I want to welcome Kim Tucker and thank him for agreeing to contribute to the Impact of Open Source Software on Education series. Kim’s post will appear on Terra Incognita on May 2, 2007 (eastern U.S.). Kim will be writing on a number of related topics that integrate Free Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) and free knowledge and equality in education, while also posing questions about what we mean by equality in education and the implications for digital inclusion. The term “libre” distinguishes freeware (gratis software) from free software, which encompasses use, modification, and distribution.

Kim is currently working as a researcher at the Meraka Institute, managed by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa. The main focus of his research is the introduction of technology and collaborative learning opportunities, and FLOSS for knowledge sharing and education. Kim also provides general advocacy of FLOSS and libre knowledge. His background includes some cognitive psychology, computer science lecturing, environmental decision support-systems development and other aspects of software development (Java, architecture, patterns, agile methodologies, etc.), and conservation biology (M.Sc.). Given this background, he has an interest in knowledge patterns, collaboration, and knowledge transfer across disciplines. In the context of Open Educational Resources (OER) he likes to promote the concept of “libre learning,” emphasizing the freedoms that users of OERs (or, rather, “libre” resources) should enjoy to permit unrestrained social constructivist (student-driven) learning in the emerging “rip, mix, and share” culture.

I am very much looking forward to Kim’s posting, and to the dialog that I am sure it will generate. Based on Kim’s background and long-standing commitment to libre resources and learning, I imagine that his contribution will strike very much at the core theme of our series. Please feel free to comment, ask questions, build on the conversation, and enjoy.

In an earlier posting I suggested that one way we could start approaching the Online Global Land Grant would be to think about goals, structure, and finance and economics. In my last posting I identified some potential goals. Now I will start by outlining considerations for structure, which might prompt some dialog. No matter what it means to be “global,” we should be considering structural models that can support the following goals:

1. Enhancing Capacity for Development through Education: The online global land grant will enhance quality of life through the development of civic and economic capacity.
2. Reducing Barriers to Quality Education: The online global land grant will significantly reduce educational access barriers, while ensuring the learning experience is relevant.
3. Supporting Educational Models to Meet Global Needs: The online global land grant will identify and shed ethnocentric assumptions, goals, and practices based on hegemonic ideologies.
4. Reshaping the Notion of Globalization: The online global land grant will recast the globalization dialog to include humanitarian ideals.
5. Internationalizing the University to Foster Understanding: The online global land grant will provide opportunities for participants to better understand and be prepared for their role in a global community.

So, what types of structural models will help us meet, or at least work toward, our goals while operating across tremendous geographic distance, economic conditions, forms of government, development needs, national and societal interests, cultural norms, etc.?

What are some of the structural characteristics of the Online Global Land Grant that will be enabling, and what types of organizations might be critical contributors? I have the sneaking suspicion that organizational centralization, distribution, and governance might guide structural considerations and impact the ways that goals are approached. There are several organizations with a “global” mission (or at least presence), which might be worth a look. We can then dig into their missions, goals, the ways they look at their global involvement, and how they are organized. I would like to start with the following sample list and grow it based on your suggestions:

• Laureate International Universities: This is quite different. Laureate Education, a for-profit, owns a network of universities throughout the world, including some online universities.
• The Open University United Kingdom: They certainly have global ambition, an international reputation, involvement in Europe, and they’ve tried to establish a university in the United States.
• Penn State Outreach: Penn State Outreach captures many of the values and services of the land-grant university. Although it has global programmes, it has a strong connection to and focus on the state of Pennsylvania. Penn State Outreach can be used as a starting point in investigating how the land grant is structured and works on the ground.
• The University of Maryland, University College: UMUC has been operating globally for more than four decades, providing educational services in the United States, Europe, and East Asia on the ground and online.
• The University of the South Pacific: USP is an interesting university that has a regional mission and multinational operation. It is jointly owned by the governments of twelve island countries and supports fifteen campuses. They were early leaders in distance and online learning serving an incredibly interesting and diverse group of countries with development needs.
• The University of the West Indies: The UWI is an international institution that serves the Commonwealth Caribbean, which is composed of seventeen countries. Although it shares a regional orientation with USP, it is organized differently.
• Virtual University of the Small States of the Commonwealth: The VUSSC is a consortium of twenty-six countries coordinated by the Commonwealth of Learning and supported through their Ministries of Education. They are collaborating to reduce the digital divide for education.
• Worldwide University Network: WUN is not a university, but I think it might be of interest to us. It is a network of seventeen research universities that have joined to share research resources and eLearning expertise.

Although all of the above organizations are “global” and have some commitment to online education, they have a diverse set of missions, goals, and structures. During the coming months, I would like to tease through the list and see what we can learn and apply to the Online Global Land Grant University and its goals. I welcome comments and suggestions for other organizations and institutions we should consider.

“Barriers to the Adoption of Open Source: Personal and Professional Observations,” the fourth installment of the Impact of Open Source Software Series, was posted on April 18, 2007, by Pat Masson, CIO of SUNY Delhi. Thanks Pat!

Open Source Software is not a Technology Issue.
Pat starts out with the observation that the debate around Open Source is no longer really about the technology. Many of the issues around support, quality, and functionality are pretty much settled. Open Source Software is widely used in the commercial and educational sectors and increasing numbers of vendors are contributing to OSS communities and integrating OSS into their offerings. In addition, Pat cites instances in which the agile design and development process indicative of OSS has been adopted by commercial vendors. So, the debate in the commercial and educational sectors among technologists is pretty much over, while academic decision makers are still debating about OSS, which has become the adoption bottleneck.

You’re Soaking in I.T.
The use of OSS in academic computing is sometimes invisible, because it meets the requirements, the end users or academic decision makers are not even aware that they are using OSS. As the academy increasing depends on software to support mission critical tasks and as OSS becomes ubiquitous across application and system classes, who will make decisions about the use of OSS? Pat takes this a step further by discussing the differences between how the treatment of OSS low in the software stack relative to very visible applications differs. He points out that software low on the stack that is OSS meets with little debate and has virtually no visibility to academic decision makers, while applications at the top of the stack or residing on the desktop are treated differently. This is captured in the following question, “How many of the folks governing online education and debating Moodle are also debating the LAMP stack?” In addition, it is pointed out that because vendors are adopting OSS, but not advertising the fact, many academic decision makers are selecting OSS based applications without knowing it, so they treat OSS objectively. Pat suggests that this is an overall governance issue and a function of awareness of academic decision makers relative to software across the stack.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Because many end users, just want the software to work, OSS has become a default option in many IT shops because of the clear technological benefits of exposed code and an open distribution license. Pat asks the rather rhetorical question about what level end users and academic administrators should be engaging in dialog about software. Should it principally be about a) the underlying architecture, b) development methodologies, or c) the application itself (functionality)? Pat indicates that the productive part of the conversation, if we want end users to think about software as a tool to get stuff done, is around the functionality of the software, not the technology. That is, does the software function appropriately and meet business needs? When this is the focus, OSS will be viewed, from the end user perspective, the same way as commercial software. The idea is that focusing on functionality, reduces the unfounded technological concerns of many academic end users, allowing the IT department to assess the technological merit of the software, which would include the quality of the code and the ability of the OSS community and associated organizations to do the right thing by the adopting organization based also on the adoptor’s capacity. The punch line is about division of labor. The end users should be responsible for knowing, defining, and articulating the functionality requirements, and the IT department is responsible for making them happen automagically, while not confusing the issue with technological concerns about OSS and proprietary software.

