Week 9: Elective Reading Synopses

QUESTIONS: What can the open education movement learn from the book you chose to read? Elaborate on at least three points. Which of the ideas presented in the book did you find hardest to believe or agree with? Why?

First of all, I am sorry for posting this a little late (it is Tuesday). I have spent last week at AECT where I presented twice (with Dr. Jay Harriman and with Dr. Robert Maribe Branch). Unfortunately, I also got sick due to the air conditions in California. I was not able to complete the week reading until today. Sorry if this caused incovenience to someone else. I guess that it still fine to publish my post today (is anyone out there reading it, after all? :-)). I do not like to be late and just wanted to justify. Hopefully, it will be fine - I have contacted the instructor by e-mail on this matter, but did not receive a response so far.

The book that I chose is this: Coase’s Penguin, or, Linux and The Nature of the Firm, by Yochai Benkler. I have finished reading this book with an overall good impression about it. It does not bring a dull language (except in rare cases when the discussion gets too much into the realms of business and management) and the author gets straight to the point the he wants to make (pretty much like my own writting style).

The book investigates the phenomenon of large-scalle collaboration systems (peer collaboration) and as the author explains, this endeavour is "intended solely to define the phenomenon and assess its sustainability and welfare effects in general terms." Against all old economical beliefs, this type of collaboration has survived and flourished, reaching sustainability. The author constantly contrasts this new kind of "business" with the traditional commercial types of firms. This new collaborative system has posed challenges to the old organization theory and represents a new cultural production system.
I guess that the open education movement can learn a lot about motivational issues with this book, since it analyzes why people are motivated to collaborate for non-profit reasons. Also, it analyzes why the large-scale collaboration systems can be sustainable. Sustainability here is due to these factors, according to the author: modular work, granularity and low cost integration.
As for motivation, there are social and psychological gains that money does provide. Well, this is not a new concept in this course, but the book analyzes in detail how this occurs in comparison to the traditional types of business. The author states:

"We see similar social-psychological reward structures to reward and motivate participation in other practices that produce high positive externalities that would be difficult fully to compensate in monetary terms, like teaching; military service; or uncorrupt political, cultural, or spiritual leadership. Similarly, to the extent that peer production can harness motivations that do not require monetization of the contribution, the information produced using this model can be released freely, avoiding the inefficiencies associated with the public goods problem of information."

Motivation is also tied to the new cultural approach that has emmerged with peer-collaboration: the decision-making process got decentralized, for instance, what makes individuals free to create and to identify the tasks that they would like to perform. Is there a better thing than not having a boss or a supervisor (who might ultimately know less than you?). In my opinion, this factor is the most attractive one. Also, since you become part of a community, you are instigated to create more and more. Peer-review works in this process works as a means to reach relevance and accreditation. "Pleasure of creation" can be another factor tied to motivation, but this one alone may not be the reality of the majority of the participants. This is hard to believe, since I know that some collaborative projects also attract many young people in the academy who are willing to gain experience which is difficult to reach in more traditional settings. This is vey good, really. Free software production is a good example.
Motivation, however, can suffer "threats". The author points some circumstances in whice the threats can occur: failure of integration and unilateral appropriation. The worst case of unilateral appropriation may be when one makes private monetary profit with the work that has been collaboratively developed. Another scenario is when someone's contribution is not integrated properly into the whole project, changing its quality.
Identification and proper allocation of human creativity are the strong features of large-scalle collaborative systems. I think that it takes more than a business and management analysis to fully understand the growth of this phenomenon.

Week 8: Economic Models of Open Education

QUESTIONS: How can you build a sustainable business around giving away educational materials? How can you build a sustainable business model around giving away credentialed degrees? Should governments fund open education? (Do they already?)

The readings this week brought nice discussions on the concept of OER sustainability. I will cite here the definition that I thought was more complete and concise - According to Wiley (2007), sustainability is "(...) an open educational resource project's ongoing ability to meet its goals." Also, it is important to highlight that these goals are related to other issues, as mentioned by Koohang & Harman, 2007: "instructional design and presentation; cost of production and maintenance; support; and OER communities of practice as relate of scalability." Building sustainability must take into account those issues and may follow different funding models, according to particular circumstances and needs. Another point to consider is that the costs involved can be met with resources other than money, merely.
Although the resources arrive free of cost to the users (I do not particularly like the term "user" in educational context, but I will use it for a broader, general sense here) it does not mean that their production, delivery and review process are for free, as well. Funding can occur through diverse means.
Wiley (2007) cites different OER business models: MIT, USU and Rice. Wiley also cites different funding models - endowment, membership, donations, sponsorship, conversion, contributor-pay, institutional, government. These models point to different possibilities of OER sustainability.
As for the sustainability of giving away credentialed degrees, Downes mentions the co-development model (and he cites some innitiatives that involve Brazil). This model seems to be ideal and it makes reference to the community of users. Just a quick note here: this partnership model always seems to benefit one side better than the other, as I know from experience.
Should governments fund open education? Yes, sure, and some are already doing it. The Brazilian federal government has funded a nation-wide learning objects project through the Ministry of Education that is being developed by many public universities throughout the country. This project will make learning objects available for public fundamental education.

Week 7: Licensing Open Educational Resources

QUESTIONS: Can you think of license options that CC is currently missing that would benefit the open education movement? As the CC and GFDL licenses are incompatible, how can OCW content be legally remixed with Wikipedia content? Some people claim that the Creative Commons ShareAlike clause provides most of the protections people want to secure from the Creative Commons NonCommercial clause. What do you think these people mean, are they right, and why? Is copyleft good for the open education movement? Why or why not?

