Pancake Bay, Lake Superior

Deep appreciation to David Wiley for underscoring misaligned incentives for OER adoption at the post secondary level. Having worked in K-12, I understand how powerful the direct link between savings and adoption. The link is removed when we move to post-secondary; educators expend effort to adopt | adapt an open resource and the learners are rewarded. Although ultimately well worth the effort, it is problematic.

At certain times, the rhetoric of open with its altruistic goals seems quite lofty ~ speaking from high up in the clouds. There must be an explanation for why the frankly no-brainer adoption of OER hasn’t swept through education. With their cost savings, collaborative nature, agency building, and embodiment of sunshine rules e.g., share, there must be many on the ground hurdles and hiccups why OER aren’t yet ingrained. 

Pancake Bay, Lake Superior

Hurdle 1

I write this week one into a strike (all faculty at the Ontario’s 24 community colleges are involved). Although the Union may have muddied the waters with multiple points of contention, my focus in the number of part time faculty ~ estimates vary but hover around 75%. The 75% of faculty are not compensated for: course development, assessment and evaluation, or learners’ issues outside of class e.g., answering emails, satisfying CAAPs, intra-group dispute resolution. Compounding these issues ~ they can be hired on Friday to teach on Monday. Here, the publisher is more saviour than pusher or villain, providing a life line and something around which to structure the next 14 weeks. If the educator is lucky enough to come up for air over the semester, it will be to attend a workshop on X to make Y easier, but not to explore an open alternative to the costly publisher’s text ~ especially since the educator may never touch or teach that course again.

If we continue to have educators parachuting in to deliver course content, the curation or creation of OER to build meaningful educational  environments and experiences for both learners and educators will remain out of reach.

Hiccup 1

I am bracing for the backlash… from my perspective, over a decade of assisting faculty colleagues across all 125 programs at the college in my position first as a Librarian and more recently as an Educational Designer (part ID, part curriculum designer) OER are more mature and accessible in some disciplines over others. I am not entering the quality debate, but not all programs have usable OER; they haven’t been developed. Reasons vary from Canadian perspective, more vocational focus of community college content, AODA compliance, etc. We haven’t yet reached the tipping point and may still need a bridge for some disciplines. This bridge would not only be for the resources themselves, but also for educators to more easily cross over ‘from the dark side into the light’. Affordable Course Content (ACC) through existing library resources could serve as the bridge. 

As strange as it seems to be writing this on the eve of Open Access Week, current library databases already paid for through learners’ ancillary fees should be used as course resources. The learners incur no additional fees for textbooks | course material and educators begin to learn the benefits of curation. Database discovery layers may not be perfect, but one place to perform a federated search for current and relevant content provides comfort to educators treading water in the sea of information. If it also boosts collaboration with the Library and respect for the skill set of Librarians, so be it!

It took me a few years working in education to realize that people don’t always embrace change. It may seem obvious to many, but for me it was truly difficult to sympathize as I tended to basically crave change. The current climate and conversation tends to pit pricey publishers against the omnipotent OER movement. This may be too shocking for many educators who need to wade in or scaffold up. ACC through existing, fee-based resources provide this gentle push away from publishers and toward OER. Ideally, this is temporary ground. When OER mature across all disciplines and awareness grows beyond the grassroots, ACC secedes to OER.

Clearing Hurdles and the Hiccups

With gratitude to individuals working hard to grow awareness and inform on the benefits of OER, it may be time in the life of OER for a more authority innovation decision ~ a move away from the grassroots to an organizational commitment. This is where all the elements of a social system, with its external influences e.g., government and internal influences e.g, students | student associations combine to normalize OER.

Unfortunately, from my perch within the community college system, there is still the highest of hurdles or most persistent of hiccups. The majority of administration in community colleges do not have qualifications in the field of education. Their primarily business backgrounds make the ethics and ethos surrounding OER a ‘tougher sell’.

300 Years to Return to the Start

Almost always copyright is cited as an important element to incentivizing creative work (that verb always causes shivers!). Therefore, the nod to its original purpose ~ to censor ~ was a refreshing add in the suggested readings. Copyright’s goal, first established 300 years ago, has come full circle. The London Company of Stationers worked on behalf of the government to control the printing and distribution of works. It doesn’t take much to peek behind the curtain and see the next evolution in copyright as equally enclosed. Statute of Anne granted the creator rights to sell ownership, but with one buying group, the publishers remained in control.  