Open Source Software Goes to Eleven
Pat argues that there are topics that are most appropriate to academic decisions makers and faculty. They tend to be around functionality and usability rather than how to download, install, and configure a LAMP environment. Pat asserted that much of the value of open source community translates to improved code and support for technologists. Although the forums can be very helpful to end users, active user forums are not unique to OSS, but are evident also in proprietary communities.

How Many Licks Does It Take To Get To The Data Center Of Your Campus?
In the end, Pat asks us “What role should end-users play identifying specific software?” His answer is that they should not be identifying specific solutions. They should be developing feature lists, functional requirements, use cases, business rules, workflow, etc. and working with the IT department to ensure that the options meet their requirements.

Comments
Many of the comments that were made following Pat’s initial posting were mutually reinforcing, serving to clarify and refine some points. Most of the comments focused on the appropriate relationships between IT professionals and end users of educational applications and systems. Pat’s contention that one of the roles of an IT professional is to act as an interpreter or translator for end users was reinforced, but also challenged by Richard Wyles as being circumstantial, pointing out that the differences between OSS and proprietary software is frequently not technological. This being the case, a typical IT shop might not be so qualified to assess OSS and the supporting community. It was clear that the discussants agreed that there are differences between OSS and proprietary software, that the differences are important under many circumstances, that sometimes IT professionals are not in the best position to explain the differences, and that sometimes end users are not in the best position to understand what are the important or relevant differences, and these are some of the factors that mitigate the current impact of OSS on education.

Thanks again to Pat, Richard, and all of the other folks who have been reading along. Our next posting will be by Kim Tucker of the Meraka Institute on May 2, 2007. The schedule for the series can be found on WikiEducator.

Open Source Software is not a Technology Issue.

I do not know where the debate now resides regarding the adoption of Open Source Software (OSS), that is, if it is now a business or cultural issue. But I am sure that while it may have once been a debate within IT, it is not now. Much of the technical debate about functionality, quality, support, etc. now seems tired and even trivial. Are we still questioning the feasibility of community development and the viability of OSS? I guess so, I’m writing this, and you are reading it…

Based on Open Source’s adoption among commercial software providers, OSS would appear to be an accepted and proven approach. According to a 2005 report by Optaros, The Growth of Open Source Software in Organizations, “Some 87% of the 512 companies we surveyed are using open source software. Bigger companies are more likely to be open source users: all of the 156 compadnies with at least $50million in annual revenue were using open source.”

Many of academic computing’s most prominent vendors not only rely on open source projects, but contribute to them as well, including: IBM (Eclipse, Sakai, SUSE Linux), Oracle (Berkeley’s DB, Eclipse, Fusion Middleware, jDeveloper, Unbreakable Linux, PHP, Sakai) Novell (Apache, Eclipse, Jboss, Linux Kernel, Mozilla, MySQL, openLDAP, OpenOffice, openSUSE, Perl, PHP, PostgreSQL, Samba, Tomcat, Xen) SUN Microsystems (GNU/Linux, Java, OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, Sakai, uPortal), Sungard Higher Education (Sakai, uPortal) and Unicon (Sakai, uPortal, Zimbra). There are some very telling examples of companies who have integrated Open Source into their businesses; those who simply support open source tools (too many to name), those who have released a previously proprietary code base into the public domain (e.g. SUN Microsystems’ Java programming language), and most telling of the acceptance of open source and community development within technology markets, those who have actually integrated open source tools into their commercial product lines (e.g. SunGard’s use of uPortal within Luminis III)–hardly the move to make if you consider open source products to be poor in quality or unreliable in development.

And yet there is another area, often overlooked, where OSS has proved valuable to commercial developers. In addition to the actual software, the movement has also helped redefine the software development life cycle, that is, how applications are designed, developed and deployed. “Community Development” has become a standard practice capitalizing on Linus’ Law described by Eric Raymond in The Cathedral and The Bazaar as, “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” Many of the techniques associated with “extreme programming” and “agile development,” that are common today in software development, co-evolved with open source and free software projects as they adopted Bazaar-style open development models: pair-programming, user-developers, short development cycles, iteration, etc. Many of today’s commercial providers producing proprietary software have adopted “open” development methods. David Treadwell, corporate vice president of the .Net Developer Platform group at Microsoft, said in a November 2005 interview with eWeek that Microsoft encourages agile methodologies such as Scrum and extreme programming, “the concept where you might have two people working on a given piece of code and the idea is that two minds are better than one. Because you can find problems faster.” In another example, Common Services Architecture “represents a new paradigm for collaborative software development within SunGard. It’s a collaborative development process—a way of creating software that allows SunGard product development teams around the world to share, contribute to, and leverage, each other’s work.”

So there seems to be a clear indication from those outside academic computing—in fact those that we within academic computing are paying for services—that the technical debate regarding open source is over. However, the decision-makers in academics, do not seem as willing to accept the same, and appear to be taking up the debate all over again, albeit with different arguments.

You’re Soaking in I.T.

Remember Madge, the manicurist who used Palmolive as a moisturizer? I think many within academic environments are shocked when they find out how dependent their operations are on open source tools, just as Madge’s clients where when they found out that they where soaking in dish soap. The analogy works because an expert found a tool that works, and the client shouldn’t care as long as the requirements are met and the outcomes are acceptable, but I’ve seen the same reaction from administrators as that displayed by Madge’s clients, shock, fear and pullback.

It’s obvious that technology is playing a greater and greater role throughout the campus. Many traditional business practices are being supported or even replaced by “technology.” There are the obvious examples; how many memos make up inner-office communications versus email, how much teaching and learning is now delivered with learning management systems, how many students enroll and register with student information services on-line, etc. These, as I said, are the obvious ones. However on my desk right now I have software proposals for less obvious systems; a housing management system that allows students to select rooms, roommates, meal plans, etc. submitted by Residence Life, an alumni analytics package that provides the Alumni Office with prospective contributors, veterinary management software for our Vet. Tech. program to help manage the care of the department’s animals, a fuel management system requested by campus Facilities for dispensing and monitoring fuel, a SoIP, or security over IP, application for the University Police, and many others. To support these systems, I may deploy them on various open source tools within my department, Campus Information Systems. Do the deans, directors and decision-makers know this? Would the fact that we may use the Linux version vs. the Windows version affect their decision making in identifying the right “solution” for their business case? Let’s really add some complexity, what if we installed the Windows version on a virtual server? Who makes these decisions regarding the use of open source?

