Tag Archive for 'open'

Responses to the Rev and Stephen on “Openness”

Published on December 31, 2009 in open content. 6 Comments Tags: , .

I love these longer, more thoughtful discussions…

The Reverend contributes to the latest round of the conversation about “openness:”

The larger question in my mind is that what is under girding this discussion is an even more insidious logic than a denatured sense of open, and that’s a sense of entitled leadership. Fact is, the push to make sense of open as a term and discuss it’s meaning, future shape, and ultimate value seems to be the most definitive step in forming an institutional structure of power around it.

What is the alternative to ‘pushing to make sense of the term “open” and discussing it’s meaning and future shape?’ Studiously ignoring the term? Turning a blind eye to what is happening in the field? Is the concern about “institutionalizing a structure of power around the term open” that only a few get to participate in the discussions?

Who gets to discuss what open is? Where do they do it?

It is being discussed in the blogosphere by anyone who cares about it enough to type, right? George chimed in, I chimed in, the Rev chimed in, Stephen has chimed in… Anyone who wants to can take part. I’m sure many more will join the fray.

Importantly, there are at least two parts to this conversation. There is global part of the conversation, where we will discuss aspects of openness (openness of content, openness of research, openness of software, openness of credentialing, etc.) outside the context of specific implementations (i.e., individual institutions or projects). Then there will be the very concretely grounded discussions about specific implementations in specific contexts. The comparison is a little rough, but these will be akin to theory / practice conversations. Both are important, and they should inform each other.

Companies don’t really care to much about that discussion, they just care about appealing to users through a term, and if they make up the table, along with administrators at universities and the like, then why do we need to go to the table at all? Isn’t the push away from these legacies of power and privilege a part of what open is working against on it’s most powerful and truly transformative levels?

Why do we open education people need to have a seat at the table in department meetings, dean’s council, and when the VPs meet with the provost and president? The same reason that open source software needs a seat at the table with Dell, HP, Gateway, and Lenovo. Sure, the hackers of the world can blow away that Windows 7 install, repartition their hard drive, and do a clean Ubuntu install. But how many more people would open source reach / how much more influence would open source have if the major vendors shipped Ubuntu or Red Hat or (name your favorite distro here) straight to consumers? Significantly more – infinitely more.

And, of course, the radicals on each campus can put their course notes on their personal website with a CC license without engaging their administrations – just like hackers can write open source software without talking to hardware vendors. But how many more people would open educational resources reach / how much more influence would open educational resources have if the institutions themselves made wide-reaching commitments to the principle of openness? Significantly more – infinitely more.

Yes, we want a seat at that table. We need a seat at that table. And until we have it, the potential good of open education is going to be severely limited in reach – restricted to the educational equivalent of the computer user who is capable of repartioning his hard drive and doing a clean Linux install. Yes, those users are out there, but they’re the vast, vast minority.

Why does their need to be a continental congress on open? Why do we have to conflate it with system and then elect officials to define it for us? Part of the power and the hope of this space for me is a new scale of working though this ideas that is both hyper-individual and communally local at the same time. To frame the discussion around a table of designated players that move us forward seems in many ways contrary to possibilities these connections and relationships provide us.

Where is this conflated meeting of elected officials happening? The conversation I’m participating in about the meaning of openness is on publicly accessible, openly licensed blogs that have comments and trackbacks enabled. How much more open and participatory is the conversation supposed to be? What am I missing?

I don’t think of this so much as radical as an alternative to the models of leadership, promotion, and adoption of ideas that have utlimately placed them squarely within a system that is moving in a unilateral direction of progress in the name of growth and profit.

Isn’t growth the whole point of openness – growing the number of people who have access to educational opportunity? For an institution like BYU, that for years has had a “zero square foot growth” policy with regard to buildings on campus, wouldn’t a commitment to openness be all about growing the number of people the institution can reach, support, and bless? If openness isn’t about growing or increasing both the amount of educational opportunity available and the number of people who can access those opportunities, what is it about?

