downes, as in Models for Sustainable Open Educational Resources (2007), and Andy Lane, as in Sustaining OERs: a brief and provocative road map (2008), albeit from my own perspective of being in an institution interested in OER projects, but with no explicit funding for it.

For distance learning programs the goal of integrating OER activities is most feasible. Quality digital content production is part of the practice, and distance learning programs should already be auditing third-party copyright materials. Another approach could be to set a goal of zero third-party copyright content from the course design phase onward, ensuring that no new course includes copyright content. UVU we have played with hosting course content on a public server (called “Shadow Files”) and “mixing” it with copyright content and “private” course activities via the learning management system (LMS). Further, the LMS may be used as the OER publishing platform itself, technology provided (as I’ve prototyped on Moodle with the OpenShare block). However, in such a case the ability to release just parts of the course as OER is necessary, and most LMSs are void of such features.

OER investments may interweave with distance learning initiatives in other ways as well. Terri Bays, Dan Charchidi, Sunnie Kim in presentation Open Sharing, Local Payoff note, “OCW can complement a distance learning initiative, taking content from and directing learners toward an … e-learning curriculum”. It’s a two-way street: developing OER can result in distance learning; developing distance learnign can result in OER.

Additionally, many of the same justifications for distance learning as a cost-reducing and education-enhancing vehicle apply to OER. Mark Pesce notes, “Recording is cheap, lecturers are expensive, and students are forgetful.” Capturing teaching materials in a digital form has perhaps the highest potential for institutional ROI. Reuse reduces redundancy: capturing allows reuse, and access to reusable materials has the potential to dramatically reduce redundancy, diminish the cost of lecturing both in the expenditure of dollars and time, and improve student learning. Stephen Downes argues that “non-economic definitions of ’sustainable’ should not be dismissed lightly”. He mentions that different organizations will have different objectives for practicing distance learning, and some are not cost-saving. Indeed, OER provide a potential means of relieving faculty lecture time for other teaching activities, such as actually interacting with students and providing more feedback.

Brainstorming Institutional Changes Towards Openness

I’ve collected the following ideas on how to successfully mainstream and integrate OER across the institution. Many of these are based on the practices of other institutions, and conversations with colleagues and the OER community. These ideas are based on the need to grow positive attitudes toward OER support across the institution, and the fact that different institutional staff may require different arguments to catalyze support (here especially I welcome feedback, altertions, or additional ideas from the community).

• IT should be encouraged to work with OER advocates to find streamlined technology solutions for publishing OER, and then budget for maintenance of these solutions.
• IT may need proof that OER will either not overload hardware, or be worth the increased load. Also, discussions on whether or not OER may increase susceptibility to malicious attacks.
• Administration may need evidence that OER does not diminish profitability or marketability of institutionally-own content, and in fact may provide satisfactory ROI through PR, student retention, quality improvement, international competitiveness, adaptation to changing cultural and educational paradigms, etc.
• Student services and advisement may need education and training on the potential value to students of OER, and how to access and utilize OER in a manner similar to that in which they access and utilize course catalogs and descriptions
• PR should be educated on the goals, scope, and potential impact of institutional OER efforts that they might better.
  Faculty may need reassurance that the value of opening and sharing is competitive with the value of locking down and isolating learning materials.
• Faculty and technology support staff may need workflows and technology training to facilitate publication of OER.
• Finding, reusing, and remixing of OER should become just another faculty skill set, and trainings should be provided–similar to (now commonplace) trainings on use of word processors, e-mail, and the web.
• Everyone should be involved in discussions of the potential value and responsibility of using non-rivalrous resources to provide access to educational content to a new, broad international audience.

I believe OER can be mainstreamed and integrated into existing processes for course development and publishing, but the needs identified in this list above require organizing, supervising, supporting, and proselytizing. Institutions serious about engaging in open education would be well served by funding at least one full-time position, such as “OER Coordinator”, if not a small team. Such a position may be situated in context of campus IT, faculty development and training, or distance learning. Investment in such a position could cohere OER efforts and reduce waste, redundancy, poor planning, and, perhaps most significantly, mis- or failed communication. At the very least, an existing staff member should be appointed as OER coordinator, and responsibilities shifted or condensed to allow for these needs.

My experience with the OER community has shown me that the passion, reasoning, and ideas of individuals will fuel and maintain the global effort regardless–Andy Lane states that “the success of OERs is also dependent on a thriving and healthy OER movement”. But to foster the movement in the long-term it behooves us to focus on the immediate needs of local sustainability. Unlike purchasing computers or licensing an LMS, with OER we are not buying a solution, we are building a solution. In doing so we are investing in the people of the institution, and can obtain a new kind of ownership: a grassroots, shared ownership of the learning materials cultivated by access to and encouragement of open and shared learning resources.

The 2007 Cape Town Open Education Declaration more specifically harkens back to the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“Everyone has the right to education.” Article 26.1), declaring a shared goal…

[to create] a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go.

This has been interpreted by a number of major educational institutes to motivate providing their educational resources to poor or disadvantaged peoples, especially in the third-world. A current example is Rice University’s Connexions program, which publishes resources for K-12 target audiences in Africa.

In a word, the primary motivation is philanthropic.

