Open Access: It’s All About the Money?

I am planning to revisit some of the topics covered in the open courseware and open educational resources topics for #ioe12, but I’m reluctant to get too behind so I’ll save that for a later date.

The next ‘open’ on the list is open access.

Open Access 101, from SPARC

The Open Access 101 video by SPARC gives a quick overview of open access and the contentious financial issues it raises.

The best known definition of open access (OA) is from the Budapest Open Access Initiative:

“By open access, we mean its immediate, free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software or use them for any other lawful purpose.”

As is always the case definitions vary and I’d say it is the use area that is the contentious one here. Some people view open access as being purely about access, while others see there as being more to it (open licences etc.) The OA introductory article written by Peter Suber focuses on open access to peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints.

“Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. OA removes price barriers (subscriptions, licensing fees, pay-per-view fees) and permission barriers (most copyright and licensing restrictions).“

There are different degrees to this but the key is the removal of legal, financial and technical barriers. There also seems to be emphasis on use of open licences to support this, and it should not involve copyright infringement.

“The legal basis of OA is the consent of the copyright holder (for newer literature) or the expiration of copyright (for older literature). The campaign for OA focuses on literature that authors give to the world without expectation of payment.“

It is pointed out that “OA is a kind of access, not a kind of business model, license, or content. ” OA delivery mechanisms are more likely to allow the author to retain copyright – many commercial journals will often ask authors to transfer copyright to a publisher.

“Many OA initiatives focus on publicly-funded research. OA literature is not free to produce or publish. OA is compatible with peer review, and all the major OA initiatives for scientific and scholarly literature insist on its importance.“

The Higher Education institution open access movement is the one I’m most familiar with, especially work of advocates like Stevan Harnad. A long while ago I project managed the ePrintsUK project which developed a series of national, discipline-focused services for access to e-print papers available from national compliant Open Archive repositories. I worked with the SHERPA project which now seems to be a partnership of research-led institutions, all with practical experience of building and populating eprint repositories.

Suber explains that there are two primary vehicles for delivering OA to research articles, OA journals (“gold OA”) and OA repositories (“green OA”). He goes on to explain the different business models behind these. Some use “author pays” approach (the fees are often paid by author-sponsors (employers or funders) or waived) while others have a subsidy from a university or professional society. OA journals can get by on lower subsidies or fees if they have income from other publications, advertising, priced add-ons, or auxiliary services. The OA movement has attempted to be seen as ‘constructive, rather than destructive’ in their criticism of the traditional publishing models. However, over the years, there has been significant resistance from traditional scholarly journal publishers.

The other resources listed in the module include the SPARC perspective. SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system. They provide a list of links and resources for those interested in pursuing open access publication or advocating for open access to others in the academic community. The Global Open Access Portal (GOAP) which gives a current snapshot of the status of Open Access (OA) to scientific information around the world. The UK entry gives details of relevant organisations and research council policies on OA. There are also details of open access week (22- 28 October 2012) and links to the Directory of Open Access Journals.

To finish off there is a nice statistical summary of 2011 by Heather Morrison, Simon Fraser University School of Communication, who calls it ‘the year of open’. It does certainly seem that way: “There are over 7,000 peer-reviewed fully open access journals as listed in the DOAJ, still growing by 4 titles per day“. Noted journals include PLoS ONE, PubMedCentral, arXiv, RePEC, and E-LIS. It seems that there are “over 2,000 repositories, linking to more than 30 million items, growing at the rate of 21 thousand items per day“. For many the open access model is the only way forward and this requires some people to do a lot of rethinking.

Openness in Education

It did seem very timely to be thinking about Open Educational Resources in Open Education Week #openeducationwk. Unfortunately while the thinking went on in Open Education Week, the writing has gone on in this week, and still isn’t really finished! Nevertheless there were some great blog posts and promoted resources on related topics here in the UK last week and I’d like to start off by listing a few of my favourites:

