[Oer-community] Introduction to the discussion

Thu Oct 7 15:22:40 MDT 2010

As usual, it is the common ground between yes and no where we find solutions.  I like the idea of user-rating.  However, if, as you suggest (and I'm sure you're right) material is reversioned over an over, how might we keep that rating current?  Can we?  

Kimberly
Houston, Texas

-----Original Message-----
From: Theo Lynn <theo.lynn at dcu.ie>
To: timothywayne.cook at gmail.com
Cc: oer-community at athabascau.ca
Sent: Thu, Oct 7, 2010 2:17 pm
Subject: Re: [Oer-community] Introduction to the discussion

For what its worth, I agree that there is no point in reinventing the  
heel if an acceptable solution i.e. Creative Commons exists.
I think peer review also has difficulties as if the content is truly  
pen, it may be adapted and reversioned over and over again - peer  
eview may cause all kinds of unanticipated outcomes and may act as a  
arrier for people to contribute. A more appropriate response may be  
n agreed technology-managed user rating system similar to tripadvisor  
tc. Over time cream may rise to the top, but rating systems do help...

________________
r. Theo Lynn
irector, Industry Engagement, DCU Business School
irector, DCU Leadership, Innovation and Knowledge Research Centre
Address: DCU Business School, Dublin City University, Glasnevin,  
ublin 9,
reland
elephone: +353-1-7006873
obile: +353-87-2261723
-mail: theo.lynn at dcu.ie
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ebsite: www.link.dcu.ie

n 7 Oct 2010, at 00:10, Tim Cook wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-10-04 at 07:20 -0400, Susan D'Antoni wrote:
> Dear Colleagues,
>
> Welcome to the first interaction in our OER Community from Athabasca
> University.

 Hi All,

 I am new to this group but not to open content / open source.

 I have been watching the email traffic the past few days and it is  
 very
 interesting.  I hope I can contribute some of my experience that may
 help with the issues being raised. Since there are so many good  
 ideas in
 this thread.  I have decided to just comment in general and to not  
 reply
 directly to any individual email.

 My comments are from and information systems point of view.  So they  
 are
 not directly inline with "teaching" but I see many similarities as far
 as open content is concerned.

 Sustainability:
 This is a crucial issue.  If the program is not sustainable then there
 is no point; correct?

 One writer has contributed links to and requested more information  
 about
 case studies on the value of openness.  The world of software has a
 plethora of examples.  Probably the most recognizable is the operating
 system, Linux. However, there is an enormous number of applications  
 that
 exist for the common good, that are created by a global community in
 self organizing groups.  I  will write up a short white paper on  
 this if
 you wish.

 Away from software and closer to the goals of OER; is Wikipedia.  I am
 not recommending the exact model of Wikipedia as one for OER.  But
 collaboration in a controlled environment reduces costs on individuals
 and organizations by spreading that cost around. Again, there are many
 examples of self organizing groups with moderate control that come
 together to create and share valuable content.

 Licensing:
 Protecting and promoting original authors of all content should be of
 the utmost importance.  The most extreme way is to not share it at  
 all.
 This is not very helpful in a promotional sense nor in a value sense.

 The next best way is to use a license structure that is  
 internationally
 recognized and offers re-use as well as original author protections.
 The various Creative Commons licenses are designed for this purpose.
 Specifically, an author can elect to share content with everyone.
 Permitting re-use, additions, etc.  as well as maybe preventing
 commercial gain by others and requiring additions to be submitted back
 for inclusion in newer editions. Since these licenses are well
 established it should not be difficult to get approval through legal
 departments where some academics may be required as part of their
 contracts.

 Interoperability/shareability:
 Common standards or specifications should be used where available in
 order to promote ease of use. For example; when creating content the
 Scholarly Works Application Profile
 http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/SWAP provides for
 consistent meta-data formats in order to increase discover-ability. In
 turn, SWAP is based on the commonly used Dublin Core Meta-data
 Initiative.

 In cases of meta-data exchanges there is the Statistical Data Meta- 
 data
 eXchange specification (SDMX) http://www.sdmx.org  There are a  
 number of
 subsets being developed specifically for aggregating purposes.  My
 research group is working with the World Health Organization on the  
 SDMX
 Health Domain (SDMX-HD) http://sdmx-hd.org/ implementation.

 Well, I started this email this morning and just now returned to  
 find 26
 new emails.  That is great activity even if many were about properly
 using mailing lists. Email is easy, lightweight, easy to sort and view
 in different ways and used everywhere.  If your inbox is overflowing  
 you
 should learn how to use mail filtering on your client. If you want to
 unsubscribe  read the footer.  It is there for a reason. Just my 2
 cents :)

 Now back to the issues before us.  While following these  
 specifications
 may seem to be a lot of extra work.  The reality is that if we ever  
 plan
 to get beyond a flat WWW, we have to do the work.  The work that this
 group is proposing will yield artifacts that will likely last for
 centuries. While we do not have a real crystal ball to see the future.
 We do know the errors of our recent past.  Meta-data is one answer.
 More are coming. It appears to me that there has been a hardworking  
 core
 group at this for quite some time.  The time is likely ripe for
 expansion for a number of reasons; technological and social.  Do the
 best we can from the start and it is easier to establish norms than
 after several hundred or thousands are participating.

 Stephen Carson pointed out and identified visions for OER in his email
 dated 10/06/2010 09:37:16 AM

 Those different visions are actually fully compatible.  Again we can
 look at how software is being developed globally by an adhoc group.   
 The
 first issue is trust.  The software groups have various methods in  
 place
 in order to judge the trust level of an individual.  They generally
 consist of a history of contributions via mailing lists that allow the
 community to judge the persons subject knowledge and their desire to
 participate.  Versioning software is used to house the artifacts.   
 This
 software provides a means to allow those with permission to update
 certain files. Non-repudiation is maintained by virtue of a public key
 pair where only the author knows the passphrase. Even at this level  
 you
 could have a person become malicious.  In that event it is easy enough
 to roll back the changes to a known point.  The most popular open  
 source
 version control systems are BZR, GIT and SVN.  BZR and GIT are  
 probably
 most appropriate in this context.

 This comes down to the matter once again of specifications.  IMHO,  
 each
 primary author becomes a defacto project manager for their document.
 They of course can choose which format they wish to use.  However I
 would recommend something that is an ISO standard.  This could be the
 OpenOffice Document format (ISO Standard) which is open source and  
 cross
 platform software and is very similar to MS Office from a user
 perspective.  But for better long term flexibility using LaTex format
 may be best.  The LyX editor is also open source and cross  
 platform.  It
 does take a bit of getting used to but it takes the stance that once  
 you
 have a template.  The content creators only need to select the type of
 content they are entering; e.g. header, chapter title, regular text...
 They never have to worry about any formatting.  If you have ever
 exchanged MS Word documents between a large group you have experienced
 the constant reformatting issues as well as not everyone having the  
 same
 fonts, etc.

 I'll close with something I have already seen on this list. Remember
 that the goal is to be as inclusive as possible.  This sometimes means
 that you or I need to step slightly out of our comfort zone.  But we
 will usually learn something in the process; and that is always a good
 thing.

 Cheers,
 Tim

 -- 
 ***************************************************************
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