But it’s also clear that there are strategic motivations as well, the most prominent being tied to the changing information culture, driven by the accessibility of the Internet. In Good intentions: improving the evidence base in support of sharing learning materials Lou McGill, Sarah Currier, Charles Duncan, and Peter Douglas note, “The rise of social networking tools, such as flickr, Facebook and blogs has caused a revolution in approach for both individuals and institutions as they have begun to embrace a more open approach to sharing information, practice and resources”(8). In David Wiley puts it to the US Secretary of Education, “With significant changes occurring in its societal context and participant base, higher education must innovate in teaching and learning, as well as other areas, to hope to
remain relevant.” (4)

This is echoed in the UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education produced Final report of the discussion on Free and Open Source Software
(FOSS) for Open Educational Resources, in which it describes a desire to do for education what FOSS has done for software: “FOSS and OER share a common conviction that access to resources, whether software code or learning materials, should be free and open for use, modification and sharing” (1; my emphases).

The implication of this statement highlights additional motivations: accesibility and (perhaps more importantly) cost-savings, both to the end-user and the educational institute.

Another motivation, though more subtle, is to improve the quality of an institution’s educational products and pedagogy. David Wiley notes, open education “exposes teaching to the quality-increasing pressures of peer review.”

In summary motivations for open education can be described as:

• Philanthropic: Sharing and providing education to people all over the world, with special attention to those in third-world countries or without access to high-quality local education.
• Strategic: Adapting educational practices to the changing world culture may increase viability of educational institutions. (Additional motivations exist here as well, but are perhaps more subtle or less overarching).
• Pedagogic: The act of sharing may increase attention to quality; the act of adapting or remixing may increase quality; the utlization of new technologies may enhance educational engagement amongst learners.
• Economic: Cost-savings to the institution by digitally archiving their own materials, and then sharing and reusing within the institution and amongst peers.

Later this week I’ll look at how these motivations are realized through the “open education” efforts of several institutions/organizations.

So what is the open education movement, and what defines it? The closest thing to an open education manifesto may be the Cape Town Open Education Declaration (September 2007), a product of a convening of the Open Society Institute and the Shuttleworth Foundation. It states that open education “is built on the belief that everyone should have the freedom to use, customize, improve and redistribute educational resources without constraint.” It implicitly seeks to free education from copyright constraints, and its rhetoric echoes the argument that education is a right, not a privilege, recalling the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, in Article 26.1, states, “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. … Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit” (my emphases). It should be no surprise, then, that the open educational resources movement is credited as having been born of UNESCO in it’s 2002 Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education. Though both the UNESCO forum and Cape Town declaration were preceded by others’ efforts to open content, knowledge, and courseware, these two documents provide the fundamentals of a definition of open education.

What may be surprising is how long it took UNESCO to get around to promoting the idea of open educational resources, but that can be attributed to the lack of technology by which information can be easily published, reproduced, and accessed by consumers from around the world–it’s clear that the Internet provides the key solution here, though it’s less clear what role evolving cultural attitudes, particularly in the west, to “free” or “open” products or content may have played.

On the first day of Dr. David Wiley’s Intro to Open Education course he answered a student’s question about the challenges that now face open education as including, first and foremost, sustainability. I have on a few occasions suggested that as we continue to move from the “traditional” classroom with chalk and photocopies to “hybird” and even fully online classrooms, the opportunities for publishing open educational resources will expand, and engaging in open education will be facilitated. In fact, not only can the practice of open education become a part of the normal process of creating and publishing educational resources, I believe it must for two reasons: first, I don’t believe open education will ever be widely adopted if it is reliant on millions of dollars in grant moneys (though those grant moneys were clearly important for kick-starting the open education movement, as demonstrated by the pioneering work of MIT OpenCourseWare, USU OpenCourseWare, et c.). Second, if the open education movement is not owned by the day-to-day practicing educators, instructional technologists, and designers, if its banner is not carried by both students and teacher, I believe it has a hard chance of sticking. Brian Lamb, recently spun off a blog post in which he voices his grassrooty motivation, and, spinning off of an article by fellow Canadian Michael Geist, suggests that the key problem is lack of leadership, not funding.

I agree that much of the work of perpetuating and enlarging the open education movement must and will come from the “grassroots”, and it can be a natural step in the digitization and technological enhancement of education that I have had the joy of being involved in for nearly a dozen years. Hook them gradually. Use freely available OER as a gateway drug. Use blogs and wikis and the power of the reputation economy to develop the drive. Through small steps we might take the learning materials and activities that are masked behind the opaque walls of the classroom into a translucent, and sometimes transparent setting of the public internet.

P.S.
(It’s possible that open education may be moved forward not first by educators, but first by administrators; to this end so far we’ve seen institutions use the carrot of financial compensation; I wonder what might happen if they chose to use a stick instead. At my institution, Utah Valley University, most of the content that would be considered for open educational resources is already owned by the institution, as it was produced under work-for-hire or with significant enough institutional resources to justify ownership. UVU could very well say, “We are doing OER, we are going to publish these faculty-created materials, and you can pound sand if you don’t like it.” If any of you know of institutions who have taken this approach–especially if you work at such an institution–let me know.)