• Open Educational Resources Timeline:
  http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/othervoices/2012/02/13/open-educational-resources-timeline/
• JISC released a series of Open education – case studies
  http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/topics/opentechnologies/openeducation.aspx
• Hacking the university – Lincoln’s approach to openness – an article on the Student as Producer project
  http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/topics/opentechnologies/openeducation/lincoln-university-summary.aspx
• The Economics of Open – blog post by Paul Stacey on the business case for OER
  http://edtechfrontier.com/2012/03/04/the-economics-of-open/
• Openedspace – by Amber Thomas with some great diagrams of an open educational space (a series of 3, along with David and Lawrie
  http://amberthomas.typepad.com/fragments/2012/03/openedspace.html
• my #openedspace- by David Kernohan
  http://followersoftheapocalyp.se/my-openedspace
• My #OpenEdSpace by Lawrie Phipps
  http://lawrie.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2012/03/05/my-openedspace/

The ioe12 module on open educational resources starts of with a TED talk by David Wiley (he pops up a lot, I guess it is his course!) where he defines the idea of openness: “it’s moving away from the toddler in you where you scream “mine, mine’!!” Wiley explains that it’s all about sharing, because without sharing there is no education. A successful educator is one who shares the most with their students. Knowledge is non-rivalrous, i.e. you can share part of yourself without loosing part of yourself.

As Thomas Jefferson said “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.“

While knowledge is non-rivalrous, resources and content can be. David takes a look at the invention of the printing press and compares it with the current advancement of new technology. He sees education as being on the brink of reformation and openness is the missing element. Access to education needs to improve. There has been a collision between powerful new media (i.e. the internet), ravenous demand for education and outdated thinking by educators about the content of material. We need to learn the lessons of the reformation and be more open. “The only proper role for technology in education is to increase our capacity to be generous“

There were quite a lot of other resources in this module and the majority of them have been squirreled away by me for a long train journey I have coming up. Once I’ve digested the lot I hope to write a more comprehensive post. The resources include a paper by Yochai Benkler entitled Common Wisdom: Peer Production of Educational Materials. Benkler talks about the vast pool of human talent the Internet has given us access to. There has been a deep transformation in the digitally networked environment, and in the information economy and society. Benker states that “the critical change is that social production based on commons, rather than property, has become a significant force in the economy.” In his paper Benkler looks at textbooks and other educational resources and decides whether they are amenable to peer production, what are the barriers and what strategies could facilitate wider development of educational resources in a commons-based and peer production model.

I’ve yet to get my head round the true opportunities and challenges relating to OER. The Jan Hylén lists the 5 main arguments for institutional involvement in OER:

1. Altruism – sharing knowledge is a good thing to do and also in line with academic traditions
2. Public Money – Educational institutions should leverage on taxpayers’ money by allowing free sharing and reuse of resources developed by publicly funded institutions
3. Enrichment – What you give, you receive back improved
4. Reputation – it is good for public relations and can function as a show-window attracting new students
5. Diversifying – Need to look for new business models, new ways of making revenue.

There are a couple of big questions starting to surface here, firstly ‘who pays? What is the business model? What are the economics of information?’ and secondly ‘what about quality? Is quality better in an open educational environment or a closed one?’

I intend to write more on this topic as soon as I get the time.

Keeping the Magic: Open Course Ware

My next #ioe12 module is on Open Course Ware – a term applied to course materials created by Institutions and shared freely via the internet. Although some higher education institutions had been releasing videos and content online since the 1990s it was the MITs launch of their materials that really brought the practice to the masses and began use of the term.

The video resource from the module is the MIT press conference held on April 4, 2001 when MIT released their first instalment of OpenCourseWare. I can actually remember hearing about this at the time (quite scary that it’s now over 11 years old!) MIT courses were the first to be offered using the open courseware model and I’ve used them as an exemplar example many times when presenting on Creative Commons. MIT committed itself to delivering open courses for 10 years in an innovative way that widens access and improved education.

The MIT OCW project uses Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license and the program was originally funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and MIT. They now use more video lectures and many video and audio files are also available from iTunes U.

It is really refreshing to hear senior people on the committee talk about how their concerns were not about money but about quality of the materials delivered and whether MIT would be able to support the programme. They are very keen to state that for MIT it is not about ‘selling courses for profit’ but about how you disseminate and create human knowledge – that fundamental value aligned well with distributing open course ware.

