4 thoughts on “but universities ARE open…”

  2. I’ve been watching a LOT of Survivorman lately. Very cool stuff, and I like that he has to film his own adventures.

    I’m also pretty inspired by your EdTech Suvivalist videos – I don’t think I’d be able to hit that level of production quality, but just taking a chance to put something out there is an important step…

  3. I think there are areas of openness within the University, and maybe even K-12 to some degree, but the Universities are still very closed in the areas you mention. They tend to hoard knowledge, acting as if knowledge was still a scarce commodity. Hence the competitive practices required to get tenure and the rewards for those who publish in official channels.

    So, yeah they are open for tenured staff but they haven’t opened up to the public to share their knowledge. There are instances of professors putting their course materials online and there are even institutions like MIT that are institutionally embracing the idea of open content. Going one step farther, they haven’t at all embraced the idea of open participation – letting anyone participate in courses whether they have paid tuition or not. Alec Couros’ EC & I 831 class kind of blew the doors open on that one because we (as one of my meagre contributions) decided we were going to go all out to show what openness could be, and we invited anyone to participate, although only tuition paying students were graded and given university credit. George Siemens and Stephen Downes have upped the ante, and have hundreds of participants. In those cases, the University has been changed from an experience that is hidden from the public into a great big learning party (I think that was your phrase, wasn’t it?).

    As institutions go, I think that Universities are more open than most for at least some of the people involved. I’m hoping they will, as institutions, find ways to go even farther in that direction.

  4. I think the whole system of universities as far as staff and tenure goes, is quite closed, and promotes protectionism and stifles new thought. Old boys get locked into tenure, and then there are no external pressures for those individuals to continue to innovate. What’s more, the process by which one gains tenure requires them to fight jealously to guard their intellectual property. I say, throw away the idea of tenured educators, and perhaps even full-time educators in general. Allow anyone to apply to teach any particular job at any institution at any time, and use any coursework on the open marketplace. The institutions become responsible for upholding the standards of education and learning, and must make appropriate decisions as to which teachers and what materials are teaching and get taught, and for those adjudication roles, professionals in the field must be hired and consulted with, but also the open web / marketplace can weigh in on the decision as well. What if we could guarantee that the courses being taught are actually relevant to the outside world, by allowing the outside world to vote on what gets taught? What if the best educators were allowed to be chosen to teach based on their current merit, and not on their past laurels? And what if the decisions were made by the open web marketplace?

    I mean, if you’re gonna play with the idea of ‘open’, let’s blow it WAY open, n’est-ce pas?

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