I think one of the often overlooked parts of open source adoption, even ridiculed, by those in technology who have accepted OSS, is governance: not pertaining to an open source project, but rather the campus’ or institution’s management of “enterprise” systems and services. As institutions begin to explore open source projects and the communities which support them, they are likely to experience push-back from those new, unfamiliar, concerned, reluctant or even opposed to—not the products’ functionality, features or usability—but open source software itself. While concern may have come from technologists in the past, today, in my experience, resistance comes from the departments IT supports. Many working within IT are quick to write off those who “don’t get it” and simply continue working with OSS without the official blessing of their institution, confident that their activities will inevitably become operational as more and more users come on line (sort of a bottom-up, or under-the-radar approach) with departments eventually adopting the ubiquitous system(s).

This approach to IT governance is based on how open source tools have traditionally been deployed within the campus’ computing environment, and could be called the “stack approach.” This is based on the growth open source software has seen within the campus data center, “low in the software stack,” focused on operating systems, server software, development tools, databases, etc. As campuses become more familiar and comfortable with (dependent on?) OSS in these utilities, presumably, the door will open for systems such as email, content/learning management, business and finance, even fuel management systems: those services deemed mission critical by campus decision makers as “enterprise applications.”

And in fact, OSS has enjoyed significant adoption on campuses within the data center, the paradox is, few know it… especially those within the campus’ administration. As an academic CIO, I cannot recall many conversations I have had with my peers (other CIO’s, CTO’s, Directors of IT) or colleagues (Provosts, Deans, Administrative Directors) regarding utilities running low on the software stack such as server operating systems (Linux, Unix, Windows) web servers (Apache, IIS, iPlanet, SunOne, Zues, etc.), application servers (BEA, OAS, Tomcat, etc.), mail servers (Exchange, Postfix, SendMail, SquirrelMail, etc.), programming languages (Java, .NET, Perl, PHP, etc.) or, Integrated Development Environments (Eclipse, JDeveloper, WebShere, etc.). These are considered operational by my peers and insignificant by my colleagues. Interestingly, I have had countless debates regarding; desktop operating systems (Linux flavors, Macs and Windows), email clients (Domino Mail, Eudora, Outlook, etc.), Learning Management Systems (Angel, Blackboard, Moodle, Sakai, WebCT, etc.), Student Information Systems (Banner, Datatel, Kuali, PeopleSoft, etc.) and other “ERP” systems with, not my peers, but with my colleagues. CIO’s see these applications—and the decision to use them—within the realm of the campus departments, and so do the Provosts, Deans, Directors of HR, Finance, Enrollment, Alumni, etc. The now tired arguments that may have prompted technology folks to investigate open source—code quality, security, integration, customization, support, etc.—simply may not be applicable, important or even understood by those in other campus business units assessing their software needs against specific business operations, because these tools (and the values of OSS) operate behind the scenery. I would imagine that those reading this, care more about the content and discussion that may result within the forum, than the fact that it is presented with WordPress hosted on AIX and delivered via Apache.

In 2006 I presented findings on the deployment, and the opinions of administrators, of OSS within The State University of New York’s 64 campuses. The statistics, provided by Netcraft, identified which operating systems and server software where deployed on the SUNY campuses’ publicly accessible servers including email, ftp, media, web and others: all of which could be considered “low on the software stack.” The results indicated that while SUNY deployments of OSS was generally lower than global deployments (again provided by Netcraft), it was growing within the campuses’ data centers. For example, specifically to web server software, global deployment of Apache peaked at 70% with SUNY at 63% in 2005. SUNY also saw steady growth in Linux distributions running on various server types, rising from 7% in 2000 to 27% in 2006. However, these “adoption rates” measured applications transparent to end-users: web-server software and the operating systems they ride on. How many of the folks governing online education and debating Moodle are also debating the LAMP stack?

The insignificance of OSS adoption within the data center as an influence on more visible applications became evident to me when, as part of my research, I surveyed campus administrators. Respondents came from a variety of fields, including technology providers (CIO’s, IT staff, etc.) and end-users (faculty, non-IT administrators, etc.), and a clear division was evident. Open source software appeared to be a credible option within the data center for technical services but apparently not for systems that end-users touched. One respondent attested, “[my campus] seldom if ever adopts open source software.” However the figures provided by Netcraft indicated that all of that campus’ servers ran Linux and 23 of the 27 servers ran Apache. In fact, they where “soaking in it.”

This raises an interesting issue: how aware are campus administrators, who may be working with commercial providers such as SunGard’s Banner student information system and their portal Luminis, that they are actually relying on OSS? Is the confidence derived from a commercial provider (SunGard) diminished by the fact that Luminis is built upon an open source project, uPortal? Or availability for the entire suite of student services may be dependent on OSS within the campus data center? If so, shouldn’t Student Affairs, Enrollment, Finance, The Alumni Foundation, etc. be part of the governance (decision-making) for their complete “solution” from the SIS all the way down the software stack, and not just those applications they work directly with? Unless they are, the “stack approach” plays no part in the adoption of open source on campuses.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

There is a rather cynical term, derived from Arthur C. Clarke’s above statement, and used by software developers to describe the unappreciated effort and technologies it takes to support user requirements: “automagic.” As those in software development can attest, end-users just want it to work and generally do not care about how that’s accomplished. Interestingly, one could argue, that the success of open source, as a development method, is due to just this sentiment: If the users don’t care about, or even understand, the technologies that deliver functionality, then let’s use those that provide us the easiest environment for deployment, open source.

Working in this “just make it work” environment, where more and more folks want more and more things to work, it’s understandable that the tenets of Free and Open Source Software would become standard operating practices within IT departments. For example, the ability to run software for any purpose allows the scope of services to expand, unhindered by licensing. This is a great resource as you deploy more instances of Linux through out the data center to support that growing set of departmental systems (Remember the fuel, housing and veterinary management systems?). Additionally, the ability to study how the software works and adapt it to an institution’s needs, provides for rapid development and quality assurance. These technical benefits have been the basis for those advocating the use of OSS. However, in my opinion, as long as open source is addressed as a technology issue it will never move into the status of commercial software. Consider a common topic on campuses today, Learning Management Systems. Should faculty be debating .NET, PHP and Java, or, SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle, or, Windows, Linux and Solaris, or, the waterfall method, Spiral techniques and eXtreme Programming, or, Angel, Moodle and Blackboard? That’s the goal, a debate over an application’s features, not a technology debate.

At a recent technology conference I was working away on my computer at lunch when the fellow next to me asked about my laptop, or more specifically my operating system’s desktop. Apparently he had noticed me rolling the 3D desktop, or “cube.” I explained that I was running SUSE Linux and that the 3D effects (Xgl) where all part of the operating system. In fact, this was not the first time someone had noticed and asked about the GUI and I expected this to be the beginning of a nice lunch time discussion (and a welcome distraction from my email). However the conversation faltered as Linux was quickly dismissed as “too complicated for average users,” something only “geeks” could use and support (yes, I guess he called me a geek). I continued on with the demo highlighting more of the graphics tools, searching tools, OpenOffice, the GNU tools like Gimp, etc. I showed him YaST and the Software Updater that installs patches, updates, etc. We talked about distributed networking and managing remote desktops. All of these were features, not technology. He was definitely impressed, SUSE was cool, SUSE was powerful, SUSE offered a lot of functionality and tools, but SUSE was Linux, and Linux was open source. So while it was OK for geeks, it was not very practical for business’ every day users, citing the usual technology related concerns about OSS; support (“you can’t call the guy in the basement who wrote it when it breaks”), quality (“how good can it be if it’s free and built by a guy in a basement?”), security (“if anyone can get into the code, then we could get ‘hacked’!”), etc.

