Althought the open offspring of T182 is still offline, internal announcements suggest that the issue of OU Open Content is very much a live matter of debate.
One issue that I imagine will be of as much concern as any will be the question of economics - if our students just by courses for the OU produced content, then we'd be giving our business away (for we are increasingly considered as a business - which is another issue altogether...).
But are we just content producers?
Because of digitization, disintermediation and increased capacity, it is likely that demand for commercial educational content will drop sharply. Already we have seen a great deal of educational content placed online, from public institutions (SchoolNet, the BBC, NYPL, MIT OpenCourseWare and thousands more). In addition, numerous educators are producing their own content. Finally, especially in the area of informal learning, learners are producing their own content. The Economy of E-Learning, Stephen Downes, 10/7/05
I've blogged on this before, but here's another thought or two to add to the mix:
What can't we give away? - other people's stuff for one thing: so we can't give away books, items that are held under copyright by third parties (including images, movies, audio, software packages etc.) because we pay for the right to redistribute it to a limited number of registered students.
Where do we add value? - the "tutorial in print" and "reflective action guide" metaphors guide the production of many course units (for more on this, check out Back to the Future with Distance Learning -- from independent learning to interdependence?), and the structure/mode of presentation is perhaps valuable in its own right.
The use of SAQs and learning exercises also add value, and could perhaps be stripped out of materials that are released under an open license. Personal tutor support and electronic conferencing provide supported/facilitated learning communities within each course and again can be with-held from opened up packages.
Assessment (both formative and summative) is another values added service, along with the provision of qualifications, and again would not be part of the free/open offering.
Many courses use OU developed software (once done in-house, though perhaps this will increasingly be outsourced). There are several levels of argument regarding opening up software, from simply making compiled applications freely available, to opening up the source code as well. (KMi release many of the software tools they have developed under open source licenses, but I think that all the OU's in-house educational software is closed, and the applications are only provided to students registred on the course that makes use of the software. ).
Can we "half give stuff away"? Yes, in a variety of ways.
The first is to trust the user, make stuff (text, software etc.) available in an open format under an appropriate Creative Commons or Creative archive license - but then you have to trust the user to stick to the terms of the license.
The second is to not really enetr into the spirit of openness, but to give away the content in a closed format (or one that is closed enough that the average user will find it difficult to modify). So for example, giving away compiled software packages (perhaps even with 30 day use restrictions) or text documents in PDF format limits the degree to which most users will be able change or modify the materials - which means we can make them available with OU branding, or even course advertising, for example, that is hard to avoid...
Posted by ajh59 at July 20, 2005 08:54 AM