The EDUCUASE Constituent Group formed to discuss the various principles, practices and projects affected by Openness. From critical IT services to educational content, distributed models based on openness are challenging higher education's traditional approaches. The Openness Constituent Group focuses on the emergence and adoption of open technologies, practices, policies, and initiatives, and how they affect the delivery and support of education. Topics include but are not limited to free and open source software, open content, open educational resources, open courseware, open standards, and management practices such as open business and enterprise 2.0.
2008 Openness Constituent Group Meeting
The Openness CG held its first meeting during the 2008 EDUCAUSE National Conference in Orlando, Florida on Thursday, October 30th at 4:55 p.m.
Because this was the CG's inaugural meeting, the focus of discussion was to define "openness," identify specific principles and practices that create and promote openness and examples of current or possible initiatives/activities/programs that might benefit from openness.
A group of approximately 25 attended the meeting, and upon entering the conference room, was asked to sit at one of three tables labeled, "technology," "academics" and "governance/management."
I. Assessment
First ach table was then asked to answer the following general questions:
- From your perspective (technology, academics or management), what is openness?
- What is the value of openness?
- What is enabling/inhibiting openness?
Technology Table Responses...
What is Openness?
- Includes access to and sharing of source code (open source software),
- exposing the various methods/protocols/specifications within technologies (open standards),
- legal access to intellectual property, as well as,
- sharing the actual practices and proceedures used in development.
- Open technologies include open source software, projects and communities, open standards and specifications, integration and interoperability, etc.
What is the value of Openness?
- Provides growth opportunities for a technology through expanded development and user pool,
- multiple perspectives define/refine best practices,
- collaboration to solve problems identifiy direction,
- choice though greater understanding and independence,
- lowers barriers to adoption with broader access/availability,
- lowers cost for customers, and
- flexibility.
What are the barriers to adoption?
- Government and organizational structures are designed for commercial procurement and contracting. Open source communities do not respond to RFP's.
- Lingering fears regarding open source software: reliability and quality, support, total cost of ownership, etc.
- Adoption/compliance, many commercial services are bundled as entire systems making decision-making easier. Services/scope extends based on commercial development paths rather than campus needs.
Academics Table Responses...
What is Openness?
- Open access to courses for students and content for faculty (open courseware)
- Open research, sharing data, methods, results, etc.
- Open education includes open courseware, open educational resources, open research initiatives, open content, open IP, etc.
What is the value of Openness?
- Free flow of information between content developers (academics and researchers)
- Increases the public good of institutions (access to an distribution of knowledge)
- Increases internal and multi/discipline communication
- Lowers transaction costs
- Increases rate of discovery and development
What are the barriers to adoption?
- Publishers have financial barriers to releasing content.
- Faculty tenure, promotion and review.
- What to do with, and how to use the increased volume of content, data, etc.
- Many issues still are unresolved around ownership and intellectual property
Governance/Management Table Responses...
What is Openness?
- Process for project approval and budgeting
- Process for identifying, refining, directing activities (decision-making)
- Open business includes crowdsourcing, agile project management, enterprise 2.0, etc.
What is the value of Openness?
- Transparency in decision-making and direction
- Increased participation from stakeholders
- Greater buy-in
- Quality in outcomes
What are the barriers to adoption?
- Lack of respect and trust throughout organization
- Perception that decisions will take longer through consensus rather than executive direction
II. Results
After each table submitted their responses, the entire group reviewed the results to identify like themes, ideas, concepts, etc. in order to provide the general principles of "openness" and some practices for developing and managing "openness."
What is Openness?
- Shared resources
- Enables collaboration
- Promotes distributed decision-making
What is the value of Openness?
- Diversity in representation, ideas, goals, values, skills, etc. leads to increased quality in outcomes by targeting real needs.
- Lowers costs
- Increases public good
- Develops trust and clarity among internal and external stakeholders
What are the barriers/benefits to adoption?
- Benefit: current economic environment
- Barrier: easier to promote within smaller vs. larger organizations
- Barrier: seen as informal, illegitimate precess/practice
- Barrier: lack of trust throughout organization, fea of losing authority/autonomy
- Barrier: concerns of scalability
III. Summary
The activities highlighted that, despite the specific area of interest, technology, academics or management, openness provides a set of general principles and practices around transparency, sharing, collaboration and trust.
Discussion
In addition, a census was taken of how participants self-identified themselves (technologists, academics, administration), their interests (e.g. OSS, OER, etc.) and which table they sat. It was offered that the level of interest for a particular open initiative among the Openness CG attendees, as indicated by the number of participants who self-selected a table, aligned with current adoption/acceptance of the various open initiatives.
- Open technologies (12 participants), such as open source software and open standards, currently enjoy the greatest level of adoption and recognition within higher education: few would still argue that open source software is not a viable option.
- Open educational initiatives (7 participants), such as open courseware and open educational resources, while enjoying greater interest is less well defined in theory or practice and only a limited number of campuses have begun to explore such initiatives: far fewer than those currently running open source applications.
- Open governance and management and (4 participants) was the least known or understood. While many recognized a potential for open organizations, specifically in the management of open source and open educational communities, few examples of campus adoption or practice could be found.