Wiley, Siemens, and Trotter all underscored the differences in copyright law across geographical boundaries and highlighted differences of ownership in education. For the past decade, I have worked within the unfortunate boundary of my institution owning my creations. Just as Trotter delineated, I have been free to use OER in my work, but have not been allowed to license my creation under Creative Commons. This is after conversations with two different Presidents and the countless pre-meetings with other layers of administration it took to get those two meetings. Many of Ontario’s community colleges are actively seeking to re-packaged content and sell it to other institutions. Here we retread the ground of academic journal publishing. Ministry | public funds support community colleges and yet colleges seek to turn around and sell publicly funded material to private organizations and, in many cases, back to the public. This money does not return to a general funding pot to sustain quality education across the community college landscape. The glaring ethical issues have somehow escaped the radar. In many cases, colleges’ output also competes with local businesses. My own department’s administration has spent, what to me is, an inordinate amount of meeting time brainstorming how to package what we create for ‘resale’.  I would say “luckily they haven’t figured out a sustainable model”, but that negates the money wasted on what I would deem as unethical conversations.

Don’t gussy up the geese!

I set this scene to bring up an interesting aspect of Canadian (and perhaps other countries’ excluding the US) copyright law ~ moral rights. Here is where we separate out the creator and the owner of copyright. Even though I may not be the holder of work’s copyright, I retain moral rights. I can assert these moral rights to safeguard not only my attribution but the association and integrity of the work. I wonder is this is an avenue to investigate? More than likely the argued infringement of educators’ moral rights wouldn’t meet the threshold, but it might start interesting conversations.

The Tipping Point

And now off on another tangent… the remix | mashup dilemma. Lessig’s points in RIP: A remix manifesto really hit home ~ the exact steps an author takes to create an academic article or book borrowing material from other authors, citing them, contributing a new insight (fingers crossed!) and then publishing is illegal with other media.

This 5/4 time fav is technically illegal, but I love it so:

It’s difficult not to go down the rabbit hole here. Any idea we use to create something owes a great deal to multiple other sources that came before our lightbulb. The large majority of us are just mashing and mixing nuggets ~ making connections across disciplines, re-interpreting across centuries, or linking from other languages to make our discoveries | power our lightbulbs. We are standing on the shoulders of a long stack of giants.

I had hoped that jotting down some thoughts on this week’s content might help solidify, but I remain in those muddy weeds…

I have no turkey to prep; I think I am actually going to make pizza for Thanksgiving dinner. This leaves me with some extra time on my hands – not always a good thing!

I have been mulling over and eventually mashing up a few unconnected posts from the past week.

1. George Siemens’s comment to my colleague, Terry Greene, “Canada has been slow on several fronts for open education”.
2. Terry’s own earnest and appreciative “Looking at stars” post declaring, “When people teach and learn in the open we can see those heroes of learning”.
3. My short rolling credits kudo | gentle shaming for those not on the list highlighting the superheroes of open textbook adoption in Ontario. [This post will underline my erroneous label of superhero, but I am not changing the video!]

@eCampusOntario High 5s in the hallway (if that’s still cool) for educators choosing open texts & saving learners money! pic.twitter.com/7BExkqfjJH

— peg french (@livingkatstone) October 5, 2017

What jumped out for whatever reason (well, I did see Kingsman: The Golden Circle this weekend, too) was the idea of hero versus superhero. Full disclaimer movies based on comics is where it starts and ends for me: I have never read a superhero comic book; I have never attended a Con of comics; I have never dressed as a superhero for Halloween.  

To my mind, a major difference between the hero and superhero is identity. The former’s is most often out in the open, while the latter remains hidden. In fact, unmasking the superhero is not singularly freeing, it often precipitates greater problems ~ internal turmoil as well as external complications and hardships. Now, bringing it back to reality…

Terry highlighted heroes of open and I do not dare dispute his list; it is packed with remarkable people. But I wonder about the number of superheroes mightily, but in quiet grace, contributing to the same ideals? This aligns more to Siemens’s remark about Ontario being behind. Perhaps in our formal cohesion of open education initiatives we appear behind, but I would venture there are countless Ontario open superheroes sharing across the province. Plus, we now have David Porter, and any perceived surface gap will undoubtedly close at the speed of light. Does that make David The Flash? I will have to run that by him…

I don’t have the right to unmask, but I have the privilege of knowing some of these superheroes of education.

