#ioe12 NH Passes a Bill supporting Open Source

HB418, passed by the NH Legislature requires all state agencies to use “open source software when acquiring software and promotes the use of open data formats by state agencies. ” The Bill goes on to define the term “open source” and boldly states “The Department states proprietary solutions will require agency justification to the Department and approval of the proprietary solution by the Department’s Chief Information Officer.“  http://www.nhliberty.org/bills/view/2012/HB418

Six months ago I was employed at one of the state universities in NH, and now am at a state college in NY.  Both are on an open source LMS.  The SUNY system, however, when given the option to choose an LMS, chose to go with the proprietary system Blackboard and most of the Colleges and Universities in the system will be moving over to Blackboard in the coming months. Not all of them will however. There are several schools going with Moodle, or staying with Moodle.

Last week, on the Directors of Distance Learning listserv, there was quite a debate about the choices, and the old myths about open source arose. It all seemed like the spouse who says the lowest thing they can think of, even if it isn’t true, to defend their position, even if it’s wrong.

SUNY is a large system. It prides itself on the “Power of SUNY” and is now talking about the “Openness of SUNY”, but when given the option, they chose proprietary. In my opinion: what they failed to understand was the opportunity they were given to truly make a difference in the future of the learning platform.  Having access to the code of the LMS they chose, would’ve allowed them to use the “Power of SUNY” to make the platform one that would meet specific needs of SUNY, leverage SUNY innovation, and contribute to the community of LMS development.  It was a great opportunity and they missed it. One can only hope that they will come to their senses at some point, and see the value of belonging to an open source community.

Open source LMS platforms are in use throughout the world; used by institutions with thousands of online courses and students as well as by small private institutions.  Having been the LMS Administrator of Moodle at more than one institution, I can say that Moodle does not require a team of programmers–that is an absolute myth about open source that is continually perpetuated!   Several System Admins of Moodle have told me that managing Moodle takes up less than 5% of their job. One of the IT folk I worked with at another institution once told me “I get better and quicker help from the Moodle community, than I ever got from Blackboard”.

Open Source is about community.  That’s the philosophy that makes open source successful and that draws us to it.  It’s about a community of users helping to make the software better, to increase usability, and to insure that the functionality we most need is implemented. In the Moodle community, and other open source communities as well, individuals can suggest improvements (if not build them). The community tests the system, comments on it, and supports it. Yes, there are open source products that have not developed a large community of supporters–products that are still in their infancy, or that do not have a large base of individuals using the application, but that is not the case with the LMS.

I applaud NH and the wisdom of it’s legislators.  There are, already, numerous schools in NH that use Moodle, Mahara, or Sakai.  I expect there will be many more adopting OS in the future.  In truth, it makes a great deal of sense that the state institutions, who are supported by the community of tax payers, choose publicly developed system applications (open source) over those that are proprietary whenever possible.

#ioe12 Open Licensing, Copyright, Public Domain, and the Common Man

David Bushnell, in his article entitled “Understanding Copyright and Licenses”, writes “Understanding copyright and licenses allows us to do what we do best: be creative.” (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/06/14/understanding-copyright-and-licenses/) and he’s right–everything we create is built on the knowledge and ideas of others. Yet, I would bet that most people have almost no understanding of copyright and licensing, and most believe it’s simply too complicated to understand.  What happens is that we end up with black and white  beliefs about usage that are just plain false: things are either “don’t touch my stuff unless you pay up” or “take freely with no restrictions”, and the gray area that exists between the two, referred to by the term “fair use”.

Copyrights were established primarily to encourage creativity by protecting the rights of the creators/discoverers in order to insure that they received benefits for their work: recognition, money, etc. For the public good, limits were established on the length of time the copyright would remain in effect. After that time, the work would go into the Public Domain.  Fair Use was established to allow for commentary, clarification, parody, research, education, and other similar activities, but “The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.” (http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html)

But even with all of these protections in place, this system has many faults including that they often bound the creator of the work themselves.