I tried to respond by mentioning that not only can support be obtained by Novell, but even Microsoft supports SUSE Linux. I let him know that SUSE would run on his existing Microsoft network. I opened an Microsoft Excel document in OpenOffice Calc. However we quickly devolved into that same old tired debate. Although SUSE Linux provided all of his functional needs and met his usability requirements, we never got past the technical and into the operational.

Based on this I decided to try a little, utterly unscientific, experiment. A little later, when another person asked about my machine—admittedly I was flashing everyone who walked by with spinning desktops, wavy and transparent windows and tiled applications—I informed my subject that he was looking at a pre-release of Windows Vista. Our conversation immediately focused on “Vista’s” new features (the same ones I had shown the previous fellow), but this time it was all about usability and functionality. We never discussed how valuable his support from Microsoft was (I wonder how many tickets his institution has opened?), we never discussed how good the actual operating systems was (did it crash, was it buggy?), we never discussed security (perhaps his campus has never been the victim of a virus?) and we never discussed upgrade costs (I assume it was something he just was resigned to absorb). What were apparently barriers to open source adoption, were accepted as the cost of doing business for proprietary software. The lesson here for me was, “why even bring open source up?”

I suspect he knew what personal computing was on his campus, and while he did not know any of the technical issues involved with deploying and administering Vista, he knew the IT staff on his campus would have to make it happen, automagicly!

If this person happened to be a decision maker on campus, SUSE as a desktop operating system would be dismissed because of open source issues (apples), not issues related to the actual functionality and usability (oranges). I would ask, does your Student Services or the Alumni Office really care if their business systems are running on AIX, Linux, OpenSolaris, Unix or Windows? I would wager no, they really only care that they can enroll students, assess fees and contact students and alumni. So, why then, would the office staff care if they where running SLED, OSX or Vista if all they really want to do is manage spreadsheets, write emails, store files, print and browse the web? They only would if OSS proponents bring it up. Enterprise level OSS is mature enough that it should be assessed just as commercial software is, based on business needs, functionality, features and usability.

So let’s embrace the automagic! Let’s let our colleagues live in peace, they don’t care about the technology issues low in the software stack (OS, servers, databases), they just want their applications up and running. So they shouldn’t care about the technology issues with the applications they can touch (LMS’s, SIS’s, desktop OS’s), they just want their applications up and running. To turn things around, I don’t really care if my campus uses Angel, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moodle, Sakai or nothing! That’s the on-line learning folks decision, and my job as CIO should be to make it work. And, I hope the faculty don’t care if we run OpenVM, Linux, Apache or MySQL, that’s how I’ll make their applications work, automagicly.

Open Source Software Goes to Eleven

Often in an effort to show added value, proponents for an open source application will include the benefits of open source development, for example, the ability to customize the application for campus-specific needs. This was just the case when I attended the recent NERCOMP/EDUCAUSE Conference and sat in on a presentation discussing a campus’ recent migration from Blackboard to Moodle. The presentation started off with, what I feel where several salient issues; why they felt it was time to re-evaluate their on-line teaching and learning tools, how they identified and evaluated the various offerings (feature set, licensing, etc.) and, migration and training issues. These topics where all specifically related to their department’s business practices and campus/faculty/student needs in on-line education. Unfortunately this was only half of the hour-long presentation. The second half was devoted to technical issues and presented by a PHP developer who was introduced as, “someone you really needed to have if you are going to run an open source LMS.” The topics discussed were; setting up a server (both hardware and software), downloading and installing Moodle and MySQL, development tools, working with the Moodle community in development and finding support, and even examples of both their customizations and supporting PHP code.

Why would these issues be of concern for faculty, instructional technologists and others evaluating the functionality and usability of learning management systems? If this had been a presentation on migrating to Angel from Blackboard, would the second half of the presentation be seen as important, even relevant, with issues like; how to set up IIS, SQL Server, using Visual Studio, Nuggets development and .NET? I doubt it. I suspect most in the crowd would have assumed that their campus’ IT department would just set it up and support it.

Like customization, collaboration is also frequently cited as a reason to adopt OSS. The idea is that because OSS is developed in an open community where achievements are shared, end-users can leverage this development to increase functionality. And this is true. Scrolling through many open source project forums yields plenty of how to’s, fixes and patches, tips and tricks, etc. Last year, a debate arose about who the Sakai community was and who it best served. I added to the debate within the Sakai discussions:

I have found Sakai, the community, to be a welcome discussion (and often education) on many of the issues I am dealing with in my organization such as: legitimacy of Open Source, portals/frameworks, scope of services (redundancy of functionality across systems), technology issues, etc. The knowledge base and experiences of the people within the Sakai community, whether they are actually contributing code or not, or whether they are even running Sakai on their campus, is a valuable resource for me as I work within my own organization.

As a technologist, I would not define myself as an educator. I have never held a faculty position and the only teaching I have done has been technical workshops. So while I find both the Sakai discussions, as well as the Sakai community, extremely valuable, I wonder if what we are discussing, and is of interest to me, would also be useful to others with different interests and backgrounds?

I was essentially asking, how valuable is the community and collaboration for end-users? In order to find out I researched the discussion forums and measured the number of posts per topic, from the very technical such as “development” where code was discussed to areas like “pedagogy” where instructors discussed the use of Sakai in the classroom.

The results showed that technical discussions dominated, for example the “development” discussion accounted for just over 71% of the total Sakai discussions, while pedagogy accounted for 1.58%. I don’t know if this is typical, but I suspect other open source forums would yield similar findings, think of SourceForge. Now I can think of several examples where there are great, end-user driven discussions taking place that provide users with best practices. Keeping to the LMS theme, the LAMS global community is a website for teachers where they can share LAMS sequences. But I would assume many find Blackboard’s users groups where, “thousands are standing by,” helpful as well.

The value of collaboration and community in open source is a technology issue that provides for higher quality code, rapid development, etc. And, while there is no doubt in the value of community and collaboration for end-users of an application, it is not solely delivered through open source as many commercial providers have excellent user groups.

The above examples of open source development, code exposure and collaboration, are just two examples of how software practices and software applications can be confused. Including open source and community development practices as a benefit in a department’s analysis matrix does not show any real value for a particular software application. These practices are critical factors for highlighting the value of open source as a development process, but not for the specific software that may be under consideration as a packaged feature set.

How Many Licks Does It Take To Get To The Data Center Of Your Campus?

All of the above leads to a fundamental question, “What role should end-users play identifying specific software?”