Right now, when education seems to be increasingly about budgets and bank notes, this back-to-basics approach in education reminds me of why I’ve always been interested in education. As one of the panel explains: distributing raw material makes you ask some big questions – “what happens in the classroom now?” Hopefully the answer is “that is still where the magic happens.” OCW combines the traditional openness of education and the ability of the Web to make resources available to many. For MIT it was not about providing a course but about delivering materials on the Web. The plan was that allowing the resources to be delivered in this way would encourage more collaboration. Also by providing a window into MIT it would result in more people wanting to enroll at MIT.

I’m interested in open course ware from a two different angles – firstly the open angle, secondly the ‘flipping lectures on their head’ pedagodgy idea. I’ve touched on this in some of the amplified event work I’ve carried out and when talking about lecture capture software (such as Ponopto). This is the idea that you use technologies such as video to record lectures and talks and use these as a precursor for a seminar – in which you actually work together, rather than sitting and watching someone talk. Because when you get together in the classroom, this should be where the magic happens…

OER Commons Celebrates First Annual Open Education Week, March 5-10, 2012

Massive Open Online Course crib sheet

I found the above Massive Open Online Course crib sheet on Flickr. It was created for a workshop being presented at ISTE 2011 on using a MOOC model for professional.

The Meaning of Open Content #ioe12

I have to admit to breathing a sigh of relief at the smaller number of resources given for the Open Content module on the Introduction to Openness in Education course. An opportunity to make up some time?

The Wikipedia article gave a good overview (open content is a creative work that others can copy or modify). The term initially referred to works licensed under the open content licence but now covers a “broader class of content without conventional copyright restrictions.“. Basically any items that can be reused, revised, remixed and redistributed (the 4Rs Framework) by members of the public.

It’s important to note that the concept is a different one from free content, which is content that “has no significant legal restriction on people’s freedom“. I would interpret the difference as being around the area of commercial use, and free content being in the public domain, but then the wikipedia entry goes on to say that:

“Although different definitions are used, free content is legally similar if not identical to open content. An analogy is the use of the rival terms free software and open source which describe ideological differences rather than legal ones.“

It’s a very hazy area…and I’m getting a little confused!

It seems that the terms are changing in meaning and “openness is a ‘continuous
construct’“. Nevertheless the basic idea is that open content is out there to be used by anyone, though not necessarily in any way they chose.

The Wiley article explores this further:

“What does “open” mean? The word has different meanings in different contexts. Our commonsense, every day experience teaches us that “open” is a continuous (not binary) construct. A door can be wide open, mostly open, cracked slightly open, or completely closed. So can your eyes, so can a window, etc. “

The video resource was interesting as back ground knowledge – David Wiley talking about 10 years of open content at the iSummit conference in 2008. Open content’s roots are in the open source movement and spring from a moment when David Wiley realised, while working on an online calculator, that “Digital content is magic because it is non-rivalrous“. He then decided that he wanted to make an open licence for materials and discussed it with open source gurus who insisted that he decided between ‘free’ and ‘open’ – he opted for ‘open’ and created the open content licence, which he later developed into the open publication licence. He admits the licences were a good idea but poorly executed, however they did allow Lessig and co to learn from his mistakes and create the Creative Commons movement. Wiley concludes with some of the current issues with CC licences, such as remixing licences, compatibility issues, and future work.

It appears that it is incredibly difficult to understand the terms used in the open movement without understanding some history and background. In the post on open source (Open Sourcing for #ioe12) I asked some rhetorical questions at the end (areas I’d like to explore more). I said “Do the people who (now) use open source software and openly licensed materials care about the ideology behind their resources?” Unless they look back at the history behind these ideas they’d struggle to understand the concepts anyway, Hmmm, it all requires a lot of effort, is there no such thing as a free lunch?

Open Sourcing for #ioe12

“Open Source: of or relating to or being computer software for which the source code is freely available.“

I don’t develop software and I don’t install software (apart from on my own machine with the click of a button) but the concept of open source is one I feel fairly at home with. A few years back I ran a couple of Creative Commons workshops (introducing people to the concept) and I got Randy Metcalfe, former manager of OSS Watch, along for support. Randy talked about the copyleft principle while I concentrated on the CC licences.

OSS Watch was launched in 2003. Since then it has done a fantastic job of supporting (they say they are not an advocacy group) the use of open source licences and helping institutions and projects who are using or developing free and open source software. JISC often mandates use of open source licences on software developed using its funding. Open source is no longer that scary, techy thing it used to be.