And – here comes the part where you can all throw things at me – if we want those opportunities to still be available 3, 5, and 10 years from now, shouldn’t someone worry about how we support them? I’m not saying that we need 2008-destroy-our-economy-and-take-the-world-with-it-style capitalism in open education. But we do have to get over this notion that any time we talk about money or sustainability we’ve tainted and contaminated ourselves.

In his summary of this round of the conversation, Stephen notes:

David Wiley responds to George Siemens’s post calling for more radicalism for open education. It’s a moderate response, reminding people to heed to the goals of education, and not the means. In this I agree – open education is not an end in itself, but part of the means by which we reach our goals of an education for all in a just and sharing society.

See! It can happen! Stephen and I can agree with each other…

And he argues that, therefore, “the ideal [of openness] needs to mean specific things in specific contexts in order for it to be applied usefully in those contexts.” This is true as well – at the margins. But the examples cited by Siemens – Twitter, Blackboard, Facebook – aren’t marginal cases, and claims that they are somehow ‘open’ in a way that is conducive to a free education in a just and sharing society somehow ring hollow.

Perhaps I need to use all caps to make my point clearer than I have been able to in my past posts. MY DISCUSSION OF THE MEANING OF OPEN DOES NOT EXTEND TO SOFTWARE (LIKE TWITTER, BLACKBOARD, OR FACEBOOK). WHEN I TALK ABOUT “THE MEANING OF THE ‘OPEN’ IN ‘OPEN CONTENT’,” I MEAN I’M DISCUSSING THE ADJECTIVE “OPEN” AS IT MODIFIES THE NOUN “CONTENT.” This is the same “open” that occurs in “open educational resources.” This is the world to which the 4Rs framework applies.

It is NOT the same “open” that occurs in “open source software.” We don’t need to discuss whether software is open or not. “Open source software” is already a trademarked term with a vouchsafed definition. Twitter, Blackboard, or Facebook are not open source, full-stop, end of story. They can claim that their software is “open” in some other manner, but no one believes it – I don’t even think they believe it. (Facebook also goes around saying that they care about protecting your privacy. Do we need to define privacy? No. Everyone knows Facebook is doing whatever is in its best interest and that it could care less about privacy or openness.) There’s nothing to discuss here except to complain about companies who mislead the public to make a buck. But there is no special relation to openness in this regard.

Stephen writes that my claim “the ideal [of openness] needs to mean specific things in specific contexts in order for it to be applied usefully in those contexts” is only true at the margins. In this case, I think Stephen is simply wrong. (See, we can disagree, too!)

The differences between software and content are not marginal. The necessary and appropriate considerations of openness in these two contexts are significantly different. People taking the naive position of “OER is like open source software for content!” fail to carefully consider what they’re saying and consequently miss important differences. (It’s like when people used to say “learning objects are like LEGOs!” After some reflection, we can see that this metaphor stuck so powerfully in people’s minds – and was so wrong – as to have contributed meaningfully to the inability of learning objects to deliver on their (over-hyped) promise.)

Our inability to speak and write with precision and clarity about the differences in the openness of content and the openness of software is a huge roadblock to the progress of open education. The “OER is open source software for content” metaphor is so powerful as to be blinding. These differences are not marginal. The differences in the openness of research, the openness of data, and the openness of credentialing are not marginal, either. We need a more mature, more developed, and more precise discourse about open education. And I think that open blogs on the open web is the right place to have it.

Response to George on “Openness”

Published on December 30, 2009 in open content. 6 Comments Tags: , , .

I’m extremely grateful for George’s recent post, “Open isn’t so open anymore.” It’s thoughtful and thought-provoking. I won’t respond to the post sentence for sentence, but I do want to respond to some of the major points. Hopefully an interesting dialog will ensue (I believe this is George’s goal as well). I’m going to cut and paste pieces from throughout together in order to respond to similar thoughts in one place.