Ok, get ready, here is what’s going to get me in trouble: the answer, “one, two, three… they should not be identifying specific software.” End-users should be developing feature lists, functional requirements, use cases, business rules, workflow, etc. Using these and working with IT staff, potential software candidates can be identified that not only fit the needs of the academic unit, but the technical architecture of the data center. Too often I have been presented with solutions first. Issues revolving around customization (scope of services), support (service level agreements), licensing (total cost of ownership) should be the responsibility of the IT department. This group will best know how to enhance and to integrate software, align support through existing providers or identify new ones, and to assess the total cost of ownership against current resources. If, as an end-user, you and your department are expected to carry out technical assessments, analysis and recommendations, I would suggest your IT department is broken.

Quite honestly, we should not adopt an application simply because it is open source, just as we should not adopt software just because it is commercial supported. I firmly believe that the tenets of open source and community development create better software and therefore assume its presence will grow in adoption. But the responsibility for end-users in software analysis should be in defining functionality requirements and business needs, not in design, development, deployment or support.

I want to welcome Pat Masson and thank him for agreeing to contribute to the Impact of Open Source Software on Education series. Pat’s post will appear on Terra Incognita on April 18, 2007 (eastern US). He will be writing from personal experience about the barriers to institutional adoption of open source software. I met Pat in 2005 while serving the SUNY Learning Network (SLN). He was leading the effort to transform the technological learning environment at SLN, and in the process he and his team influenced the dialog internationally.

Pat Masson currently serves as the Chief Information Officer for New York College of Technology at Delhi. As CIO, Pat provides oversight, leadership and vision for the college’s Campus Information Services including enterprise applications, technical centers and labs, server/systems administration, network & telecommunications, online/distance learning as well as user support such as help desk services.

Previous to his appointment at Delhi, Pat worked for The State University of New York System Administration as the Director of Technology for Learning Environments, and was responsible for leading technology design, development and deployment of system-wide projects including SUNY’s e-learning platform, SLN, serving over 110,000+ enrollments, 5000+ courses and over 3,500+ faculty annually. Prior to joining SUNY, Pat was Director of the UCLA Media Lab.

I am very much looking forward to Pat’s posting, and to the dialog that I am sure will flow from it. I have never known Pat to make a statement without it engendering some spirited reaction. Please do feel free to comment, ask questions, build on the conversation, and enjoy.

In an earlier posting I suggested that one way that we could start approaching the Online Global Land Grant concept would be to start thinking about goals, structure, and finance/economics. I’ll start with introducing some potential core goals and perhaps it will initiate some dialog on the topic.

• Enhancing Capacity for Development through Education: The online global land grant ought to follow in the tradition of practical education designed to enhance quality of life through the development of civic and economic capacity. These goals are not at all unique to the land-grant mission; they are reflected in the Australian Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions, Polytechnics of New Zealand, and programs such as the L3Farmer in India, and tuXlab in Africa.

• Reducing Barriers to Quality Education: The online global land grant should reduce economic, social, organizational, and access barriers to education, while ensuring the educational experience is relevant. There is enormous unmet need for education on every level through the developing and developed world. Although the barriers to education in some locations are rooted in complex relationships, there are some activities that move us toward our goal. For example, capacity development for the use and development of Free and Open Software; development of learning materials that are Free and Open for sharing, redistribution, and localization; intelligent investment in technologies, distance, and online learning; direct connection between educational activities and enhanced quality of life; and strengthening of community—all will reduce some barriers.

• Rethinking Educational Models to Meet Global Needs: One significant barrier that is not always considered is the ethnocentric assumptions frequently made about educational quality and the role of the traditional Euro-centric university in society. The assumptions support and perpetuate educational models that were not designed to meet global needs.

• Reshaping the Notion of Globalization: Globalization is alternatively viewed with angst, frustration, and hope. The online global land grant can help minimize angst through the development of a global community that has shared interest and can better understand the impact that our behavior has on others in our community. To date, most popular literature and news reports frame globalization in ideas and terms that are inherently capitalistic, with “winners” and “losers.” One role of the global land grant could be to recast the globalization dialog to include humanitarian ideals.

• Internationalizing the University to Foster Understanding: The online global land grant should provide opportunities for enhanced personal and professional development of faculty and learners. Contact between individuals across cultures is a powerful tool to enhance understanding and community. Thoughtfully designed and developed curricula and pedagogy, coupled with excellent faculty facilitators can enhance understanding and international cultural competence.

These goals will have implications for organizational structure, values, and partnerships. In the next post, I will outline what I see as some of the structural issues and directions for the online global land grant. Once again, I invite comments on the notion of the online global land grant and on the specifics outlined in these posts. Constructive feedback will only improve and refine the ideas.

I would like to draw your attention to an absolutely fascinating process that took place in Vancouver during the past few days. I think that this will be of interest to most who are following along with the postings on Terra incognita. Wayne Mackintosh of COL and Erik Möller from Wikipedia hosted and co-facilitated a meeting with the aim to:

To refine the available technology infrastructure to radically scale up the development of a free curriculum for all levels of education which can be customized, modified and adapted for local needs without restriction. We recognize the dignity of all educators and learners to become equal participants in transforming the digital divide into digital dividends.

The meeting included a group of professional educators, program administrations, leaders of development projects, OSS projects, and others, who are passionate about how free OSS and OER can contribute to the common good and are committed to do something about it. One of the objectives is develop a full free educational curriculum by 2015. Some in the group suggested that it can happen much sooner.

To learn more, check out the Tectonic Shift Think Tank resources on WikiEducator.

“WikiEducator: Memoirs, myths, misrepresentations and the magic,” the third installment of the Impact of Open Source Software Series, was posted on April 4, 2007, by Wayne Mackintosh, education specialist for eLearning and ICT Policy at the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and founding director of the Centre for Flexible and Distance Learning (CFDL) at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Wayne provided the focus of his article early on with the statement, “This is a post about freedom and how it can support education as a common good.” Wayne then framed his article around the intended role of WikiEducator in leading and supporting the development of an entirely free education curriculum by 2015. It is worth noting that Wayne’s work with WikiEducator clearly connects both Free and Open Source Software with Free Open Educational Content (OER). WikiEducator is built on the OSS Wiki application WikiMedia.

Wayne’s article has a reflective quality that includes sections on:

• The history of WikiEducator, focusing on the origins of the project and some of the early decisions that included selecting a domain name and potential collaborations.
• Growth in site use.
• How WikiEducator is evolving to meet the 2015 free curriculum objectives. Wayne indicates that WikiEducator is evolving to support engagement and experimentation, facilitating networking and supporting projects that are aligned with COL’s commitment of learning for development.
• Myths about the university and public education, which included
  1. “Universities have been around a long time - technology doesn’t restructure our pedagogy“
  2. Publicly funded education is economically sustainable as a common good.“

  The treatment of these myths shed light on some of the connections between technology and education, and by extension, the impact of OSS and Open Content on the sustainability of educational systems. Wayne provides a provocative and intriguing argument for rethinking the current structure of higher education economics.

