Open Content: Considerations and Thoughts in #change11

This week found our #change11 MOOC focusing on open content with David Wiley. Not familiar with David’s work prior to the first synchronous discussion of the week (the recording is here), I had only a cursory understanding of open content, after which I started to learn that it involves content that can be reused, revised, remixed, and redistributed with more flexibility than traditional published content.

I had initially thought of open content as a panacea, and in many ways too good to be true. You know what happens when things are seem that way, right? Why share quality content without generating revenue? How good can free stuff really be? How can we confirm free content is of sufficient quality to be able to rely on it?

After the somewhat contentious live session (I reacted somewhat strongly when the concept of “doing the right thing” was raised, as if an objective “right thing” exists that is naturally self-evident), I started to think of open content in a different way, one which is much more skeptical than I initially began. Open content here was described as something that can be free or for pay, depending on the delivery mechanism. Let’s face it–people work because they get paid. Sure, volunteer efforts are done for the benefit of others, and non-profits exist to work toward their mission while covering their costs. It seems that open content tries to do the latter, but since some of the open content providers that were discussed in the live session were for-profit companies, I cannot get my mind around how open the content really can be. Consider Google, in that everything it does is oriented toward revenue, including providing all those nifty and (on the face) free services. Even its “free” Android operating system is on track to generate $2.5 billion in advertizing revenue. How free is free when strings, often very hidden ones, are attached?

In this way, are companies that provide goods under an open content license doing anything different than implementing a business model that revises a traditional publishing method into a new dissemination strategy? Yes, the content, such as in Flatworld Knowledge, can be freely available in some forms (provided the economically-focused users want it in that way), or still available in a traditional manner (for cost). What this means is they get the benefit of being considered a “good” company that is committed to sharing available resources (like Google, perhaps, which claims “You can make money without doing evil.” However, I am not sure Google would be classified as an open content provider, even given its freely available Reader, Documents, GMail, and the like), while strings are still attached on the back end. Go ahead and look at the website–how can a company exist without revenue? OK, try to see where they generate it; I could not locate it. That alone makes me suspicious, ironically, of something that claims to make solid content freely available.

I know, what is the big deal? If companies can provide open content and thereby benefit some people, then what is the harm in that? Nothing, insofar as the process is transparent. I am always skeptical when it is not clear how a company makes money, as companies are companies to generate revenue for stakeholders (or else they would exist as non-profits).  In this way, it reminds me of how Google was free and then ads appeared and then they started tracking user movements. Facebook does the same thing by selling user movements and interactions to advertisers. I am still wondering about Twitter’s business plan. But these are all known to be revenue-generating companies. Are open content generators just doing the same thing under the guise of being generous content sharers (for those who are economically challenged . . .)?

Granted, I agree that issues around peer reviewed journals and the tenure process and annually updated textbooks are all imperfect systems, though I am not convinced open content academic providers are the magic bullet to what comes down to fundamental issues of supply and demand. I don’t have answers as to why costs are so high in academic books and publications, except to say that for-profit providers of content do what providers of everything else do–they charge what they believe the market will bear. Perhaps open content providers will help to change that, though I believe the problem lies more with the corporatization of education itself, with the content providers simply following along.

Does Collective Learning = Organizational Exploitation? #change11

I had a really interesting comment from Allison Littlejohn in reaction to the Week 4 #change11 MOOC discussion on Collective Learning we are having this week. In her examples about collective learning in organizations or the workplace (or even academia), they all involve crowdsourcing or wisdom of crowds or greater learning by the collective than individually. That is wonderful for the development of large ideas or to solve seemingly inflexible problems, but what happens in the process to the individual?

Sure, the individual can relish in the personal learning, the sense of being part of something much larger, and the experience. However, who owns the product, or the solution? Whose value increases as a result of all that individual work? Yes, the organization or the corporation or the government. Perhaps the shareholders or owners or leadership? Ultimately, the collective benefits those who control it, while the individual components to the collective get swept up into the final product with the individual having little to tangibly show for the efforts. Without a vested interest on the individual level, the collective could probably not be effective.

Now, I have worked in nonprofits and academic institutions for years, and believe in the mission and vision of those organizations where I spend much of my time. I know that when I contribute to the collective, some aspect of society (and not shareholders) get the value of those efforts. However, can’t collective learning be leveraged to exploit the individual members by not giving them credit, or reward, or acknowledgment for their contributions? Can “doing thing for the common good” be said for the benefit of the few, and not necessarily of the many? Thinking in the context of WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?), what is my WIIFM for participating in any formal or organized collective learning experience, if I will not in some way benefit from all my efforts?

