My attention has been recently diverted a bit by an update that I received a few days ago from WashingtonWatch about the Global Online Freedom Act of 2007 (H.R. 275). The tag line on the bill is that it is intended to promote freedom of expression on the Internet and protect United States businesses from coercion to participate in repression by authoritarian foreign governments. I investigated this proposed legislation because I thought that the notion of freedom of expression on the Internet was critical to online learning (eLearning) in general and to our recent postings about open educational resources (OER) quite directly. In fact, without a whole lot of effort or creativity, it would be pretty easy to connect parts of the conceptual underpinning of the Global Online Freedom Act to all three strategies that were outlined in the Capetown Open Education Declaration and some of the derivative works to increase the reach and impact of open educational resources. Note too that the Bill refers to Article 19 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights for part of its philosophical underpinning.

Just to set the stage a bit, H.R. 275 is meant to support the following policy of the United States:

1. to promote as a fundamental component of United States foreign policy the right of everyone to freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers;
2. to use all appropriate instruments of United States influence, including diplomacy, trade policy, and export controls, to support, promote, and strengthen principles, practices, and values that promote the free flow of information, including through the Internet and other electronic media; and
3. to deter any United States business from cooperating with officials of Internet-restricting countries in effecting the political censorship of online content.

Please note that I do not want to get into how well the US government follows its own policy, etc. right now. If you want to comment on that, or on issues around implementation, please feel free. In any event, the Bill is, at least on its face, about enhancing and protecting access and reducing coercion. It is meant to address activities of selected foreign governments that are designated as “Internet-restricting countries.”

A government gets this designation when it blocks Internet sites or filters search engine terms and phrases relating to human rights, democracy, religious free exercise, and peaceful political dissent, both in general and as specifically related to the particular context and circumstances. In addition to blocking and filtering, H.R. 275 prohibits US businesses from locating (finding and giving away), within a designated Internet-restricting country, any electronic communication that contains any personally identifiable information. Currently Belarus, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iran, Laos, North Korea, the People’s Republic of China, Tunisia, and Vietnam would be identified as Internet-restricting countries.

The teeth in H.R. 275 come from applying sanctions of various types against offending governments (some sanctions will be determined only after the Bill is passed), and applying penalties to US businesses that contribute to offending activities. Offending activities by Microsoft and Yahoo are cited in documents that support the Bill. The coordination activities would fall under the purview of a newly established “Office of Global Internet Freedom,” while enforcement would fall to a number of US government agencies. Civil and criminal actions against US businesses would go through the Attorney General.

I see some connections between H.R. 245 and our previous dialogs around OER and Open Education, as indicated above, but I am wondering really what they might be. Given that H.R. 275 does provide civil and criminal recourse and also points to potential export controls, it could impact many US education providers who operate in Internet-restricting countries as partners with local universities and companies, or through branch campuses. I think too though that the notion of such legislation might have international interest. In early 2007 the following NGOs

• Reporters Without Borders
• Amnesty International
• Human Rights Watch
• China Information Center
• Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
• Earth Rights International
• Laogai Research Foundation
• National Economic and Social Rights Initiative
• PEN USA
• PEN American Center
• Religious Freedom Coalition
• Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights
• Secretariat of the International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net)
• Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia

endorsed H.R. 275 in a Joint Statement to the members of Congress, the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights, and International Operations, because of the Bill’s “…effort to prevent U.S. companies from carrying out or facilitating the suppression of online speech in China and other countries.”

So, would this type of legislation be useful to educators? Would it potentially serve as a means to free up OER for use in various countries? Does it address fundamental access issues that are precursors for Open Education?

More pragmatically, does it potentially pose interesting questions for US universities who partner with universities in foreign countries that require “location of personally identifiable information” of students or faculty, wish to filter content, or block Internet sites?

