17.1 Content is infrastructure  (Page 10/10)

I have suggested before and, though reticently, will repeat it here. We need to get on with the job of opening up the access so everyone has a chance to learn, and worry about how it gets payed for later. Our ‘Pay per Page’ concept will likely work for us, even if it heavily subsidized, and it may even work on a broader institutional context, however, I believe that One Size Fits All will not work for Open Access, just as its efficacy has failed in the educational field as a whole.

14. ken udas - october 14th, 2007 at 7:24 am

Martin, Hello. I agree. I think that most of us want to enhance access and I suppose we all can do our parts individually. That is, if we individually have copyright to the work we create, we can license it and distribute it ways that meet our needs and help lower barriers so everybody has the chance to learn, as your rightfully iterate. It becomes more of a challenge when you are trying to create an environment in which a lot of productive capacity is being leveraged.

For example, those of us who manage organizations that produce a lot of digital resources used in online or hybrid courses are frequently managing and are trying to transform legacy systems in our institutions to reduce barriers to opening educational resources. Cole (see comment above) identified the behavioral manifestation of some cultural issues. Three artifacts that we have to work with that raise and lower barriers to leveraging productive capacity include:

• Work Flows: Are the work flows in the organization conducive to making content open and free? This includes content management.
• Rights Waivers: Does the work unit responsible for “fixing content to a digital storage devise” require that the author/creator waive or transfer their copyright to the university? If so, do the terms of the waiver provide the opportunity to open content?
• University Licensing: Does the university of a policy around licensing “open” and libre content? If so, is it standard (one of the Creative Content Licenses, the newly evolving “Libre” license, etc.) or an internal license?

There are a lot of other issues, some of which have been reference in previous posts, but the three identified above frequently reflect the organization’s cultural commitments as artifacts whose impact can be significant.

Cheers, Ken

15. joelgalbraith - october 22nd, 2007 at 12:39 pm

A shout-out from the “peanut gallery”.

I can only assume there are others out there like me, who are following the discussion with interest, but have not yet chimed in. There’s a great deal to process here, and I dasn’t contribute till I’ve thought this through some more.

Just a note to acknowledge the interesting views shared here from–what I hope are–a silent majority (not that they should remain silent, but rather that I hope more are following the discussion than appear to be ;-) ). -JG

16. tanuj says: november 8th, 2007 at 3:11 am

this basically assertions a proposition with which I am in basic agreement. “If we want to see education radically improved, we can’t architect it. None of us is that intelligent. We have to understand that content is infrastructure in order to start Linus’ massively parallel feedback cycle running.

Regards, Tanuj

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