[Oer-community] Wrapping up the conversation

[Fred Beshears]

I'd like to respond to Douglas Tedford's question:
"OER is essential for fomenting the actualization of economic, academic,
intellectual potential in Latin Am's C and D (lower- and under-) classes but
seems to be a potential enemy to for-profit onsite and online universities.
How will the two harmonize?  A major and complex question."


One answer is that sometimes competition is a good thing, and too much
cooperation is a bad thing.

In his classic book, The Logic of Collective Action, Mancur Olson argues
that distributional coalitions (aka special interest groups) attempt to
increase, or at least maintain, the size of their slice of the economic pie
by resisting innovation.

There are several distributional coalitions in education: teachers, profit
seeking organizations, and grant seeking organizations.

Teachers are not adverse to all technological innovations. For example, few
if any teachers would be adverse to the idea of using a spread sheet to keep
track of grades. But, in general, teachers have been adverse to the idea of
lecture videos replacing live lectures. I discuss this in my blog post on
the High Tech Small Study Group Saga at UC Berkeley:
http://innovationmemes.blogspot.com/2010/09/high-tech-small-study-group-saga.html

In addition to resisting the idea of using Tutored Video Instruction, the
Berkeley faculty (in general) were also adverse to other similar ideas for
moving away from large lecture classes. My group, the Instructional
Technology Program, brought in quest speakers from other schools such as
Eric Mazur from Harvard, who talked about peer instruction, and Joe Redish
who along with Jack Wilson had developed something they called the studio
course model. Both of these presenters proposed ideas similar to TVI - i.e.
breaking large lectures into small groups and providing the groups with
online instructional material - but we were never able to get the faculty -
as a whole - to buy into any of these idea. It's a very sad state of
affairs.

In some ways, I'm happy to see for-profit schools trying to give traditional
universities some competition. And, when I hear faculty complaining about
these companies, I tend to see them as a distributional coalition trying to
defend their turf. The faculty claim that these companies are trying to
de-skill the work of professors by trying to turn the sage on the stage into
a mere guide on the side. When I hear this argument, I think to myself:
we've known for a long time that we can replicate the learning outcomes of a
live lecture with a recording of that lecture, but we're still not able to
replicate the work of a skilled tutor.

Aside from teachers, the other distributional coalitions that resist
innovation are: a) publishers and authors that sell learning materials and
b) non-profit groups that seek grants.

For profit textbook publishers are very adverse to the idea that textbooks
should be public goods paid for by taxpayer dollars and non-profit grant
funding. This idea is covered in my blog post the case for creative commons
textbooks:
http://innovationmemes.blogspot.com/2010/09/case-for-creative-commons-textbooks.html

Finally, non-profit groups with a particular business model compete for
grants with other non-profit group with different business models and
individuals that offer up ideas and business models. In order for a group to
attract member participation, it has to offer something to the members to
gain their support. Ideally, members will participate out of the goodness of
their hearts, but many potential members who would benefit from whatever
public good the group produces will refrain from doing so. They become "free
riders" who gain the benefits of the public good, but don't pay their dues.

So, in the case of groups involved with the OER movement, some content
authors and others participate out of the goodness of their hearts, others
want to get a job paid for by grant money, and there may even be some who
participate because they think OER content will undermine those pesky
distance education and other for-profit schools that are trying to compete
with traditional institutions of higher education.

As for myself, especially now that I've retired I like to think of myself as
a Rebel Without a Constituency.

It sounds something like the old James Dean movie Rebel without a Cause, but
in my case I have a cause - I want to improve the quality of education and I
want to reduce its cost - but I'm afraid I tend to alienate all those who
might form a constituency by talking frankly, perhaps too frankly, about the
motives of the distributional coalitions that are involved with education.
So, the trouble with being a Rebel Without a Constituency is that even
though you get to speak your mind, you can't really get much done.
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