With the greatest admiration for Amy Collier, I want to care like Charlene. You won’t find her at conferences or blogging. After tirelessly educating and protecting the most vulnerable in society each and every day, she retreats to her home sanctuary. There, any spare money that could fund a conference or new technology is spent fostering abused and neglected animals. And yes, she ends up adopting the ones that cannot be placed – another reason she’s not able to fly off to conferences and connect.

CogDog is still to be commended for his creativity, connecting, and comic touch, but I want to share like Dave. His boundless and bottomless tech talent keeps so many balls in the air and bits and bytes flowing. He honestly has no idea how remarkable he truly is and how much better we all perform and grow because of him. He gets out from behind his hide, but not to conference or keynote ~ it’s to cycle the globe, couch surf, and even fly out to help a friend camp across country when returning (yet again) from a prolonged western adventure. More recently, his efforts channel into step-dad-ding and partnering while still coding and patching his heart out to facilitate the needs and wants of others.    

Jesse Stommel was new to me, but I understand and underwrite the nod after investigation. But I want to teach like Keith. He always embraced the toughest teaching assignments and managed to reach learners who were in danger ~ at the precipice. He not only re-imagined education in theory as so many of us can do, he remade it into reality. From family classes, where multiple grades collaborated and learned across curricula to ensuring the arts were injected into every lesson. Even after a double amputation and into retirement, Keith volunteers to inspire.

You will have never heard of my superheroes, who share their ideas, time, and passion. Indeed, people working in their orbits likely don’t know of their superpower combo of kindness and brilliance. And they wouldn’t want it any other way. As much as we need our heroes, those sharing out in the open, we need the superheroes, too.  And as these heroes work out in the open, I guarantee that these and other superheroes in education are continuing to answer the call | bat signal | spidey senses | etc. in their own way. It is worth remembering for every star out on stage and in the limelight, there are similarly talented people working away in the shadows. But since this is veering off into another metaphor, it’s time to stop.

However, now that I am now on a superhero kick, I will end by using the superhero name generator to uncover my superpower.

I am Doctor Random:

“You were a seemingly normal university professor – until you cracked a seemingly impossible mathematical conundrum, a feat that unlocked strange and bizarre abilities for you! Now, you lead a team of heroes while also searching for the true meaning of the formula that changed you!

Probability Adjustment is my superpower – Your powers give you the ability to manipulate and control probabilities, meaning that you have a seemingly-supernatural level of luck!”

“Free as in speech, not beer.”

But I would like to unpack it slightly differently from its common understanding in the open world. The “free” here involves work and a commitment. Witnessed at an alarming rate these past few months, free speech is no longer a guaranteed right. If we are to well, right the right to public discourse, there will be major effort involved.

Open education, to collaboratively and collectively increase knowledge, also takes work and dedication. You are committing to an idea, a resource, a development that is never finished. From all the subtle differences in the derivations of open, here we use the one connoting not finally settled, unresolved, open ended. If we revert to the software lingo ~ always in beta.

You either open your own work [read: blood, sweat, and tears] for others to not only use, but potentially dismantle, reconfigure, and | or rebuild or | and you take on the responsibility of using, perhaps remixing the blood, swears, and tears of another while still respecting the original. [Apologies for so many conjunctions.] Both scenarios can be scary as hell.

[Mr. Terry Greene caught my typo or Freudian slip – “sweat” not “swear”, but upon reflection, I let it stand. Heck, there’s a fair bit of internal cursing involved in education creation and curation!]

The alternative is less scary, but too stationary. If we go to the binary opposites again, closed or ‘unshareable’ | immutable seems more secure. But if there is nowhere to go, there is no way to grow.

As open as I have been to sharing any course resource I build, any assessment I craft, any discussion challenges I conceive, for the past decade this sharing has all been behind the walls of an LMS and a Canadian community college. As much as I pushed CC licensing and Copyleft, I couldn’t be truly open, because technically, I did not ‘own’ the work. So here I sit, perhaps perched next to Schroedinger’s cat both open and closed. I am anxious to see if current experiences and my ability to summon enough bravery land me on the right side of the fence.