Response

Two weeks ago, Washington state representative Reuven Carlyle wrote a blog post about his vision for open education in the state of Washington, in which he referred at length to my recent Educause article, Openness as Catalyst for an Educational Reformation. A thoughtful constituent of Carlyle’s, Professor Amy Kinsel, professor of History at Shoreline Community College, took the time to pen a thoughtful, critical response to his post and my ideas specifically. I’d like to respond to several of her points here. ...

The world is increasingly divided. The world is increasingly bitterly divided. Of all the things I worry about late at night, lying in bed unable to sleep, the almost absolute absence of civility in our nation’s political discourse has loomed largest lately. Everyone on the left seems to think everyone on the right is a moron. Everyone on the right seems to think everyone on the left is a moron. The louder you scream and the meaner the things you say, the greater standing you seem to have in your political group. The recent round of vilifications of “Republicans in Name Only” and “Democrats in Name Only” provides a preview of what may soon come - an America where radicalism (i.e., actions and words showing your allegiance to either the radical right or the radical left) becomes the primary political currency. There is precious little room left for those in the center who put pragmatics before ideology and would rather discuss and understand than accuse and belittle. ...

I recently received a copy of a letter the US Chamber of Commerce is circulating in opposition to H.R. 5037, the Federal Research Public Access Act. Since I decided to respond to the letter at length, I thought I would share my response with the community. Below I quote their letter in full with paragraph-by-paragraph responses to their argument. Dear Chairman Towns and Ranking Member Issa: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest business federation representing the interests of more than three million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region, opposes H.R. 5037, the “Federal Research Public Access Act,” and urges you not to bring it before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for consideration. ...

Yesterday Michael tweeted: @opencontent Would be grateful for your input to this conversation: http://bit.ly/dzECrZ He’s referring to a thread of conversation around Anya’s new book, DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education. In his initial post, Michael says, Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think the DIY U vision is a bad one. To the contrary, there are many aspects of it that are good, necessary, and overdue. I just don’t think it’s a complete vision. ...

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. ...

George has written a thoughtful post about issues with OCW 1.0 projects titled Utah State OpenCourseWare, lowriders, and system design. A few quotes and then some response: Utah State University has announced the closure of its OpenCourseWare initiative due to budget woes. I call nonsense (or BS). Apparently OCW needed $120,000 per year. Given the size of Utah State University, I’m going to guess they have an annual operating budget somewhere in the range of $300-400 million. This is not a budget shortfall – this is a commitment shortfall. 120K is a fraction of a fraction in light of the larger university budget. ...

George Siemens has written a very thoughtful analysis of Flat World Knowledge (and the change process generally) titled Change that prevents real change. I want to respond to a few of his thoughts. FWK will succeed for the wrong reasons. It will succeed because it tweaks the existing model of textbooks just enough to disrupt publishers, but not enough to disrupt the industry as a whole. FWK is integrated into the system of education: authors, bookstores, faculty, and students. It uses existing reward metrics (recognition and a little bit of revenue for the author) and addresses the biggest complaint students have about textbooks: costs. Essentially, the existing system is used as the infrastructure for FWK model. And that’s the problem. ...