Outside of my personal and informal reasons for engaging in collective learning, what is my WIIFM for doing it when others will leverage (exploit?) the results? I am not asking this in a greedy or selfish way, but there is only so much time and energy, and I have to wonder how easily (cf. hegemony) it is to work together, with only a few reaping the significant benefits. Are individuals exploited under the guise of corporate or organizational collective learning?

Goodness, I am now wondering about a potential connection between collective learning and critical management studies!

Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms & #change11

I just came across this thought-provoking video Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms, and thought others who may have missed it may find the visualization of the TED talk engaging. It does certainly resonate with the collective learning work of Allison Littlejohn in this week’s #change11 MOOC course!

Initial Reaction to Little by Littlejohn – Collective Learning #change11

I really like how Allison Littlejohn began her Week 4 #change11 MOOC week on Collective Learning. I especially like how we are having 2 live calls this week to discuss all of this, and she gave us a task to help get us started in her Task 1 introductory blog post. In some ways her extremely clean organization is a welcome change from the diverse (isolated?) ways of learning and communicating in a MOOC, though in other ways it is task-oriented in a way that may potentially be at odds with the personalized objectives and freedom to set (or not) learning goals. Then again, as all the tasks and things to focus upon in this open course, I believe the tasks help to focus those of us who need help focusing on something, especially if we want to engage with Allison as this week’s speaker.

In reading Allison’s Position Paper, I was struck by her her “grand challenge,” namely for people to have to learn differently. I did not see the evidence in the initial paragraph, in that technology requires a demand for new knowledge. I am not sure if technology in itself demands new knowledge, or even that any societal development or global issues, such as energy consumption or healthcare needs, requires ongoing knowledge creation on a large scale. This does not necessarily involve an increase in technology or expansive knowledge on behalf of a growing population per se. Whether solar cells or wind technologies expand, I as a consumer do not need to know the particulars–I just need to buy the product and leave the rest to the scientists. Do I really have to learn differently, or is it more that I find learning by navigating the collective helps me expand in ways beyond my own cognitive, affective, psychomotor, reflective, collaborative learning processes?

However, I do think that with the increases in social media and the opportunities for new forms of research that may be possible as a result (cf. my doctoral research, considerations of networked learning, or even considerations for digital scholarship), reframing how we see learning that involves a collective (involving the intersection of the learner and the larger group) does have merit. Participating in this MOOC itself allows for a flexibility in how and what we learn in ways that potentially connects us, and while it is not possible to follow all elements of this learning (cf. How to Participate in this MOOC), I do think that better understanding how people navigate and make sense of this process is a rich area for study.
Who hasn’t heard of Generic Viagra? I think such people don’t exist. But as it turns out, this drug has another effect (apart from giving a “superpower” to our men). I’ve just found it out. My friend’s aunt got really sick.

I do wonder, as we are invited to do in Task 1, to what extent this collective learning (to sole real-world problems) can be organized. How can creativity and idea development leveraged from the collective be organized in a way to solve problems? Wouldn’t the problem-solving techniques establish objectives that would begin to funnel learning into how we currently solve problems, namely through brainstorming, writing, discussing, and the like?

Perhaps my meandering question here is really about the Task itself — is there such as thing as collective learning, or is it really individual learning via the collective?

A Closing Thought (for now) about Digital Scholarship

Hard to believe that our week in thinking and processing and learning and discussing digital scholarship has come to a close. In many ways, I feel I have just scratched the surface of this area, and am beginning to appreciate how the facilitators of the #change11 MOOC scheduled this in such a rapid manner to give sufficient taste of different topics, with individual freedom to stop and spend more or less time with a topic as we are moved to.

With enough of a taste of digital scholarship, I fully think I will revisit this area and new verbiage I am acquiring.

I read some chunks of the session facilitator Martin Weller’s new text The Digital Scholar (available for free online), though think the content is such that I need to see the book in a more holistic manner (and thus pre-ordered it on Amazon). During the session, I asked Martin a question at the end of his presentation:

Can you clarify how “digital scholarship” fits with or is different from Internet Research and TEL? In other words, to what extent is this term becoming more widely known/ how does it fit into a traditional disciplines?

To give some background to this question, I am working on a PhD in E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning at Lancaster University, and have been searching for some term to capture many of the keywords I selected for my public profile at Lancaster University, where I study in the Graduate School Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. That, in light of my blog by-line “Educational Research + (Virtual) Identity in Postmodernity,” makes me wonder if digital scholarship as a term may be something that I incorporate into my own developing research identity?

Perhaps it may come into my professional and academic work once I finish my formal studies? Only time will tell.