If I publish a written work (book, paper, etc) through a publisher, I sell my rights to the company in order for that work to be published. In fact, it is not me the writer that owns the copyright, but the publisher and I must abide by the same copyright rules everyone else must abide by. This copyright applies even to my own derivative works. What I do receive is a portion of the profits from the book for a time, and of course my name must be associated with use of my work. For the most part, that has worked out well, but not always. And sometimes copyright laws make it so that works are less well known than they would’ve been otherwise, because access is limited. Sometimes organic advertising of a piece is the best way for someone’s work to become well known–just think of all those viral videos on YouTube!

Newer forms of licensing (Creative Commons for example) grant a creator with much greater control over how and when their work can be used, while providing more opportunity for creativity inspired by the work, or based on the work.  While understanding the licenses, and how they work, may take a bit of time to learn, understanding them is not out of reach for the common man. In fact, there is a little game, that was part of the Open Licensing unit, that is perfect for understanding how to use Creative Commons Licensing and how to use creations with a Creative Commons License on them: http://indstudy1.org/univ/355460515034/Flash/Lesson2/PracticeVersion.html

 

A new year and a new venture. I’m currently enrolled in the Open Education course hosted by David Wiley: http://openeducation.us/welcome and working my way towards some badges.  I’ve begun a study group to work through this course with me: The OER Taskforce for the ESC Center for Distance Learning. We will earn badges together, and at the same time work on a document, that defines the various aspects of Open Education, which will be published for the college. We will also be presenting, as a group, at the Center’s upcoming conference and at the All College Conference–sharing our work.

 

As we wait for the dawn of this new year

Every year, at about this time, I make a list of all the things I accomplished during the year. It helps me to reflect on the year, stimulates my memory, and encourages me. So, as the New Year has arrived in various parts of the world already and is moving around the globe, I wanted to add my two cents to all the other two cents on what were the big “things” in education this year. My vote goes to the continued development around open education and the particular focus on credentialing: OER University which held its first meeting of the anchor partners this year, the Badges for Learning  (Open Badges) initiative, and the announcement of the certificate program soon to be offered as MITx. I believe these will impact education in ways we’ve yet to imagine. There are some tides of change that happen regardless of those who would like to stop it. The cost of education, and the importance of it, are driving new ways of achieving what’s necessary. The future, though it is right outside our door, is yet to be seen.

Happy New Year everyone!

Student Feedback for Assessment

About a year ago I was working with an institution on its adoption of an Online Course Evaluation tool. It was a rather long process which included getting information on options and associated costs, piloting the program, responding to the concerns of the faculty about how the surveys would be used, setting up the tool so that the surveys would go out in emails to students, developing the survey tool itself (the questions) and then analyzing the results of the surveys to determine if the questions did, in fact, give us the type of information we were looking for.

Sadly, one of the greatest hurdles was the reluctance on the part of faculty to have a survey at all. I say “sadly” because such surveys can be invaluable for an instructor, a course designer, and the institution itself. If nothing else, well constructed surveys can  help in determining if a program has redundancies, have difficulty navigating the course, or if students are unclear about the learning objectives.

Course surveys should occur, at the very least, at the end of a course.  Even though information gathered at that time would be too late to make the course better for those students, the information can improve the course for the future students, and perhaps even improve the program as a whole. Too many instructors have the belief that students do not know enough to be able to determine whether there were clear objectives, whether they were met, whether there were unnecessary redundancies, or even if the work assigned was too much (or too little) for a 3 credit course.  My experience has taught me that students do know, and we should ask them.

The ideal would be to survey students at the very beginning of a course, at the midterm, and at the end.  The purpose of the beginning survey is to determine what students may already know or have experienced, and what they expect from the class. The midterm survey should be given to determine if the course is meeting its goals, and to determine if the students are struggling with a particular part of the course. The benefit of this is that necessary changes can be made before the course is done and it’s too late. We’ve already discussed the final evaluation.

If the questions are framed right, the survey can even cause students to reflect on their learning–to think about what they’ve done and learned. It can be used to develop metacognitive skills. There is a free tool available to assist with the development of these surveys. The site is called Student Assessment of  Learning Gains, and you can access it here: http://www.salgsite.org/ You can use the wizard to create your own surveys, and you can browse a library of surveys to get an idea of what other instructors are asking.

Assessing what we are doing, all along the way, is an important part of insuring we are meeting our students needs and expectations.

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  • A critical look at education: assessment of learning, institutional assessments, and assessments of the education system