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

Sudhakar Agarkar s_agarkar at hotmail.com
Tue Oct 12 00:26:58 MDT 2010


Dear Wyne

I agree with you that we still have a long way to go in the OER movement. We are still clinging to the idea of copyrighted and peer reviewed material. You have rightly said that we need to move from sharing to learn to learning to share.

In India I am engaged in developing open educational resources for schools. I am focusing on all three stakeholders namely students, teachers and parents. I am finding it difficult to get suitable material for my project. There are only a few persons who are ready to share their manuscripts. A large majority are concerned with the copyright and the honorarium that they would get.

Making OER a sustainable movement is a challenge. I am sure we would be able to face it successfully.

Dr. Sudhakar Agarkar
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Mankhurd, Mumbai 400 088
Tel: +91-22-2507-2209
Mob: +91-8097-27-4097  

Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:25:44 +1300
From: wayne at oerfoundation.org
Subject: [Oer-community] In fields like OER -- Shouldn't we eat our own dog	food?
To: oer-community at athabascau.ca

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, Ph.D. 
Director OER Foundation

Director, International Centre for Open Education,
Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand.
Founder and elected Community Council Member, Wikieducator
Mobile +64 21 2436 380

Skype: WGMNZ1
Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg 


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