I think that the Global Online Freedom Act of 2007 is one way that Internet Freedom and Open Education, which is predicated on various freedoms, is starting to align in various ways. I am not sure if national legislation is the most direct way forward, but it is becoming a factor in the dialog that will potentially impact education and education providers. Online learning and the Open Education movement raise the visibility, profile, and stakes of engaging in repression of education. Please feel free to share your thoughts!

The posting has two parts: the first part describes the past and current UNESCO FOSS activities and the second part suggests a new activity aimed at building an integrated FOSS Education solution targeting universities and that UNESCO may wish to initiate.

I. Brief Summary of UNESCO’s activities in FOSS For Education

1. UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, promotes international cooperation and dissemination of knowledge in the field of education, sciences, culture and communication. Therefore the organization recognises that community approaches to software development in general, and FOSS in particular, have a very significant role to play. There are a number of activities undertaken by UNESCO in support to FOSS.
2. Free & Open Source Software Portal - The UNESCO Free and Open Source Software Portal was developed and published in November 2001. It is maintained by the Information Society Division and provides a one-stop access point to reference documents on the FOSS movements, as well as to websites hosting the most popular and useful FOSS packages in UNESCO’s fields of competence. The portal also mirrors the Free Software Directory, a joint project of UNESCO and FSF that catalogues useful free software that runs under free operating systems — particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants.
3. The Greenstone Digital Library (GSDL) - UNESCO has produced with the New Zealand Digital Library Project (NZDL) of the University of Waikato (New Zealand) and the Human Info NGO (Antwerp) a multi-lingual version of the Free and Open Source Greenstone Digital Library software suite. It is expected that the Greenstone software package will enable educational, scientific and cultural institutions worldwide to build and share compatible digital libraries of open access and public domain information. UNESCO makes available free of charge CD-ROMs containing Greenstone 2.70, documentation available in four “core” languages (English, French, Spanish, Russian) and documented examples of digital libraries and associated software. A feasibility study conducted by UNESCO suggested that the open source GSDL, associated with appropriate training and documentation, could constitute a unique resource in the implementation of digital libraries for Africa.
4. UNESCO assisted in the deployment of an open-source Learning Management System (LMS) at the Arab Open University in Bahrain, which was further replicated in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
5. Together with UNDP, UNESCO also organised a consultative meeting of specialists to assess the needs of developing countries in terms of FOSS and on modalities to pursue an FOSS initiative for developing countries with special focus for Africa.
6. UNESCO has partnerships with FSF, the Free and Open Source Software Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) and various FOSS-active non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and is participating to the Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Free Software Development and Use (LACFREE). In addition UNESCO is informally collaborating with FAO, UNEP, UNDP and UNCTAD in promoting FOSS.
7. Other activities undertaken by UNESCO in support of FOSS are: development, distribution and translation of UNESCO FOSS software (CDS/ISIS – database software, IDAMS – statistical software).
8. Two discussion forums organized by UNESCO IIEP have focused on the related issues of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) for e-learning (June 2004) and Open Educational Resources (OER): open content for higher education (October/November 2005). The FOSS and OER groups have continued to interact on a more informal basis as international Communities of Interest.
9. The Discussion forum on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) for Open Educational Resources organized by IIEP/UNESCO took place from 11 September to 6 October 2006. The main outcomes were the elaboration of a list of FOSS tools for OER development, management and dissemination, and the creation of a wiki collaboration space dedicated to the UNESCO IIEP Community of Interest on Open Educational Resources.
10. An Internet discussion forum aimed at discussing the OECD study on Open Educational Resources (OER) was held from 13 November to 1 December 2006.
11. Documentary on “Software for development: Documentary and Case Studies” - UNESCO contributed financially to this activity implemented by the UNDP Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme’s (UNDP-APDIP) International Open Source Network (IOSN) initiative, which aims to promote the choice of FOSS as affordable (yet effective) solutions for developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

