[Oer-community] In fields like OER -- Shouldn't we eat our own dog food?

[Wayne Mackintosh]

Hi Everyone,

Congratulations to Susan and team at Athabasca University for continued
support of this OER forum and community.

In the corporate world "eating your own dog food" is when a company uses the
products that it makes - the idea being that "if you expect customers to buy
your products, you should also be willing to use them". (See Wikipedia -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food.)

Notwithstanding the phenomenal progress of the open content and free culture
movements over the last decade, OER still has a long way to go before it is
mainstream practice in the formal education sector. Paul Stacey's suggestion
of encouraging institutions to use and remix OER created externally is a
good one because it will teach organisations the value of sharing.

In the OER world we are still in the early learning phases of our own
capability maturity. We now need to shift from the notion of "sharing to
learn" to "learning to share". "Sharing to learn" focuses on the core value
and purpose of education -- that is, to share knowledge freely.  However,
"learning to share" is the real challenge but also the "competitive
advantage" of OER ;-).

As movement, if we a serious about nurturing the development of sustainable
OER ecosystems on a global scale -- I think we should start "eating our own
dog food". That is, as individual OER projects fostering and promoting
openness, transparency and collaboration through self--organising and open
systems.

The OER landscape is characterised by project silos with very little
collaboration among OER initiatives. There is a high level of redundancy and
duplication of core resources used to support OER projects. For example,
funding proposals and grant applications are typically developed under
all-rights reserved copyright. Core policy documents and strategic meetings
associated with OER projects happen behind closed doors and not very
transparent.

IMHO, our strategic point of difference (when compared to closed models)
must be our openness.

Shouldn't we as the OER movement be more open and start eating our own dog
food? What can and should we collectively be doing to leverage our openness
for the benefit of society?

If we are serious about real social change let's make a shift towards open
philanthropy (Here I'd recommend reading Mark Surman's ideas on the concept
of open philanthropy -
http://commonspace.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/open-philanthropy-and-a-theory-of-change/
)

Cheers
Wayne




-- 
Wayne Mackintosh <http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg>, Ph.D.
Director OER Foundation <http://www.oerfoundation.org/>
Director, International Centre for Open Education,
Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.
Founder and elected Community Council Member,
Wikieducator<http://www.wikieducator.org/>
Mobile +64 21 2436 380
Skype: WGMNZ1
Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg
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