Open-Content

Imagine that - somehow - you’ve never used the internet before. A good friend and long-time internet user finds this out and begins trying to describe to you how awesome the internet is. However, for some inexplicable reason, all of his arguments for why you should be on the internet focus on cost. While it is absolutely true that each of these services is cheaper than its pre-internet counterpart, cost is far and away the least interesting thing about any of them. Would these arguments actually inspire someone to want to use the internet? If you’re already familiar with the internet, the whole line of argument seems to miss the point. It omits the heart and soul of what makes the internet amazing. Who thinks about the internet this way? ...

Two and half weeks ago I extended an invitation to attendees of the annual OpenEd Conference to “please help make the OpenEd Conference better.” This invitation was extended (successfully delivered by email) to the 2,240 people who (1) have attended the OpenEd conference at some point in the past and (2) are still subscribed to the OpenEd Conference information mailing list. 924 people opened the email (41.3%). The email invited them to either (1) anonymously answer a series of questions about the conference and how it can be improved or (2) indicate their willingness to participate in a 30 minute conversation about the conference and how it can be improved. 214 (9.6%) people clicked on one of the links in the email (taking them to one of the Google Forms collecting this information). ...

There was a lot of discussion at OpenEd17 about the relationship between OER and value-added services like platforms. The discussion was energized by an announcement made by Cengage immediately ahead of the conference, but this is a conversation that has been percolating for a while now. Examples of Value-Added Services in the Context of Open Both the wider internet and the narrower education space are filled with companies and organizations that provide value-added services around openly licensed software and content. A few examples include: ...

There were lots of amazing takeaways from #OpenEd17 for me. One set of takeaways has to do with opportunities to make the conference a more effective vehicle for advancing the work of open education. I wrote about that yesterday. Over the coming days and weeks I’ll post more thoughts prompted by conversations at the conference, starting below. Ryan Merkley’s opening keynote was awesome. Among the many important things he said, one that struck a chord with me was a comment about how we talk about “open”. Ryan made the assertion that “open has to be about more than the 5Rs - open also has to be about our values.” I couldn’t agree more, and I think this point is worth elaborating and exploring. ...

This morning I sent the following email to the 2,253 subscribers to the Open Education Conference mailing list. I extend the same invitation to you. My apologies in advance for the length of this email, but I hope you’ll agree the subject warrants it. The work of the open education community is so important that we must leverage every resource available to better support student learning and success. The Open Education Conference is one of those resources. And it can be better. It needs to be better. How we can use the conference to its fullest potential in order to catalyze and facilitate more, better, and deeper learning for all students - particularly for those students who are the least likely to succeed without the work we are doing? ...

As you may have heard, my fellow rabble-rouser George Siemens and I are doing a MOOC on open education that launches later this month on edX. Before you ask, let me preemptively answer a few questions. Yes, this MOOC actually is open - all the content will be viewable outside the edX platform and downloadable under open licenses so as to be fully 5R-able, yes, you can fully participate in the course for free, and no, I don’t make any money should you choose to try for a Verified Certificate. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, George and I have a request. Would you be willing to make a 3 - 5 minute video sharing your perspectives and experiences regarding one or more of our weekly topics? We would love for our fellow course participants to hear a wide diversity of voices (rather than just suffering through ours all the time). The weekly topics are: ...

Reading through and pondering the reactions to what was apparently a wonderful ALTC keynote by Bonnie Stewart (UPDATE: here are her slides), I find myself reflecting on the ways my thinking about “open” is influenced by the ideas of negative liberty and positive liberty. This is certainly not the only lens through which I see open, but I do feel like it is a useful one. As I understand it, negative liberty refers to the absence of external obstacles, barriers, roadblocks, hinderances, or constraints that interfere with my ability to accomplish my desires. My negative liberty is maximized when there is nothing in the law, in society, or elsewhere outside of me that prevents me from exercising my agency in order to accomplish my desires. ...

I started to post this as a comment on Mike’s amazing essay Information Underload, but I’m going to put it here instead. Read Mike’s whole piece - it’s worth it. He writes: Endless thinkpieces have been written about the Netflix matching algorithm [including in education], but for many years that algorithm could only match you with the equivalent of the films in the Walmart bargain bin, because Netflix had a matching algorithm but nothing worth watching. (emphasis in original) ...

Last week I shared a little of my thinking about the problems inherent in the way people in the field talk about OER. Primary among those problems is our bewildering refusal to talk about the permissions necessary to engage in the 5R activities. These permissions are a critical part of the definition of what it means for a learning resource to be open. Second among the problems I discussed is our seeming inability to be clear about OER being free (the other critical part of the definition of what it means for a learning resource to be open), while services provided in conjunction with OER might cost money. ...

In a recent webinar about OER, organized by one of the major textbook publishers, there was a lot of conversation about whether OER are “free” or “affordable.” This conversation was problematic in two ways. Before I begin though, just to be clear, allow me to reaffirm that OER are free, plain and simple, full stop, period. That is literally part of the definition of OER. OER = free + permissions. ...