[Open-education] Friday Chat: The differences between open (as in access) or open (as in participatory & contribution)

[Pat Lockley]

I think Heartbleed is a great example of open and it's failings, and one of
the things open was supposed to prevent - many eyes and so on. Any look at
a github contributors graph shows that the majority of the work is done by
the few.

I worry if we talk access, then the few doing the work already become even
more burdened.

I think the lacks of tools in OER is a real problem. Access is great, but
then what? I don't think we've solved creation yet, but it's old ground and
no one likes old ground and trying again.


On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 4:31 PM, Danielle Paradis
<dani.paradis2 at gmail.com>wrote:

> As Pat has pointed out, there are many (7 in fact) definitions of what
> constitutes open educational resources. There's also open-source,
> open-access, and I'm probably missing another one. I think the conceptual
> idea of open is a big-tent. It really has to be when there are things like
> MOOCs, open textbooks, and repositories of OER distributed all over the
> web.
>
> Marieke really touched on something when she mentioned that there are
> questions about the focus on being able to access resources rather than
> contribute to them. In my experience people tend to fall into one category
> or the other. While working on my thesis I found a few people who were
> creating the resources and a few people who were using them. There didn't
> seem to be a lot of cross-over, but there was a few instances. I believe
> the tendency to participate in the creation of OER probably has to do with
> familiarity about what they are. It's easy enough to find a free textbook
> online and think 'cool, I will use this'. It takes a little more time to
> understand the licensing, the repositories, and pedagogy that surround the
> concept of open education. Perhaps then as the open education movement
> matures we will see more people occupying a dual role of consumer and
> developer of OER.
>
> This reminds me a bit of the Heartbleed bug<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/technology/heartbleed-highlights-a-contradiction-in-the-web.html?_r=0>which occurred because everyone was using OpenSSL code, but no one was
> checking the work. That is, I believe, a cautionary tale for OER.
>
> Great topic though!
>
> Danielle
>
>
> On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 5:24 AM, Pat Lockley <
> patrick.lockley at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> I've mumbled about this before re open access as a geography (
>> http://www.slideshare.net/Pgogy/open-as-in-oer-and-open-as-in-mooc). The
>> analogy I use is in the UK we have footpaths, which the public are allowed
>> to walk on - even if say they cut across your land. Whereas in the US you
>> might have a national park, which is open but you have to get to it.
>>
>> Footpaths aren't big, parks are. Footpaths tend be nearer, parks tend to
>> be further away.
>>
>> I think shifting the burden of accessing openness onto developers is
>> problematic for two reasons
>>
>> 1) How could they know what to do? Are we talking a Berners-Lee like star
>> system?
>> 2) How could taking things to people not seem a bit Victorian Empire
>> Missionary?
>>
>> I would say developing an accessible first (akin to mobile first) style
>> of openness makes sense. So make transcripts available for MP3s as an
>> example, but again, are we having better forms of open? And can we do this
>> and not put people off being bad open?
>>
>> So you can be open, but at a point of moving your openness onto people,
>> do you close things down? Or does it look a little spam like?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 11:15 AM, Marieke Guy <marieke.guy at okfn.org>wrote:
>>
>>>  Hi Everyone,
>>>
>>> Sorry we missed our Friday chat last week - this was due to the Making
>>> it Matter workshop (lots of good discussions<http://linkedup-project.eu/2014/05/21/what-we-learnt-at-making-it-matter/>there though!)
>>>
>>> So on the open design list there was an interesting conversation<https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/opendesign/2014-May/000390.html>about the differences between open (as in access) or open (as in
>>> participatory & contribution)? They were trying to decide which is the most
>>> important and if we have, in the past, focused too much on access?
>>>
>>> I was wondering how this ties in with open education. Are conversations
>>> too centered on resources and fail to consider whether people can actually
>>> participate. So here a couple of things come to mind:
>>>
>>>    - Being where people are at - do we often trying to force people to
>>>    come to 'a place' rather than going to where they are?
>>>    - Language - we continue to use a lot of jargon
>>>    - Is open education elitist? e.g. material OER is WEIRD (Western,
>>>    Educated, Rich, Democratic), much activity relies on infrastructure,
>>>    learning & teaching practice approaches are often tied to cultures.
>>>
>>> Just a few thoughts.
>>>
>>> Marieke
>>>  If you have an idea for a Friday chat add it to the etherpad<http://new.okfnpad.org/p/Open_Education_Working_Friday_Chats>
>>> .
>>>
>>>
>>> **
>>>
>>> Marieke Guy
>>> LinkedUp <http://linkedup-project.eu/> Project Community Coordinator |
>>> skype: mariekeguy | tel: 44 (0) 1285 885681 | @mariekeguy<http://twitter.com/mariekeguy>
>>> The Open Knowledge <http://okfn.org/>
>>> *Empowering through Open Knowledge*
>>> http://okfn.org/ | @okfn <http://twitter.com/okfn>| OKF on Facebook |
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>>> http://remoteworker.wordpress.com
>>>
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>>>
>>
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>>
>
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