The open source module on the Introduction to Openness in Education course includes many of the key pieces of work on open source including the seminal work the Cathedral and the Bazaar.

The Revolution OS video gives the history of open source and an introduction to the ideology behind it (one of hacking, activism, relinquishing of control, moving away from ownership etc.) and is definitely worth a watch. Some key interviews from open source advocates including:

• Richard Stallman – Software freedom activist, pioneer of copyleft.
• Eric Raymond – Author of the Cathedral and the Bazaar, co-founded of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).
• Linus Torvalds – Developer of the Linux Operating System.
• Bruce Perens – Co-founded of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

I also enjoyed the “Open Minds, Open Source” essay by Eric Raymond which is condensed overview of the ideology and history. It explains the connections between open source and science fiction:

“SF taught me to think of people and cultures as adaptive machines. SF also taught me that the universe doesn’t respect the neat little compartments human beings like to chop their knowledge into.“

A few key definitions:

• Open source – Open source involves using decentralized peer networks for verifying solutions to complex problems. Source refers to source code, programmers publish a programme’s source code for active peer review by other programmers. It involves collaborative software development resulting in software released under open licences.
• Code secrecy – An approach used by companies for economic reasons, customers are locked in to use of code and support from a company when they cannot access the code themselves.
• Closed source – The opposite to open source!
• Brooks’s Law – Axiom of software engineering which observes that “adding more programmers to a late software project makes it later.” Led to isolated teams and code secrecy in commercial software production.
• Hacker vs Cracker – Hackers build things, crackers break them!
• GNU – GNU’s not UNIX (a recursive acronym) – an operating system similar to Unix, developed by the GNU project.
• Linux – Operating system developed by collaborators based on Unix.

The Annotated Open Source Definition is useful for accurate definitions and gives the full distribution terms of open-source software. It must comply with the following criteria:

1. Free Redistribution
2. Source Code must be available
3. Derived Works must be allowed
4. Integrity of The Author’s Source Code must be shown
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor – the software can be used for commercial gain
7. Distribution of License – the rights are redistributed to all additional parties.
8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software
10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral

The Cory Doctrow video gives a real insight into the mindset behind the commercial companies and the pointlessness of their attempts to control the current digital copyright situation.

“Copying will only get easier. Your grandchildren will turn to you around the Christmas table and say ‘tell us again grandma about when it was hard to copy things in 2011, when you couldn’t get a drive the size of your finger nail to hold every song ever recorded’“

The main essence of Doctrow’s talk is that the powers that be are waging a war on general computation, he talks about SOPA and other related regulation.

A feeling that surfaced when reading and viewing the recommended resources is how ‘open’ was originally very much a state of mind and part of a wider social and political movement. As Eric Raymond puts it in the Open Minds, Open Source essay “OS raises some fundamental questions about not just the technological machinery of our computers but the social, economic and political machinery that surrounds software development“.

The question this then leads me to ask is: is it still about open minds? Do the people who use open source software and openly licensed materials care about the ideology behind their resources? The quote that is often banded about is that to understand the concept of open source you should think of “‘free’ as in ‘free speech’, not as in ‘free beer’“. Are people these days just after their free beer and unaware of the cost behind it? Something I’d like to explore more in future modules.

A final thought: Raymond explores the economic analogy in his articles and observes that “planned systems complexify until they collapse of their own weight.” I’m a practical person so simplifying systems appeals to me. A big battle I often fight in my working life is the esoteric nature of many of the areas I work in. I’ve heard “the people we want to listen to us aren’t interested” said many a time, the answer I often want to give is “because you aren’t saying it in a way that interests them, just a way that interests you“. Is openness a way to move away from this, to simplify systems by collaborative working? Something to chew on…

MOOC – The Online Trend for Career Pursuers

It’s now February and I continue to dawdle along on my Introduction to Openness in Education course (I’m currently learning about open source). While I assemble my thoughts for my next blog post here is Melissa Spears to tell you more about MOOCs.

Melissa Spears is a website content developer who loves to write articles and blogs on different subjects. Education is her favorite subject on which she loves to write blogs, articles and even guests posts. She prefers to research thoroughly before writing with the intention of letting let people know about new opportunities in education.

In her guest blog post Melissa Spears provides us with a further introduction (after my very brief mention a few posts back) to Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs. She tells us how students planning for distance learning can get real benefits from such courses.