II. UNESCO Activities envisaged and related to FOSS for EducationFOSS Education Solutions

1. Needs Analysis
   There is a strong demand for Free and Open Source Software solutions based upon open standards from developing and emerging countries who want to initiate secondary school and/or higher education computerization programs, as well as to computerize public administration. The ability to customize a solution to the special needs of a country, and any school or university in the country as well as using open standards, are the key advantages of providing open source solutions. It is usually quite easy to find FOSS applications that can solve a specific isolated problem such as an LMS or CMS, but most of the time a global solution is needed and there is really a lack of integrated FOSS solutions for education.
2. Vision
   In view of these needs, UNESCO would like to explore the possibility of producing a complete FOSS Education Solution for higher education that would integrate a stack of software tools, guidelines, and good documentation.
   A complete integrated FOSS Education Solution should be a technical roadmap with a stack of software tools and that could integrate for example:
   1. A Generic Integration Engine or Framework that:
   • Should solve the current Student Information System (SIS) problem
   • Add value by integrating isolated software tools and providing bridges
   • Allow flexibility to add more applications to the stack
   • Provide a seamless Education IT environment
   2. A Web Single SignOn (SSO) across or within organizational boundaries. It allows sites to make informed authorization decisions for individual access of protected online resources in a privacy-preserving manner.
      (Schibboleth — http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/ )
   3. The Moodle Core
   • Course Management (search, create/edit/delete, classify, event management, etc …)
   • User Management (add/edit/delete, authenticate, enrol, grouping, etc…)
   • Configuration Management (general configuration, site configuration, language, module, etc…)
   • Teacher & Student functions (register, logon, teaching, learning, finding resources, etc…)
   4. The Education Management System (EMS)
   5. Guidelines and requirements for flexible IT Infrastructure
   6. Guidelines for planning, budgeting and implementing
   7. Step-by-step guide to implementing open distance learning.
3. Tentatively Skeleton for Project Management
   Projects are usually divided into eight phases. Each phase has an objective, associated documents and deliverables.Phase 1: The first phase intends to produce a Requirements Evaluation and Project Proposal document.
   Areas to be addressed include:
   • Fundamental Problem to be solved
   • Tasks/functions the FOSS Education Solution will perform
   • Benefits/Savings/Cost Justification
   • Economic
   • Contribution to EFA goals and objectives
   • Quality
   • Performance Requirements
   • Security
   • Compatibility/Migration
   • Product integration
   • Packaging
   • Related/Dependent Projects; Other Dependencies

   The project proposal document should set the background, define the fundamental concepts, compare and evaluate the alternate FOSS Education solutions in terms of functionality and compatibility, and should be accompanied by a thoughtful analysis of the current isolated FOSS Education Solutions and the desired integrated FOSS solution. It should also identify the missing components if any.

   Phase 2: Planning Phase
   Phase 3: Detailed Design Phase
   Phase 4: Construction Phase
   Phase 5: Testing Phase
   Phase 6: Implementation Phase
   Phase 7: User Support Phase
   Phase 8: Completion Phase

   Please note that this is a first attempt to design a project proposal for building a FOSS Education Solution targeting universities. It needs further improvement and elaboration. It could also be envisaged to build a FOSS Education Solution for secondary education (or K12).

I have been attending the National University Telecommunication Network (NUTN) annual meeting in Philadelphia, and due to a missed flight by the keynote presenter, Dr. David Cavallo co-leader of MIT Media Lab’s Future of Learning, Ene Tammeoru of the Estonian e-Learning Development Centre affiliated with the Estonian e-University and I were rescheduled to open the meeting. Ene talked about a multi-organizational e-learning partnership composed of Estonian universities and technical schools that she leads. The project is 4 years old and its purpose is to develop sustainable infrastructure ranging from technology to faculty development. I provided a more general presentation on some considerations associated with selecting activities that make sense. The main ideas were that:

• International activities do not have to start and stop at delivering or extending educational programmes to international students, but can include involvement in OSS, OER, and open communities of practice.
• Activities can be aligned within the context of global tends, institutional mission, and capacity.

Please feel free to check out the presentation materials, update, share, comment, etc.