• Misrepresentations of Wayne’s comments and arguments. This is another interesting and provocative section, which probably generated the lion’s share of comments. The first misrepresentation addressed is, “it’s far better to have a poor-quality educational resource that is free, than a high-quality resource that is non-free,” which Wayne retraces to arguments about licensing content to make it most useable (avoiding the use of the noncommercial restriction). The second misrepresentation, “monolithic learning management systems are a barrier to widening access to education through eLearning,” is linked to Wayne’s assertion that learning management systems have dominated and constrained how we think about structuring and supporting eLearning, effectively stifling dialog about personalized learning environments and other alternative approaches to learning and communication support environments.
• The section titled “The Magic of WikiEducator” is Wayne’s opportunity to frame that section’s dialog by reflecting on the impact he has seen WikiEducator have on practitioners and projects that are aligned in a loosely coupled network with the basic Commonwealth of Learning commitment to educational development and the tangible objectives of a free curriculum by 2015.

There were a number of comments and responses made during the days following Wayne’s post. There were at least five central themes that were generated from the comments.

1. Although there are numerous connections between Open Source Software and Open Educational Resources, one of the principal connections explored is the nature of “Free” software and content. Wayne pointed out that although there are some similarities between code and content, content is a much more accessible artifact to create. That is, more individuals have the skills and knowledge to generate educational materials than production-level code for software, and that is why a full free curriculum by 2015 is realistic.
2. The limitations and opportunities that LMS (Learning Management Systems) present to us, and the future of such systems were discussed through the commenting session. The conversation ranged from tool interoperability, access, and limitations that LMS place on open networking. Wayne suggested that the Wikis reduce use barriers and support social networking, which is a function for which the LMS is ill suited. Wayne also indicated that the LMS classroom metaphor restricts the new pedagogy of networked distributed learning. There were other arguments suggesting that LMS can work toward more open and extensible environments, so there is no need at this point to count out the LMS.
3. Appropriate platforms used to support Open Educational Resource projects were discussed in terms of reducing barriers to access and inviting group and networked creation and continued development of content.
4. Using an appropriate distribution license was another major area of discussion. The most notable feature of this thread was the use or non-use of the NonCommercial Use Restriction. A number of comments were used to develop a rationale for not using the NC license restriction. In addition, an argument was developed in some comments about how the NC license element sub-optimizes the impact of the content and creates confusion in the Free Content “marketplace.” David Wiley from Utah State University responded to this thread of discussion with a posting titled “Why Universities Choose NC, and What You Can Do,” which provided an opportunity to reflect on the efforts of pioneering institutions and what others new to OER projects can learn from the earlier adopters.
5. Another thread addressed some of the challenges with content development at the individual level. There was some discussion about the appropriate level for OER programme focus; areas identified included individual, institutional, and pan-institutional. It was also argued that because the cost of traditional text books are absorbed by the learner, there is less incentive for faculty members to produce OERs than if they absorbed the costs personally or of it came out of their departmental budgets. One poster pointed to the viability of contributions made directly by learners, which prompted a comment suggesting that there are learning design techniques that promote the creation of educational artifacts as part of the learning experience.

Please feel free to refer back to the full article and comments posted at “WikiEducator: Memoirs, myths, misrepresentations and the magic.” I welcome all comments, feedback, and suggestions that will improve the above summary. Thank you.

For more information about the Impact of Open Source Software on Education series, visit the project site on WikiEducator. I will be exploring ways in which we can best make the series assets into OER.

We’re living in exciting times! The free culture, mass collaboration, and self organisation are transforming traditional models of society and the economy in fundamental ways. I don’t pretend to have the answers, but I’m confident that the convergence among these forces combined with the shifts from organisational hierarchy to the individual will help us find the answers together. Finding the answers, holds huge promise for radically advancing access to education and knowledge. I use radical in the original sense of the word referring to the radix or root of fundamental change as opposed to revolutionary change.

This is a post about freedom and how it can support education as a common good. If you suffer from hypertension best to read this post under parental guidance. Now that I’ve cleared the health warnings, I want to move onto the more important stuff.

”In education, if you give knowledge away freely - you will still have it for yourself to use.”

This is why Sir John Daniel of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) argues that education will not suffer the tragedy of the commons.

An overview
WikiEducator is working with others in the freedom culture to develop a free version of the entire education curriculum by 2015. It’s an ambitious target riddled with complexity, but the importance of our work is underscored by our vision to turn the digital divide into digital dividends using free content and open networks.

I want to set the context with a short history of WikiEducator and its growth over the last year. With particular reference to free cultural works, I will reflect on two academic myths associated with our industrial models of education, clear up a few misrepresentations where things I have said are sometimes used out of context, but more importantly try to capture some of the magic I have experienced being part of the WikiEducator free content community. This is the magic that will turn the divide into dividends — magic which is produced through self organisation and mass collaboration.

Rationale for the post
Ken’s invitation to post a contribution for the OSS series covering the impact of free software in education couldn’t have come at a better time. We’re preparing to celebrate the first birthday of WikiEducator. This OSS series is an appropriate forum to reflect on Wikieducator’s beginnings because we:

• use free software (in particular, Mediawiki, the same engine used for Wikipedia’s online encyclopedia);
• promote and advocate the use of free software in education; and
• our meaning of free content is derived from the experiences of the free software movement.

This post will reflect on some of my personal experiences in founding the site and its potential contribution to widening access to education in meaningful ways. If anything, I hope this reflection encourages constructive debate in building the value proposition for why we need to support free content production in preservation of the educational values that should underpin our knowledge practice.

Memoirs: The origins of WikiEducator

A good place to start is with the original reasons for establishing WikiEducator. I set up the wiki primarily to support the collaborative authoring requirements for free content in support of COL’s facilitation role in guiding the development of the Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC). VUSSC is a project involving 27 small states, working together as a network, including the development of free content to support the educational needs in these countries. I always hoped that the WikiEducator would grow organically from this small nexus into something bigger. Reading the statistics, this is proving to be true.

I don’t see this early history to be compelling reading for our audience, so I have linked to this content. Nonetheless I have used Ken’s invitation to document the early beginnings of WikiEducator. I cover this under the following headings which you may want to read when you have more time on hand:

• History is important: In order to dispel any new myths which may or may not arise from this post, I feel that I should document some of WikiEducator’s early history…
• The first prototype: Getting back to the inception date of WikiEducator, in preparation for my move to COL in Vancouver, I set up a prototype installation of WikiEducator on a desktop machine…
• Reflections on choosing the domain name: I registered the WikiEducator domain name on 12 February 2006 in New Zealand, which was not put into production until April 2006 when we moved the prototype onto a hosted server… and
• Why not Wikiversity: I should point out that I seriously considered joining forces with Wikiversity in the early days before “going it alone”, so to speak…

History enthusiasts aside, it’s more important to look at the outputs after our first year and the numbers provide some indication of what our community has achieved.

Early signs of exponential growth?
Popularised by Mark Twain, we know that there are three kinds of lies: “Lies, dammed lies, and statistics.”

On the verge of WikiEducator’s first birthday, we have logged about 2.3 million hits. This week we were ranked by Alexa as the 354,568 most visited website. This puts WikiEducator within the top 8% of websites on the planet. That’s not too bad for a small wiki working on the development of free content for education, especially when considering that there are approximately 48 million active websites in the world (according to Netcraft’s 2006 figures). The statistics for March 2006 show an average of 20,000 hits per day from approximately 900 unique visits. We are currently recording visits from 61% of the 193 countries in the world.