All right, before I start with the answers, some comments: As I was returning from Brazil this weekend where I attended the IVLA (International Visual Literacy Association) conference I saw inside the airplane (TAM) that they had this Brazilian Popular Culture Almanac (printed magazine). It is a very interesting publication and I noticed that it is under the Creative Commons license. The license restricts commercial reproduction of content and asks for contact in case someone wishes to do so. Right then I noticed that it really is a "some rights reserved" copyright.
Also, as I watched the video that mentions Brazilian musician (and politician) Gilberto Gil I was not surprised about his innitiative reported in the video ("take a bit and make it new"). Gilberto Gil is tunned with the Internet era and has many works that reflect on the changes in culture trigged by the new information society. Talking about culture, he is the current Minister of Culture in Brazil. He is in his second term (along with the president who got reelected) and could manage with the president to maintain some of his musical agenda. Gilberto Gil was also the mayor of Salvador( capital of the state of Bahia) some years ago. So, he is very much connected to the world of culture and its relation with politics.

It seems to me that CC is missing a lot in relation to free sharing of instructional resources. It seems to work well with cultural products, though. I got the impression from one of the videos that it can be customized, am I wrong?
CC is still very restrictive, still retains copyright, although it allows certain uses of the work. This is what keeps it from being fully in sync with the open education movement. It uses the term "free" in a monetary sense. It would benefit Open Education if it waived the restrictions on commercial uses and also on credits.
Wikipedia content is commited with free (in the sense of personal liberty) content version of education. The remix mentioned in the question would only happen under a share-alike provision of CC.
Well, those who claim that "the Creative Commons ShareAlike clause provides most of the protections people want to secure from the Creative Commons NonCommercial clause" might be wrong since CC allows for collaboration, use, sharing etc but at a certain extent. It is clear in keeping the non-commercial clause.
As for copyleft, which came from free documentation of software, it is good for the Open Education movement. It meets the free content definition and has the share-alike provision. Copyleft understands free in the sense of liberty and not in monetary grounds.

Week 6: Background Readings in Copyright and the Public Domain

QUESTIONS: Understanding the importance and value of the public domain, how much (what percentage) of this value would you estimate is realized when works are licensed with a Creative Commons or GFDL license? To what degree would the open educational resources movement (and therefore the world) be additionally benefited if OERs were simply placed in the public domain? Please explain.

The world of Copyright is so tricky. Well, I guess that the more I read about it the more I get confused, really. There are many details and situations to consider. But I think that Carroll and Pollock did a nice job trying to make the concepts digestible. I particularly liked Pollock's work "The Value of The Public Domain". It includes a nice discussion about on-line file sharing.
I also read on the Wikipedia about Creative Commons and I agree with this statement from Lawrence Lessig (founder of Creative Commons) about the dominant and restrictive permission culture: "(..) it is "a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past". Lessig maintains that modern culture is dominated by traditional content distributors in order to maintain and strengthen their monopolies on cultural products (...)."
We live in a world that is so restrictive about the sharing of intelectual products. And it is not different from most anything that exists, actually.
Most of what we read deals with the conditions in the developed world. But what happens when we consider other places with more unstable economies? Brazil, for instance, and as far as I understand at least, also has similar copyright regulations. But there is equally as much confusion in relation to this issue. I will talk about a scenario that I have observed there:
It is common for someone at a bar or at a beach tent (yes, in Brazil we have tents on the beach where you can get food and drinks, isn't it wonderful?) to be approached by a vendor (usually someone who is currently unemployed and survives through the informal market) trying to sell illegal copies of music CDs or movie DVDs for far much less than what they are sold in the stores. My question is: since the minimum wage is too low, how can one buy an expensive CD or DVD at the store? I am not in favor of "piracy", but of course it is impossible for someone with a low income to spend a lot in order to purchase CDs. This is how piracy survives in deloping countries. The phonographic industry has not been able so far to propose intelligent fair solutions for this situation. Yes, they have come up with measures that are even more restrictive (seals, for instance). There are campaigns that explain the costs and people involved in the development of CDs, but all they try to do is to share the common sense of "guilt" among the population in case one buys a "pirate" product (illegal one).
Also, I asked once at a video rent place (something like Blockbuster) what they consider illegal reproduction of a DVD. They told me that if you copy a DVD for personal use only this is not considered a crime, but if you make many copies and sell them this is an illegal act. Well, I am sure that the situation is more complicated than this. It is hard to determine fair use. For instance, is it really fair use to copy something for educational purposes?
I mean, it is just so easy to deal with this situation in a simplistic way, calling it a crime to copy and distribute materials among the poverty.
Now back to the main question of the week: as I read on the Wikipedia "The Creative Commons licenses enable copyright holders to grant some or all of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information. The project provides several free licenses that copyright owners can use when releasing their works on the Web. It also provides RDF/XML metadata that describes the license and the work, making it easier to automatically process and locate licensed works. Creative Commons also provides a "Founders' Copyright"^[1] contract, intended to re-create the effects of the original U.S. Copyright created by the founders of the U.S. Constitution."
Well, if it is really so, then I think it is very nice. But I am not so sure of how much it can also be restrictive. It seems to me that it is still somewhat restrictive.
I understand the principles of the public domain better. The world would greatly benefit from measures that would grant OERs to be placed in the public domain. In the words of Pollock (2006), the public domain is "synonymous with ‘open’ knowledge, that is, all ideas and information that can be freely used, redistributed and reused." So, I think that the public domain broadens the scope of materials that can freely shared and reused and also it solves the problem of limits and barriers.