View the presentation in PowerPoint format.

Earlier this week I had the chance to chat with Michael Adewumi, who, among other things, serves as the director of the Alliance for Earth Sciences, Engineering, and Development in Africa (AESEDA). As an aside, AESEDA and the World Campus co-sponsored an interesting event in early December 2006, which included a seminar titled “What Does It Mean to Be a Global Land Grant University?” Audio files and notes can be found on WikiEducator. Following that seminar, Michael expressed interest in the global land-grant notion, and during our recent chat raised a number of interesting issues, inspiring me to try and frame the idea, which will hopefully shape the conversation as it develops. I am taking my guidance from the work that the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) has done around internationalizing the university, the dialog generated during the previously mentioned December 2006 seminars, observable trends on the perception of globalization, and the changing nature of international assistance programming.

I would like to start by developing a high-level outline of things we ought to consider; from there we can develop, dispute, formalize, explore, etc.

Goals: Understanding and articulating why a global land grant is a compelling notion, what it has to offer, and what its goals would be. During my recent chat with Michael he made an observation that unlike many other universities, Penn State’s forte is resource management, which speaks to its land-grant heritage, and is relevant to much of the geo-political, commercial, and environmental activity through which we often describe the effects of globalization. What can the internally and externally facing goals of the global land grant be? Are there other types of institutional models that support similar strengths or complementary strengths, particularly while considering the impact of online learning and social networking applications?

Structure: Given what it means to be “global,” how can we organize ourselves and structure the organization to fulfill the land-grant development mission based on the connections among teaching, applied research, and practice (cooperative extension), frequently in a community context? That is, what types of models will help us meet our goals while working across tremendous geographic distance, economic conditions, forms of government, development needs, national and societal interests, cultural norms, etc.? What can the global land grant look like?

Finance and Economics: What types of financial arrangements and exchanges of value will support the mission and sustain participation? Due to a trend in reduction of state support, U.S. land-grant universities have had to rethink how they operationalize their missions and seek new sources of revenue to finance operations and program development. We might ask ourselves what types of arrangements will work on a global scale with little central financial support. How can the global land grant operate and create sustainable value to all participants?

I will start fleshing-out each of these areas in future posts, digging into what lies beneath the surface. This is all very conceptual right now, which provides us with an opportunity to create the path as we walk it. I welcome your feedback, whether it is supportive or disparaging—constructive contributions move the dialog forward. In addition, sharing resources on the topic would be appreciated.

Well, I’ve been thinking a little bit about the possibilities. What if a land grant university really took its mission globally, and if it did, what might be the role of online learning?

After all, there are many parallels between the environment in which the U.S. land grants were established in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the current environment in much of the modern developing and developed world. When the land grants were established in the U.S. there was social unrest, post-war reconstruction, profound economic and social stratification, expansionism paved by the systemic genocide of native populations, epidemics, economic migration, the need for developing civil infrastructure, agricultural capacity, education, health, and human service systems to support economic and social capacity to scaffold the civil society. Although things aren’t perfect, by many measures they are considerably better, and I would argue that the land-grant universities have played a significant role in making things better by fueling development through outreach into communities by integrating educational activities, practical research, and cooperative extension.

If the basic model has promise, how can we leverage the benefits of online learning? I believe that there would be a pretty practical curriculum focusing on business, work force development, engineering, natural sciences, education, etc. Unlike the elusive Global Online MBA this program would be intensely international because of the applied research and extension activities grounding the online component in practice onsite in places like Uzbekistan and Liberia. Think about the possibilities for study abroad programs and internships.

Although online learning has great potential for reducing barriers to education, whenever we work globally there are considerations about technology and connectivity, and access to educational resources. We would have to assume that this global land grant would have the same financial challenges as its more-or-less state bound counterparts in the U.S. are suffering and would have to fit the budget of a global audience. How might we reduce the financial and access barriers to infrastructure and educational materials? My experience suggests that western textbooks carry too big a price tag. How would we localize the learning environment and content? Would the organizational model be a network or a centralized institution? There are a lot of questions. Are there examples of institutions that might look something like the global online land grant, and are they delivering the promise?