**********************

In today’s world, who wants to cling on to the traditional modes of education? Who wants to bear long stretching lectures and stare at blackboards for hours? The present world has been technologically enriched and now you are not required to head to classes and obey strict orders of instructors out of compulsion. With the passage of time, the learning trends are updating, and this is alluring plenty of career enthusiasts to pursue courses with interest and excitement.

Currently, the arena of open education has brought some trendy courses for career framers collectively known as Massive Open online Courses or MOOC. These career programs are absolutely unconventional and effective since they have been established on the theory of ‘connectivism’ as well as the theory of pedagogy in relation to network learning. What’s best about MOOC is that the majority of these career oriented programs are offered free. However, if you are looking for accreditation, some MOOCs will charge you. No specific requirements go for enrolling in such programs but certain timelines are provided for discussions on weekly topics.

MOOC – The Learning Process

MOOC or Massive Open Online Course is one where the course materials are all distributed across the web to students applying from various corners of the world. Now, this can be possible only if the course is open. Rather, the impact would be stronger if it’s a bigger course. MOOC is not an online gathering but a brilliant way of creating connections between qualified instructors and learners for discussing a common topic related to career enhancement. In other words, MOOC is an advanced form of online education that completely stands in contrast to formats based on posted resources as well as the learning management systems.

Popularity of MOOC

MOOCs have been alluring career aficionados in thousands in the past few years. In 2008 that the open educational program registered over 2000 candidates, 150 of which continued to interact throughout the programme.

Interactive and autonomous discourse is one of the biggest advantages of MOOCs that let students establish communications among participants.

Benefits of Pursuing MOOC

• It’s an easy going course that can be pursued with sheer flexibility. Applicants can make the course their own and share views with others.
• The curriculum has been designed in such a manner so that the participants can share and discuss the course lessons with each other.
• Taking help of social media, students can post discussions on diverse ideas, share resources and help each other sort queries related to MOOC programs.
• Applicants will be able to develop their knowledge regarding internet applications and learn in a better way.
• A wide array of assignments will be provided so that students can enjoy the freedom to choose any project of their choice.
• Participants would not necessarily have been allowed to enroll at the institution offering the MOOC but can still benefit from its teaching.
• There are no language barrier issues since distance learning students are able to access the website translation facilities.

So, if you are looking to opt for distance learning, MOOCs will take you through a new and unusual path to prosperity.

#ioe12 Coffee Breaks with a Little Open Licensing Thrown In

Doing an online learning course is just like being at school….I’m playing catch up already! Actually I was pretty good at school, it’s just now that life gets in the way!

I have finally worked my way through (most of the) the first module on Open Licensing and will share some thoughts on it in this post, but first I wanted to tell you about my #ioe12 coffee break! (I know, I’ve started with the coffee break rather than the learning – making sure I get my priorities right!)

#ioe12 Coffee Break

Some colleagues at the University of Bath are also taking part in MOOCs and early this week, at the suggestion of Jez Cope we met up for a “#ioe12 tea break” (naturally I had a coffee). Jez, an ICT Project Manager from the Chemistry department, and I have both registered for the Introduction to Openness in Education course while Marie Slater and Julian Prior from the e-learning team have signed up for the Learning Analytics and Knowledge 2012 Syllabus offered by the Society for Learning Analytics Research.

We started off by comparing the 2 courses. The lak12 course looks a little more structured than the ioe12 one. It is divided up into weeks and specific dates are given for each week. At the moment only week 1 is available. There are also introductory notes for each week and explanations for the resources listed. The ioe12 course takes a more “in at the deep end” approach and I think I might have struggled with some of the first topic resources if I hadn’t had a reasonable back ground in the area already. There was no overview of what the resources were or the angle they were coming from. It was very much up to us to decide what we made of them and whether we agreed with them. I guess it’s a good lesson in the Internet generally – every Web resource has an agenda, does this one align with yours?

All 4 of us at the #ioe12 coffee break were already struggling to spend time on the course. Julian admitted having started a MOOC before and doing nothing for it bar signing up on the registration page. We all agreed that you get out of it what you put in and it’s very much up to you how much work you want to do. If nothing else, an online course offers links to excellent resources, almost like a topic driven filter of your rss feed or Twitter stream. Julian and Marie had signed up for their course at the recommendation of their line manager. Jez and I were doing the course as a form of CPD (continuing professional development) and largely in our own time. I wonder which of us will get the most done?