We need some good ol’ radicals in open education. You know, the types that have a vision and an ideological orientation that defies the pragmatics of reality. Stubborn, irritating, aggravating visionaries. Today, I fear, open education is beset with a more moderate spirit…

Richard Stallman has been somewhat replaced by, or even written out of, the open source movement. Stallman was (and still is) an uncompromising radical. Or at least that is how the well established proprietary software field sees him. The open source movement developed in response to what others perceived as Stallman’s unpalatable views for mainstreaming openness.

I’ve stated in the past that I’m concerned about open education suffering the fate of Stallman – marginalized because it is not palatable at the “power table”. I still think this is a valid concern. But we first need a Stallman in open education before we can even begin to marginalize him. We need an idealist that sets the stage for thinking and debate around openness.

I would disagree and say that we have plenty of stubborn, irritating, aggravating voices in the open education space. A few examples that I respect greatly: First, it’s well known how much Stephen aggravates me, and how uncompromising he is. Second, Kim Tucker works so hard to bring the purity of Stallman’s ideas into the open education space that he sometimes appears to be a reincarnation of St. Ignucius himself. Derek Keats is also a champ in this regard. The UNESCO listserv “discussions” (aka battles) over licensing issues, which are at the very core of openness, were really something.

I don’t want to launch into a full-on defense of pragmatism; however, it is easy to see why the open source movement had to emerge from what Richard was doing with the “free software” movement. He couldn’t get a seat at “the table” because he wouldn’t speak in a language anyone at the table cared about. He still refuses to – and he still doesn’t have a seat at the table. Now, being uncompromisingly committed to principle is fine, as long as you don’t mind being ignored by certain groups. It can mean a life of “being translated” so that others can understand you, which consequently means a life of not having a direct impact, because your message is always being rewritten by a mediator so that it can be understood. (Hence, Eric Raymond has been an extremely popular consultant and wielded a huge direct influence on the computing industry, while Richard has not.) If you want the attention of those groups “at the table,” and you want the opportunity to engage them directly, you have to speak their language. And sometimes you have to adapt your message. I believe that protecting one’s ability to adapt appropriately for different audiences is one of the key benefits of openness, so I will be curious to hear whether George thinks adaptations are appropriate or not.

While we often hear criticism of Stallman’s inflexibility, he has done more to advance openness by not accommodating than he could have possibly done by assuming a moderate or even commercial stance.

I disagree wholeheartedly. Without translators like Raymond, who adapted Stallman’s message so that a broader audience could both (1) understand and (2) see the value of it, Stallman and his philosophies would still be niche players on the global scale today. (Let the firestorm begin.)

David Wiley states that open is a function of gradients (“a continuous, not binary, construct”). According to Wiley, openness is not an ideological concept, like democracy, but rather a functional or utilitarian construct: like a door or window being open or partly open. I can see the appeal of this view – the value of something is discovered in its implementation. But it seems wrong to me when applied to an ideological concept such as openness.

I’m not sure why George makes the leap from my more nuanced view of openness to my somehow not believing that openness is an ideological concept. Of course openness is a concept – and of course people are ideological about it’s meaning. But, like democracy, little concrete debate can be had about the concept (and no implementation of the concept can occur) until it has been operationalized. How can you debate a concept without a concrete proposal as to it’s meaning?

Unfortunately, many people have taken the stance that the open education movement’s notion of openness should be exactly the same as the open source software movement’s definition. Because software and content are different in meaningful ways, I don’t think such a simple-minded, whole-cloth adoption makes sense. This is why I have proposed the 4Rs Framework for thinking about openness specifically with regard to content (including educational resources):

1. Reuse – the right to reuse the content in its unaltered / verbatim form
2. Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself
3. Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other content to create something new
4. Redistribute – the right to make and share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others

I guess George doesn’t see value in my “framework” for thinking about openness. His discussion makes me believe that he doesn’t see the 4Rs Framework as being able to disqualify things from being open (“The gradient of democracy has a threshold”). However, as I’ve discussed in the past, there is content that clearly fails to grant any of these rights (and so is closed). There is also content that only grants reuse and redistribution rights, while denying revision and remixing rights (which I call “2R open”). Finally, there is also content that grants all four rights (which I call “4R open”). Clearly, traditional textbooks are not open according to this framework. Anything with a standard (c) statement is not open according to this framework.