Sometimes it seems that a project is just perfect, tying together elements that are mutually reinforcing, interesting, and relevant. The World Campus is contributing to the Commonwealth Computer Navigator’s Certificate (CCNC), which is a project dedicated to creating open courseware that is designed to help learners develop computer competencies using open source software. The project is building from the OpenICDL project, which is an open computer competency certification. The CCNC-added value is that the curriculum and modules will be specifically designed for distance and eLearning delivery.

World Campus learning designers will be working with colleagues in more than 7 countries to refine the pedagogical template used across the curriculum and assume responsibility for one of the certificate modules, while also contributing across the curriculum. I am excited about this project because it is breaking ground in open educational resources (OER) and open source software (OSS), which are two major global trends that hold significant promise for lowering barriers to education, particularly for eLearning. In addition, it provides us the opportunity to work collaboratively with a truly global consortium of colleagues, which will be organizationally enriching.

It is very much my hope that after the basic computer competency curriculum is developed, we will start taking leadership in developing educational materials supporting more advanced competencies related to OSS, such as evaluating OSS software/projects using appropriate metrics, contributing to community development, establishing and growing open source projects and communities, open licensing, etc. And while there currently are materials being produced as stand-alone primers (just Google it), organizations that concentrate on specific OSS topics such as the Open Business Readiness Rating (BRR) project with OSS evaluation, and academic programs (e.g., Carnegie Mellon West, MS program in Software Management) that are integrating OSS topics into their course offerings, pulling a curriculum together as open courseware designed globally would be something very special.

The CCNC is an open project. We would gladly work with enthusiastic designers, graphic artists, and other folks interested in an easy way to contribute.

Any thoughts? Please feel free to share them.
PS: More of Open Source Software as we kick off the “Impact of OSS in Education” series on March 12 for our first posting on Terra Incognita.

There is no question that the MBA is at the very heart of graduate business education, it has been established as a globally recognized degree, and that globalization is cast frequently, perhaps most frequently, in terms of business and commerce. This is reflected in an interesting article titled MBA programs and goals shift focus, in which the author, Mitchell Young, President of the University of Northern Virginia (UNVA) in Prague shares some of his insights about where he thinks the MBA as a program is going. In addition to sharing some market trends for the program and some demographic trends of MBA students, Young writes about how the globalization of MBAs is not just about going out into the global market, but has something to do with creating a multi-cultural environment that reflects the realities of international management.

Although Young’s perspective is primarily from that of resident-based programs, some of the challenges he cites are applicable to online education also. For example, he identified language as a potential barrier to a “globalized” MBA. He also points to the cost of a MBA education in the Czech Republic, which is about a third of the cost at the lower cost programs in the United States. This would prohibit many international students from traveling to US and Western European locations to study. Given economic and geographic access barriers, how do you attract a multi-cultural residential student body? How much value is there in a multi-cultural learning environment and what constitutes a multi-cultural environment? Is it a foreign location, far-flung internships, robust study abroad programs, a diverse student body, international faculty, a globalized curriculum, something else, or perhaps a combination of these and other factors?

I suppose that if we assume that more diversity is better and that having multiple layers of opportunity is also better, then a combination of all of the above is better. There are many examples of these activities and qualities at many residential programs. For example, in an earlier posting, I looked at an intensive international environment created at a very traditional French university involving study abroad, recruitment of an international student body, and taking advantage of being located in an international location. This looked very exciting, but a little exclusive. For example, combining work, family, and study, would be nearly impossible. Limiting access in this way reduces a certain form of diversity, which is preserved in many online programs. That said, I am not so familiar though of any online MBAs that pursue more than one or two “globalizing” factors. Why? It seems that all of the characteristics and activities listed above are not only within the grasp of online programs, but there might be lower barriers to achieve then through an online program. After all, when the world is your campus, anybody can study from home, or work, or on a business trip.

