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

[Paul Stacey]

Wayne: 

First of all let me join others in expressing appreciation for the efforts of the Open Education Resource Foundation in furthering the field. 
I notice you referenced my opening remark and I'd like to raise it again. 

I'm making one simple recommendation which I believe will result in OER sustainability, financial return, and tremendous academic benefits. For OER to make the transition to mainstream we must see institutions like MIT, UKOU, Athabasca, and ideally all others who develop academic curricula use OER that have been developed outside their institution as part of the for-credit credential opportunities they are offering. If this one thing was to occur OER would make the transition to becoming an integral part of education practice. 

If you look at the OER field overall, and the highly cited initiatives in particular, one thing becomes clear. There is a great willingness to author OER but there is a huge reluctance to reuse anyone elses OER. Don't get me wrong I admire MIT's OCW, Conexxions, UKOU's Open Learn and all the others but I don't think they've fully embraced the OER field. They are encumbered by a "not-invented here" syndrome where OER developed anywhere else except at that institution cannnot possibly be as good as what has been developed in house. OER is as much about reusing resources others have created as much as it is publishing your own. For me the early leadership I saw exemplified by institutions like MIT is being lost by their failure to embrace the reuse aspect of what OER have to offer. Let me also be explicit about what I'm calling for here. I'm calling for higher education institutions to reuse OER others have created in their "for-credit" offerings that lead to a credential. If we start to see institutions using each others OER in for-credit offerings we'll really start to see things start to make a lot of economic, societal and academic sense. 

Paul 





From: "Wayne Mackintosh" <wayne at oerfoundation.org> 
To: oer-community at athabascau.ca 
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2010 1:25:44 PM 
Subject: [Oer-community] In fields like OER -- Shouldn't we eat our own dog food? 

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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