An interesting way to look at WikiEducator’s growth is to compare the number of days it has taken to reach cumulative totals in steps of a half-million hits. It took WikiEducator:

• 157 days to reach its first half-million hits
• 102 days to reach the next half-million
• 41 days to reach the 1.5 million mark
• 21 days to reach the 2.0 million threshold

An evolving vision
The historical interactions mentioned above have encouraged WikiEducator to think critically about its evolving vision. Particularly with regards to how it differentiates itself from similar projects. Given the magnitude of our collective task to develop a free curriculum by 2015, we cannot afford duplication of effort. Where things stand at the moment — taking into account that WikiEducator is a dynamic community — I think the project differentiates itself in the following ways:

• WikiEducator has a strong commitment to the developing world in making sure that all citizens can engage as equal participants in the development of free content. This commitment is endorsed by COL’s “Learning for Development” — the thrust of our current strategic plan.
• WikiEducator has a commitment to build capacity in parallel with free content development, thus leveraging the advantages of a learn-by-doing approach. (See, for example WikiEducator’s Newbie Tutorials.)
• WikiEducator has a forward looking disposition and encourages responsible experimentation with evolving technologies in our search for sustainable solutions for e-learning futures. (See, for example WikiEducator’s Tectonic Shift Think Tank)
• WikiEducator facilitates networking nodes of a range of projects in conjunction with our mission to develop free content for education. (See, for example FLOSS4Edu and the Future of Learning in a Networked World FLNW2.)

Myths

I use the notion of “myth” with caution. In fiction, there is no requirement to validate the truth. Similarly there is no impediment to basing a fictional work on fact. The myths I’m referring to are the traditional stories (sometimes ancient) of the academy which attempt to explain selected aspects about our educational realities. By interrogating these myths, hopefully we can establish plausible grounds for mainstreaming the free content movement in contributing to the sustainability and common good of education. Perhaps we should take the time to engineer new myths that will sustain and direct our educational futures. I encourage readers to help me in this creative story writing process.

The first myth: Universities have been around a long time - technology doesn’t restructure our pedagogy

Yes, universities have been around since medieval times and are one of a handful of organisations that survived the industrial revolution. Why should this be any different in the knowledge economy? The reality is that technology has succeeded in restructuring pedagogy and there is no reason why it can’t do so again. In deconstructing the myth I refer to one substantive example of technology precipitated change that has altered the pedagogy of the university in fundamental ways. I’m referring to the inception of the large-scale distance education universities. Two observations:

1. Institutionalised forms of distance education did not exist prior to the onset of the industrial revolution.
2. The specific roles that the learning technologies assume in the teaching-learning situation can actually alter the pedagogical structure. For example: Media resources that are used as adjuncts in support of face-to-face pedagogy, (for example slide show presentations) do not alter the pedagogical structure of classroom teaching. However, asynchronous learning resources must actually carry or mediate all the functions of teaching including the presentation of content, forms of interaction (both simulated and real dialogue) and assessment. Incidentally, this is the reason why slide show presentations don’t migrate well into eLearning contexts.

The second myth: Publically funded education is economically sustainable as a common good

The massification of education as a publicly funded system has achieved considerable success in widening access, with impressive results evidenced by the exponential growth in the participation rates for higher education after the Second World War. However the long term sustainability of higher education is coming into question. The trouble with our traditional model is:

• The greater your success in widening education, the less sustainable it becomes over the long term, especially for cash-strapped governments in the developing world;
• Education provision does not function as a perfect economy. If it did - why don’t we see a radical reduction in the cost of provision - given the global demand for education. Is this a supply problem? Does this suggest a return to elitism for survival?

I contend that the economic model for higher education is fundamentally broken. The increase in student fees in the United States over the past decade has been in excess of the national inflation index. How long will the system be able to sustain itself?

We are now twenty year’s away from Drucker’s predictions in that famous interview in Forbes magazine back in 1997 where he predicted that “Thirty years from now, the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won’t survive …” (March 10, 1997, pp.126-127). These predictions were made just before the the hype and subsequent bursting of the dot com bubble. Drucker’s predictions became the Trojan Horse for many commentators arguing for the transformation of the university to survive in the e-world. Less cited are the real reasons for Drucker’s concerns, namely:

”Do you realize that the cost of higher education has risen as fast as the cost of health care? …Such totally uncontrollable expenditures, without any visible improvement in either the content or the quality of education, means that the system is rapidly becoming untenable. Higher education is in deep crisis…” (Drucker, Forbes Magazine, March 10, 1997, pp.126-127)

The deconstruction of these myths set up the value proposition for free content. It is certainly plausible that we can reduce the design and development costs of asynchronous learning materials, while improving quality by an order of magnitude through mass collaboration adhering to the principles of self organisation. Moreover, we could see new (de)institutional arrangements emerging from the free cultural works movement that supplement or compete with the traditional educational models. This is possible because of deep seated changes we are seeing in the World Wide Web. In the “old days” the web was this amazing information resource where you would go out and find what you needed. Today, information finds you. The same information we may choose to co-create as individuals through the read-write web.

There is nothing new in these ideas - they are well documented in the literature. My concern is that the traditional academy does not have a good track record in educational innovation and is one of the reasons I have taken a short leave of absence from the academy. I want to see whether it’s possible to achieve sustainable innovation with free content from the “outside” - because it’s important for humanity. In justification of my assertion, I should point out that the big university icons that have pioneered the Open Education Resources (OERs) movement have adopted non-free content licenses. What’s the point of OERs that regulate the very freedom they are supposed to encourage? This is a contradiction in terms. It’s important that we get this right - our academic freedom depends on it.

Stated differently - Assuming the freedom culture achieves a free version of the education curriculum, what are the implications for your institution?

Misrepresentations

I do not use non-free software because I do not want to face the ethical dilemmas arising from the tensions between honesty and educational service when helping my neighbour. As an educator, I do not want to be tempted into the illegal reproduction of software or closed learning resources when helping a learner. As a teacher, I don’t want to be in a situation where I must refuse access to knowledge at the expense of helping someone to learn or for that matter earning a living. It’s a personal choice. Sometimes my choices are a catalyst for emotional debate among my peers. In these situations, I frequently make statements that challenge the hegemony of closed content and the traditional pedagogy we have grown accustomed to in education. On the rare occasion, what I say is used out of context fueling misrepresentations. I’d like to set the records straight. I’ll concentrate on two examples.

It’s far better to have a poor quality educational resource that is free, than a high quality resource that is non-free

Yes, you’ve guessed it — I have been accused of disregarding quality and its importance in education.

I usually make this statement challenging those OER projects that have adopted the Non-Commercial (NC) restriction in their choice of license. First of all, quality has nothing to do with the freedom of a resource. In my experience of education, quality is a function of the design and processes implemented during the development of those resources. Quality is not a function of the commercial restrictions placed on a resource. In fact, these commercial restrictions limit essential freedoms to widen access to education, not to mention the incompatibility with the growing number of resources available under free content licenses which you can legally mix and match. Free content must be available to sell because we should not deny any individual the freedom to earn a living. This is the cornerstone of a modern economy. Besides, competition encourages quality and I would argue that we should encourage commercial activity to promote the quality of free content.