In response to my statement:

Licenses have therefore provided people with license options to help them more effectively accomplish their personal goals. This tolerance for different goals and explicit support for people in achieving them is something we should cherish and extend beyond our licenses into our community discourse and behavior. If another person or institution’s approach to openness doesn’t help you meet your goals, then look for help somewhere else – don’t criticize them.

George says:

We should criticize. We should debate. By not criticizing gradient views of openness, by failing to establish a solid foundation on which to discuss openness, we are providing an ideology for our generation, not one that serves as a future-focused movement. Openness is a hard topic to discuss ideologically because it’s important. Yes, pragmatics are easier. But pragmatics have a short life span.

Openness is not a methodology. Openness is an ideology along the lines of democracy. It is worthy of theoretical discussion. And various modes of implementation should be subject to debate and criticism.

Two things are entangled in my comment and George’s response – the productive criticism of the ideals of our movement, and the criticism of individuals or institutions that gets personal and becomes both unprofessional and unproductive. I strongly believe that we should engage in criticism and debate with regard to the ideals of our movement itself. No meaningful progress can be made if we don’t. We also desperately need to engage in criticism and debate about the processes and methodologies in which these naked ideals are clothed in the real world. No meaningful progress can be made if we don’t. However, when everyone starts bashing MIT, or starts talking about how stupid anyone is that would ever use the NC clause, or what a waste of space institutions who share pdf files are, then what could be productive conversation turns into vindictives that move the field backward.

Why spend days, even months, debating seemingly insignificant details of openness? Why not just produce something and share it in any manner you wish?

The debate is great, and productive, and I think this series of posts shows that some of us are engaging in it. We just don’t want to discourage people from making their first forays into being open by slamming their “moronic decisions.” They’re worried enough about whether or not they should be open without us attacking their first attempts. We should be supporting them, not belittling them. I’m not claiming that George belittles people, but there is far too much of that in the open education movement right now.

As I’ve said above, I believe that because content and software are meaningfully different from one another, their definitions of open should be meaningfully different as well. I’m not sure if George shares that sentiment, since his article seems to flow freely between software systems and other aspects of open education. Though he does make this nod:

What does it mean to be open? What is an open methodology? What does openness look like in relation to technology, information, learning content, administrative systems (transparency of the student record and related data collection by an institution), and pedagogy?

George continues with a quote:

Robert Hutchins has stated that “the death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment”. A similar concern exists for openness in education.

I think a great example of that undernourishment is the belief that open means the same thing no matter where you find it. While we’re appreciating the differences in software and content, we should look ahead and see that when the ideal of openness finally starts to make its way into the broader institutional policy discussion, it’s definition will have to adapt again. Neither the Open Source Definition nor the 4Rs Framework will be sufficient for the language spoken at that particular table.

We also have to realize, admit, and feel comfortable with the fact that openness does not belong everywhere in education. For example, if students want to keep their grades private, they should be able to. And the existence of one area where openness does not and should not apply should lead us to look sincerely for other areas where it does not and should not apply. I don’t believe George is promoting it, but you don’t have to look far to find voices calling that all copyright should be abolished and all information should be open. This is the cry of a zealous fanatic, not the impulse of a thoughtful person.

Remaking our educational institutions into places where openness is a core, ambient, unconscious value of all who work there is a more intricate and involved matter than giving everyone on campus a copy of the OSD and saying “apply this in all aspects of your professional and personal life.” “Openness” the ideal needs to mean specific things in specific contexts in order for it to be applied usefully in those contexts. It will mean one thing in the IT context, another in the research / scholarship context, another in the teaching and learning context, another in the broader policy context, etc. And we need to thoughtfully develop these different meanings through writing and debate.

