[Oer-community] Introduction to the discussion

[rory]

  Paul, et al.

I did not see this in the same way as you. I saw "in the place of 
current expenditures" more about external spending than internal. We can 
replace the payments to publishers and licensing fees of our libraries 
by using OERs. Then it is no longer zero sum. Internally, I would 
support (in our context) diverting internal money also from printing and 
mailing to online access to resources. Of course robbing Peter to pay 
Paul does not always work as you note below and we should be careful not 
to penalize  other productive areas of the institution, so I do not 
disagree there.

I also would like to respectfully suggest a change in your statement:
"Think of sustainability not in terms of money, but rather in terms of 
impact that is wholly positive"
To
"Think of sustainability not JUST in terms of money, but rather in terms 
of impact that is wholly positive"
I would suggest that anyone who is not looking at the financial 
implications of sustainability(as well as other factors) is not being 
systematic. Financial considerations need not rule everything, but that 
does not mean that they are unimportant and should not be considered.

All the best.
Rory

Rory McGreal
Associate VP Research
Athabasca University



> Dear Susan, all
>
> It's great to see this discussion starting. Thank you for circulating 
> the briefing document (10 10 OER Community-OCWC.doc), which mention 
> three sub-themes:
>
> 1. Building OpenCourseWare
> 2. Using OpenCourseWare
> 3. Sustaining OpenCourseWare
>
> Sub-theme 3 states the importance of strategies for long-term 
> sustainability of OCW/OER projects. It says "...think of 
> sustainability not in terms of money, but rather in terms of impact." 
> Fine. Then I begin to worry, because it says "...investments will come 
> IN THE PLACE OF other current expenditures." (my emphasis). "In the 
> place of" sounds like diverting funding from one area to another area. 
> To me, that seems like a zero-sum game. In my view we don't need to 
> make the assumption that our options are limited to what we can do 
> within overall institutional budgets, and we don't have to decide on 
> what to allocate to OCW/OER at the expense of other activities. 
> Diverting funding is potentially very divisive: imagine for example 
> that the "current expenditures" at risk of being diverted to OCW/OER 
> are for social justice programs that have lower impact than OCW/OER on 
> impact measure A, but higher impact than OCW/OER on impact measure B, 
> and that we pay attention only to measure A and use that to justify 
> shifting funds. Sounds fine? Not for me. I'd want to know how to 
> protect people affected by the cuts. They might include people who are 
> surely important to any caring institution, such as the disabled, 
> minority groups, and historically-disadvantaged groups such as women.
>
> There is a better way, in my view: create wealth in socially-desirable 
> ways (= benefits to society as a whole, rather than the few), using 
> OCW/OER where appropriate, and direct a proportion of the new wealth 
> to augment the total budget available for social justice interventions 
> including OCW/OER.
>
> This is not fanciful. It requires liaison with people in other 
> communities, likely to be well-disposed to OCW/OER. An example is the 
> Open Science community, see eg an open-access book from the National 
> Academies Press, "Managing University Intellectual Property in the 
> Public Interest" [acronym: MUIPPI], 
> _http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13001_ 
> <http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=1300>
>
> The MUIPPI book is representative of a body of well-informed work on 
> how society as a whole, as well as individual public institutions, can 
> benefit from a systemic (and systematic) approach to sharing and using 
> innovations. I shall be contributing to that process in various 
> multi-partner international projects, one of which has just begun. Our 
> commitment to our funders (public bodies) includes interoperability 
> with other programs, eg OCW/OER, and sharing our findings, insights, 
> contacts etc in open ways that have the potential to create societal 
> wealth at a significant level without harming weak groups in society, 
> and, as part of that, can help individual learners and their 
> communities to get lasting benefits, valued by them, from the 
> knowledge created and shared in joint work such as OCW/OER.
>
> My conclusion: I would be delighted to collaborate with anyone who 
> wants to explore projects that implicitly assume a subtext to 
> sub-theme 3 in the following direction:
>
> Think of sustainability not in terms of money, but rather in terms of 
> impact that is wholly positive (eg, new forms of wealth creation, 
> compatible with the public-interest). Take action in an integrated 
> way: link OER and OCW to forms of Open Innovation and Open Knowledge 
> Sharing that benefit society as a whole (eg, socially-focused 
> exploitation of publicly-funded intellectual property, to create new 
> sources of wealth for the world) and that can lead to 
> socially-desirable outcomes (eg, creating new types of job, and making 
> students more employable by helping them to apply what they learn via 
> OER and OCW, to bridge the "knowledge-action gap").
>
> Best wishes
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> -- 
> The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an 
> exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland 
> (SC 038302).
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Oer-community at athabascau.ca
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-- 
Rory McGreal
Associate VP Research
Athabasca University



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