However, my major concern is the waste of human effort in many OER projects which essentially render the products almost useless for the very people they are intended to serve. I’ve yet to find a set of lecture notes developed by another teacher that I can use without the need for adaptation for my local context or personal style of teaching. The problem is that adaptation requires effort and consequently incurs cost. It would be nice if I could find bits and pieces of free content that I could mix and match thus reducing my personal effort in the adaptation process - in other words creating a digital mash-up from free content for my learners. The problem with the NC restriction is that you cannot mix the NC materials with any of the “copyleft” content licenses because you are creating a derivative work. Effectively the NC restriction shuts off modifications and adaptations by leveraging on the availability of existing investments in free content.

One advantage of a poor quality in a free-content resource is that you have the freedom to improve it!

Monolithic learning management systems are a barrier to widening access to education through eLearning

I’ve become increasingly disillusioned with Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and I suspect that they’re constraining innovation in education. I am an eLearning practitioner and have previously been responsible for leading eLearning strategy in the university environment and have extensive experience with many LMSs - so I’m not an eLearning luddite with a nostalgic reluctance to adopt technology in education. On the contrary, I firmly support Sugata Mitra’s advice that we must use the most advanced digital technologies for the most disadvantaged learners. I’m on the side of eLearning here.

My disillusionment with LMSs fuels speculation among my peers and colleagues. I see the looks of surprise when I chat with my colleagues suggesting that LMSs are the barrier to eLearning. Their unspoken diagnosis of a temporary bout of digital amnesia is tangible. I observe the disappointment most among my free software associates that have slaved for years in the implementation of free software LMS solutions. In my view, we made an error in judgment assuming that unrestricted access to the source code of free software LMSs would facilitate innovation in eLearning. Unfortunately we have reached the point where every eLearning problem is a nail - because the only tool we have on campus is a large LMS hammer.

I think we can learn a lot from the Personalised Learning Environment cohort and the work on the eFramework - essentially a description of a web services architecture for eLearning. However this work is essentially a framework specification not an implementation. Given our experiences on the eLearning XHTML project, which has developed an authoring tool using internationally accepted specifications for interoperability, I’m not too optimistic that we will see an e-framework implementation as mainstream technology very soon. I have yet to see an elegant deployment of the LMS/SCORM specifications in any LMS (both proprietary and open source). When you view a SCORM import in all the LMSs I have tested - you feel that you are viewing alien content that is not part of the instructional strategy.

Why go through the pains of an SCORM export/import when you can simply upload and reference the relevant web content on a server using W3C protocols? (Even better, start using RSS/RDF content feeds.) The reason is that some local authority has taken responsibility to manage your freedoms to educate. We don’t tolerate these intrusions in the traditional classroom, yet under elearning we accept this in the name of cost-efficiency (or some other “justifiable” reason). This is why LMSs won’t survive - they are not aligned with the Web 2.0 culture of enabling individuals to teach as they see fit. LMSs are typically organisational installations and restrict educational freedom to work as individuals across institutional boundaries. In my view, this is why we will witness exponential growth in the technologies that service these educational needs. The phenomenal growth in Youtube, MySpace, Open Wiki installations, Flickr being an early example of the shift from organisation to you as individual.

You may be wondering what this has to do with free content, but it’s an important debate. We have to figure out ways in which we will deliver free content to our learners. I’m not too optimistic that interoperability specifications are going provide the solution. We’ve got to get smarter.

The Magic of WikiEducator

There is real magic in the WikiEducator community and it’s both addictive and contagious. However, I don’t have the skills to articulate this dynamic. WikiEducator is a living organism as evidenced by a few examples:

• I have observed a free software champion based in Kenya conceptualise the FLOSS4Edu project and capitalise on the space provided by WikiEducator to mobilise educators in East and West Africa to commence development of free content for Africa by African educators.
• I have been involved with two VUSSC boot camps where 25 countries are collaborating online in the development of free content.
• I meet with Country Mike, based in New Zealand on WikiEducator’s Internet Relay Channel and we share thoughts about the strategic directions for WikiEducator.
• After a recent keynote presentation in India, I was taken back by the passionate defense of WikiEducator from the floor by a senior Indian academic.
• I was moved by a reflection from a teacher based in Germany who announced in one of our forums that “After discovering the WikiEducator site I was quite exited, and I told my family at supper: Listen, I have something to celebrate, I just found something very promising!”
• I interact with experienced technical gurus like Eloquence from the Wikimedia foundation in identifying sustainable innovation alternatives for open content authoring in the future.

Networked communities have their own energy and they organise themselves without the need for a centralised hierarchy. Community projects take on a life of their own, and WikiEducator’s no exception. The compelling value proposition of free content and the freedom to participate actively in the destiny of WikiEducator is triggering exponential growth in the intiative.

Administrator’s frequently have difficulty understanding this community impetus and attempt to over regulate this energy, leading to projects that are destined to failure in the medium term. Fortunately, WikiEducator has adopted a clean slate approach. The starting point was simply a declaration of community values - the rest followed from that. In hindsight this has been the success of the WikiEducator community. It’s a delicate balance because the Commonwealth of Learning has funded the development of WikiEducator and the agency has a clearly defined strategy to support learning for development. We have refrained from interference in the evolution of the community and this is paying handsome dividends in the realisation of our aims.

In many respects the evolution of open networked communities is like golf (Although, I’m not an authority as I do not play the game). You can spend many hours perfecting your swing, but you have very little control over where the ball will rest. The old adage that your luck in getting it right will increase proportionally with the time you spend practicing, will help us move forward in the right direction.

I hope you will help us.

I want to welcome Wayne Mackintosh and thank him for agreeing to contribute to the Impact of Open Source Software on Education series. Wayne’s post will appear on Terra Incognita on April 4, 2007 (eastern US). Wayne will be writing about his experience with WikiEducator, the freedom culture, and education. I first met Wayne in New Zealand while he served at the University of Auckland. He visited the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand where I was working and our conversation immediately turned to open source software and its potential impact on the landscape of New Zealand tertiary education.

In addition to Wayne’s work on WikiEducator, he was the founding project leader of New Zealand’s eLearning XHTML editor (eXe) project. Wayne is a committed advocate and user of free software for education. He currently serves the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) as Education Specialist, eLearning and ICT Policy and is the founding director of the Centre for Flexible and Distance Learning (CFDL) at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Wayne has extensive experience in the theory and practice of open and distance learning (ODL). Prior to moving to New Zealand he spent eleven years working at the University of South Africa (UNISA), a distance learning institution and one of the world’s mega-universities.

Although I am very much looking forward to Wayne’s posting, I am even more interested in the dialog that will flow from it. I have always found Wayne to have something important to say and I am sure that this discussion will be no exception. Please do feel free to comment, ask questions, build on the conversation, and enjoy.