Many of us, myself and George included, are aggressively pursuing systemic change in education. (Some of the more radical voices in the field simply want to burn education down and plant new seeds in its ashes.) George asks an important question that each of us should be open about answering – ‘why are we pursuing this change?’ Personally, my reasons for wanting to increase the openness of all aspects of education, each in their own appropriate way, are moral, ethical, and ultimately religious. I continue to be inspired by the great 1975 address by LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball to the BYU community, which included the following statement:

We must be willing to break with the educational establishment (not foolishly or cavalierly, but thoughtfully and for good reason) in order to find gospel ways to help mankind. Gospel methodology, concepts, and insights can help us to do what the world cannot do in its own frame of reference.

Ideas like “sharing” are not concepts that flow directly out of the market, and there is little that the market can tell us about how to do it well. I would never claim that Mormonism (or Christianity more broadly) has cornered the market on loving and serving your fellow man, but my personal belief that I should “love my neighbor as myself” is the bedrock on which my life-long pursuit of increasing openness is built. That principle, sometimes called the “second great commandment,” is one which certainly requires adaptation to the individual, but never needs to be compromised.

On Open Accreditation

Published on September 30, 2008 in open-education. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

There have been some good comments on my post from yesterday, and interesting posts elsewhere around the net. I realized I needed to clarify my model a bit after reading Stephen’s comment:

A slightly different model has emerged in George’s and my Connectivism course. We have the 20 for-credit students at the University of Manitoba, and the open access students. We’ve published the details of all the assignments. We had a student who signed on as an open access student but who would be submitting her assignments at her home institution, for assessment there. This distributes assessment, allowing for assessment to be basically open-sourced.

In my Introduction to Open Education course, I had 8 or so normally enrolled students at my own university, and dozens more at no university at all who just followed for fun or for the “homemade certificate” which the Chronicle called a “diploma” again and again. But I also had another 8 students or so who were at their own universities, signed up for an Independent Study or Independent Research or Directed Readings kind of course (whichever was least painful to get enrolled in and would count toward their degree). I marked all their assignments and simply submitted a grade to the supervising professor at the end of term. I couldn’t really “outsource” the assessment piece of the course to these students’ supervising faculty, because there was no one at the students’ home institutions who knew anything about open education (hence their desire to take the course from me).

It occurs to me now, though, that this in and of itself is an interesting hack of the higher education system. These students paid tuition and took a course that partially fulfilled their graduation requirements, and my class is not in the universities’ course catalogs and my name is not on their faculty rosters. How much of a degree could you do this way? In a PhD program like the PhD in Instructional Psychology & Technology at BYU, each student is required to complete at least 18 hours in their area of specialization. This is a fairly common model in US graduate schools. In practice there is a huge amount of flexibility in the specialization courses taken, adapted to each individual student’s needs and interests. So if a student took all Independent Studies for these specialization courses and a sequence of six courses from the Edupunk Un-iversity (or Anti-university or Alter-university or Meta-university or whatever it is), they could potentially take 20% of their entire PhD program this way.

Open accreditation may be much closer than we think. We just need to continue to find creative ways to hack our courses into the existing university systems around the globe. At the same time, we need to establish a recognizable brand name for the collection of courses we would offer, so that folks will have heard of them. Until then, we’ll have to ride the strength of our names.

“Dr. Smith? For my specialization courses I’d like to start with a three course sequence from the Edupunk Un-iversity.”
“The what?”
“You know, those classes that David Wiley and Brian Lamb and Stephen Downes and those guys offer online.”
“Oh, sure. Sounds great. Which three?”

Now, these courses may not fit well outside of Instructional Technology type programs, but hey – we’ve got to start somewhere, right? Throw your thoughts about what should be offered over on the new Edupunk Un-iversity page on the OpenContent Wiki. I’ve thrown up some starter ideas, too. And we already have our first student waiting to enroll as per the comments on yesterday’s post – so what are you waiting for? Let the experiments commence! =)