So, who is doing this well? If you know of an online MBA that is actively creating a globalized, international, and multi-cultural program through programmatic initiatives, I would like to hear about what they are doing.

It is a great thing when you realize that what you do can make things easy. Important things, particularly. One of the really exciting things about online learning is its potential for lowering the barriers of participation in an academic program or with a community. The university can extend its community far from campus (or far from its servers) enriching the experience of its students by inviting participation from those who might never have even considered engagement.

I just came across France takes the plunge into globalized education, an article that describes a program at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris in which all undergraduates spend their third year of studies abroad, while the school accepts international students from 260 universities worldwide. This is interesting to me because it shows a real commitment to providing opportunities for international and multi-cultural experiences to learners aboard and in residence. That said, although the university makes some financial accommodation, this is not an inexpensive endeavor for the learners or for the institution.

In the article, Jean-Claude Lescure, director of the institute’s journalism school, states that “It (the program) is a way to promote competition within forms of being and thinking, … Competition is a good way to improve — to be confronted with the foreigner in order to improve yourself.” Obviously this is just one of many potential objectives and benefits of an international education and learner exchange program. How might online learning support this type of objective? Beyond this objective, should a type of “virtual study abroad” experience be a “no brainer” for distance or online education organizations like the World Campus, UMASS Online, or UMUC? Should we perhaps see at least some passing reference to “cultural enrichment” in the character of such organizations, and if not, is this a missed opportunity?

One last thought. I wonder if the term “globalized education” was used intentionally in the title of the article, rather than “internationalized education.”

There are ongoing questions about the impact on commercial enterprises on higher education and I would like your thoughts. This topic raised its head again for me just recently. As a follow-up to the recent posting titled “Higher Education Reform in Nigeria”, I was reading an article titled “Nigeria: Akingbola Advocates Radical Varsity Reforms” that touched on the investment that Intercontinental Bank is making in the Nigerian higher education system and specifically at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

I am thinking that this topic is not so cut and dry. There are issues around need, compromise, corporate intent as well as the nature of capacity of local governments and the impulse for “Globalization” as Akingbola frames it in the articles cited above.

Based on the “Nigeria: Akingbola Advocates Radical Varsity Reforms” article, your experiences, and your thoughts, do you think that there are dangers for Higher Education associated with commercial investment in institutions? What are they, and how might we manage them?

Please feel free to share experiences and insights. Here is one of mine:
Years ago while living in Europe I recall days of student protests in Vienna because the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Culture were considering applying a rather nominal tuition fee (by Anglo standards anyway) for nationals attending higher education institutions. I had mixed feeling about this. On the one hand tuition is a barrier and access to education is a cornerstone ideal in a liberal democracy interested in promoted an egalitarian society. On the other hand, it was impossible for learners to complete their undergraduate degrees in less than 7 or 8 years because of over-demand and under-supply of resources (class space, faculty, etc.). At the time the student-to-faculty ratio at the University of Vienna was reported to being over 300-to-1. In fact, many of the learners who I had at the International University of Vienna (IU), were there because it was taking them too long to get a free and frankly higher quality degree from the major Austrian Universities in Vienna. The very few Austrians attending IU were there because they wanted a western degree and saw this as a way of getting it done in 4 years. They felt that the opportunity loss associated with waiting a few extra years to get their degree was greater than the tuition costs from a private university.

In any event, I saw both sides of the story and asked a lot of people why then not adopt the US model of partnering with commercial organizations to attract and generate resources. I was thinking about the enormous investments that Texas A&M was making at the time to develop a corporate research park on campus to support industry sponsored research at the University. There seemed to be universal distain for the idea among my European colleagues. I was told that it would corrupt the educational enterprise and the threaten the autonomy necessary for pursuing truth. Fair enough. We have seen evidence of questionable corporate behavior in US higher education.

