Monthly Archive for May, 2010

More Response to Stephen

Published on May 14, 2010 in open content. 4 Comments

This must be the single most popular post title on my blog…

In response to my earlier post, Yes, Stephen, but Who Cares?, Stephen responds:

I care, David.

Because the next result on Google won’t be the free version, it’ll be another pay version. And the next and the next and the next. That’s how SEO works.

If SEO worked this way, Elsevier and Springer would keep us from ever finding articles available in PubMed. Microsoft would keep us from ever finding Open Office. Adobe would keep us from ever finding the GIMP. Et cetera. And yet, of course, they’re not able to keep us from finding these things. Elsevier alone had over $2 billion in operating profits last year, so they have the “means.” And their entire business depends on people licensing content from them, so they have the “motive.” And if SEO were as easy to manipulate as you say, they’d have the “opportunity.” means + motive + opportunity usually = a crime, and yet I can still find articles in PubMed through Google and Yahoo. If Elsevier can’t get it done, who can? Microsoft has had tons of cash on hand forever, and they haven’t been able to push Open Office to the 30th results page. It just isn’t happening.

And in some places, like your iTunes or your Kindle, the free version simply won’t be available at all. Want the free version? Use 10-year old technology incompatible with today’s learning systems.

How are the ebooks available through Gutenberg not compatible with today’s learning systems? Wouldn’t those include Blackboard, Moodle, and the iPad (both via Safari and ePub compatibility)? It’s true that a single vendor like Amazon can always choose to limit their product’s interoperability, but how does using NC licensing solve that problem? It doesn’t. Vendor attitude problems are a completely different issue. When people vote with their wallets and buy a different vendor’s product (like the iPad), the restrictive vendors will see the error of their ways.

Or they’ll lobby governments to keep the free versions complete unavailable. “Unfair competition,” they’ll cry. They’ll force agencies like the BBC to stop distributing educational content. Convince Africans that locked-down mobile phones with no free content are good enough. Take cities to court to prevent them from offering free internet. Stall internet deployment to keep paper copies and publishing viable in the developing world.

And how does using the NC clause solve any of these problems? It doesn’t. These are different issues altogether. Yes, we need policy reform. Yes we need to hold governments accountable through available processes. Yes we need to vote with our wallets when vendors act irresponsibly. But these aren’t the problem we’re discussing.

I simply don’t understand how you can’t see this, when it’s right in front of your eyes.

I see lots of problems right in front of my eyes, but I don’t see any that the NC license solves.

Yes, Stephen, but Who Cares?

Published on May 14, 2010 in open content. 5 Comments Tags: , .

Stephen comments on Stian’s post:

I don’t want to say “this is exactly what I meant,” but, this is exactly what I meant!. And it’s why I use the NC clause in Creative Commons. e-century reports: “One of the major reasons for this change was because some companies are trying to archive the articles published by us for pure commercial purpose – they will ‘lock up’ all those articles on their websites and ask readers to pay to access them. This is obviously not right, and against our intention to keep all articles openly accessible to all readers, no matter where they are archived.” So, don’t tell me any more that this won’t happen. It does.

Yes, Stephen, it happens. But who cares? There is still a free copy available, and anyone who wants to find it can. When I Google for one of the articles, Google will show me multiple results. I’ll click on one, and maybe it will be behind a paywall. So I’ll go back to Google and click on another result. Then I’ll read it for free. Or maybe the first one I click on will be free. Or maybe I’ll just quit using the default Google search and start making my queries through the advanced search interface so that I only find freely available CC licensed material in the first place.

What you’re describing seems to be an information literacy problem, not a licensing problem. It appears to be an extension of the “tax on uneducated people” argument. By that argument, we’d need to ban a variety things ranging from selling lotteries to selling cigarettes to selling printed copies of public domain books. And maybe we should, because we could argue that people who buy these things ought to know better, and that we have an obligation to protect the uninformed from their own poor choices (in this case by using the NC clause). Because there are a variety of other scenarios in which the NC clause precludes access, we can’t universally say that using NC promotes access better than not using NC. We can only universally say that it protects the unenlightened from themselves.

Maybe we should modify the old saying as follows: Fool me into paying for openly licensed content once, shame on you. Fool me into paying for openly licensed content twice, shame on me.

I guess I could bring myself to care if you said “I use NC because I want to prevent people from being exploited,” because I can also care about that. But I don’t think that’s your point. Am I wrong?

Identifying concrete pedagogical benefits of open educational resources

Published on May 14, 2010 in open content. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Here’s one of the proposals I submitted for Open Ed 2010:

The most naïve kind of hype around open educational resources (OER) says that OER are more effective pedagogically than proprietary educational resources (PER). Can we justify this claim?

First, it is critically important that we understand that “effectiveness” is not characteristic of an educational resource. Without a proper conception of the origin of “effectiveness” we cannot ask meaningful questions about the comparative effectiveness of OER and PER – because we will not know where to look.

A similar lesson is taught by item response theory (IRT). IRT teaches us that an assessment item does not have a “difficulty” independent of the individual who is attempting to answer the item. While an assessment item may be “hard” for a novice to answer correctly, the same item will be “easy” for an expert. Consequently, we cannot talk about the difficulty of an item without talking about the expertise of the person attempting the item. “Difficulty” is a property of an item-individual pair.

Likewise, “effectiveness” is a property of a resource-individual pair. A resource that perfectly meets the needs of one individual may be completely inappropriate for a second individual. Consequently, we cannot talk about the effectiveness of an OER or PER without talking about the person using the resource.

One important difference between educational resources and assessment items is that while there is typically only one way to “use” an assessment item, there are many ways to “use” an educational resource. Pedagogically, the most important difference between an OER and a PER is the additional ways an OER can be used that are prohibited with a PER. When a resource-individual pair has access to an expanded repertoire of uses, we have a rational foundation for believing that increased learning may occur.

For example, a pilot project in Utah high schools is deploying printed copies of OER science textbooks in place of traditional PER textbooks. Before we can ask if students will learn more from the OER textbooks we should have a theoretically responsible, pedagogically-founded (i.e., new-type-of-use-founded) rationale for the question. For example:

PER science textbooks cost at least $80 each. Because they are so expensive, these textbooks have a four-year service period and must be protected so they can be used by different students. Consequently, students are generally prohibited from writing notes, underlining, highlighting, or otherwise annotating their textbooks. Printed OER science textbooks cost about $10. Because they are so inexpensive, a new OER textbook can be purchased each year for each student. When a big-ticket item ($80) becomes a consumable ($10), students can be allowed to write notes, underline, highlight, and otherwise annotate their textbooks. When students can use their textbooks in this new way, engaging in more active study strategies, we have a theoretically responsible, pedagogically-founded reason to believe that students using the OER will learn more than students using the PER.

In this session, we will discuss new uses enabled by OER that give us theoretically responsible, pedagogically-founded reasons for believing that OER can be more effective educationally than PER.

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States
This work by David Wiley is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States.