So coffee and tea break over here are my (brief) thoughts on open licensing.

Open Licensing

The resources given in the first topic were collectively in support of sharing and putting works into the public domain. Jez has written a really good overview of the concepts explored and I really don’t want to out do him . A few thoughts…I read Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity by Lawrence Lessig many years ago and I really liked his ideas around our need to understand free as a part of our cultural ecology. Much of what he says is very US centric (though the Copyright Term Extension Act did mean that both the US and UK now have the same copyright terms of life + 70 years) but some of ideas have really concreted my feelings in this area. For example:

• Copyright policy is not just about enabling commercial success but is about what level of control we are going to exercise over public reality.
• Intellectual property and physical property are very different.
• Over zealous copyright stifles creativity and innovation. Creation always involves building upon something else.
• Ideas are non-rivalrous – people can’t use them up by using them.
• Piracy is complex.
• Openness is a commitment to a set of values
• The ‘public good’ is not something that can only be measured by profit.

I have to admit I didn’t read the two papers by Rufus Pollock, they were both pretty lengthy and not particularly recent. I’ve bookmarked them and will take a look at them on a lengthy journey sometime soon. I had a look round his Web site instead. Rufus Pollock is the founder the Open Knowledge Foundation and their ideology is definitely one to be noted (the promotion of open knowledge leading to better governance, culture, research and economies). I felt that some of his comments on his blog didn’t necessarily align with where the Open Knowledge Foundation seems to be now. e.g .“This is because our philosophy is that what is important is CONTENT. It is NOT about the fancy bells and whistles, the flash plug-ins, and all the other meretricious tartuffery of the modern web” . For reference a tartuffe is a hypocrite who pretends to religious piety. Maybe the commercial Web fits this description but the Web in which I work doesn’t. Maybe I don’t get it, but I quite like the modern Web. Am I going off topic?

Before I go here are a few other blog posts that do a much better job at distilling the first topic:

• Open Licensing #ioe12 – Post2
• ioe12 & the day of the internet blackout
• #ioe12 Open Licensing, Copyright, Public Domain, and the Common Man
• Open licensing

IOE12, MOOCs and Vegetarianism

I’ve been writing this blog for quite a while now (3 years 4 months) and recently I’ve struggled a little with content. During the blog’s life I’ve covered many of the challenges related to remote working and, although issues still arise, for me remote working has become almost too normal to blog about. It’s a little like being a vegetarian – which I am – when you become one you talk about it a lot (the why, the how, the challenges, the opportunities), but over the years it’s just the way you live your life. Sometimes you just need a new angle, or maybe a new recipe. For a while I’ve tried out the ‘amplified event recipe’ and have posted about relevant tools and practices. As it is new year I’d like to try out something different…

I’m going to give online learning a go.

The Introduction to Openness in Education course #ioe12 is what is know as a Massively Open Online Course or MOOC. The Educause paper 7 Things you should know about MOOCs provides an excellent introduction to the concept but to summarise:

A massively open online course (MOOC) is a model for delivering learning content online to virtually any person—with no limit on attendance—who wants to take the course.

I’ve decided that I am going to participate in the Introduction to Openness in Education MOOC and blog about 1) what I learn and 2) my experience in taking part on the course. My plan is to take this course outside of work time and to write a blog post on each of the topic areas:

• Open Licensing
• Open Source
• Open Content
• Open CourseWare
• Open Educational Resources
• Open Access
• Open Science
• Open Data
• Open Teaching
• Open Assessment
• Open Business Models
• Open Policy

I know a little about most of the topics areas already but I’m hoping that the course will allow me to find out more about them and also clarify how I actually feel about openness in education. I’m also hoping that being open about what I’m doing will encourage me to complete all the topics and earn, at the very least, an OpenEd Overview (Novice level) badge. I think a few of my colleagues from the University of Bath are also going to attempt the course so there should be a support network there for me too.

To get started I have signed up to the participants page and intend to start working my way through the course as soon as possible. I’m not sure how long it will take, I’ll just have to give it a go.

I’ll still be writing about my usual topics but hopefully this approach will add some much needed freshness to this blog!