Sometime in late 1998 I decided that there was something missing. I was teaching primarily professional courses in business and information systems, but was finding myself increasingly separated from practice. I was questioning the relevance of my knowledge. In addition, I was feeling a little distant from the “public service” mission that had originally drawn me to higher education. I was doing a lot of teaching, and I think making a difference with at least some of the learners I was working with, but there was something larger that was missing.

As already mentioned in earlier postings, many of my teaching experiences took place in developing countries and at financially fragile universities; in addition, many of the learners had financial challenges. The environment provided some challenges in terms of accessing modern textbooks and other learning materials. For example, when I first started teaching at Comenious University I was asked to prepare a syllabus and provide it to my department chair and the dean. This was my first teaching assignment, and admittedly the course was a little “over designed.” There were lots readings, plus a textbook.

My syllabus was positively received, but I was told it was not realistic to expect students to purchase a western textbook. I was told, for example, that a teaching assistant would earn less than $40 for a whole semester’s work. Unfortunately the students did not have any other access to systems-design texts of sufficient quality. My first reaction was to contact publishers, explain the situation, and get some sort of a “developing country” discount. They were not very interested. I contacted a few other publishers and found no interest there, either. There really did not seem to be much concern for students who could not pay retail price for their books.

At that point I figured I could just create a “reader,” supplement the readings with notes and assignments, and have it all photocopied and distributed in packages. The solution seemed acceptable to everybody, and the package for week one was printed and distributed—but no others followed. When I asked the office administrator why there were no more packages, explaining that this was impacting the quality of the class, she was very apologetic and indicated that the problem was a simple oversight. Yet it still took a few more weeks and a few more visits to the print center and the office administrator until my department chair finally pulled me aside and explained that the college was subject to paper shortages throughout the academic year. He thought perhaps we should rethink how we could get quality learning materials to students.

I had experienced similar, if less systemic, challenges at the International University in Vienna. There the books would be ordered and stocked in the bookstore, but many of the students could not afford the textbooks and would just buy what they could and photocopy the rest—or just hope that the text was not “that important.”

These and other experiences prompted me to start investigating why it was so hard to find affordable educational resources. I studied, read a lot of books, talked with learners who were not respectful of intellectual property (IP) law, and even presented a few papers on the subject. I was captivated by the prevailing and dominant intellectual property regime, its origins, rationale, enforcement mechanisms, and corporate influence, the United States’ role in developing global policy, and the very real problems it caused for a vast majority of the world’s learners. Until I taught in a developing economy, the problem was never real to me – never visible.

During the fall of 1999 I made two of the best professional decisions in my life. I became so interested in IP policy and law that my first decision was to apply to law schools, eventually deciding to attend the Law program at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law (which had a great IP program) in New York. My second great decision was to withdraw from the program and university after only one semester.

I quit for a few reasons. First, I realized pretty quickly that even after earning a JD and passing the Bar I would probably have to serve as an indentured servant for a few years to earn my stripes, which did not appeal to me as an adult learner who wanted to have an immediate impact on improving society. In addition, I could not see a clear path to making a difference as a lawyer, but I could see a promising one as a teacher, which I was already qualified to do. This was reinforced each time I would visit faculty and advisors at the New School of Social Research (now the New School University, which was located across the street from Cardozo on 5th avenue); they always asked why I was studying law instead of making a difference doing what I really wanted to do.

So … I left, became unemployed, and moved back to Massachusetts, where I set my sights on making a difference. I continued to read about IP and wrote a bit, but spent most of my time looking for work, which after nearly six months I found with Harcourt Higher Education —my first brush with for-profit education.

Wow … this posting was supposed to be about the short-lived Harcourt Higher Education project, outsourced learning design, flexible learning ambitions, corporate values, and the results of being bought by an even-larger publisher that did not really understand what they bought. Instead, I’ve told you about problems of accessing educational resources, which I think points to a recurring theme in my experience with distance learning.

Next time, the uncertain terrain of for-profit education and being bought and sold by two publishers in 24 hours!