The other day one of the people in higher ed I follow on Twitter, Jim Groom from the University of Mary Washington, posted a tweet saying they had a webcast of the keynote speaker for their Faculty Academy, James Boyle, online. I checked it out and was really impressed with what he had to say. I even sent him an email asking if he’d consider coming to the WV Higher Education Technology Conference in September to speak. (still waiting for a reply, though.)
Anyway, he brings up some excellent food for thought on how universities should to revisit how we think about openness. Not only in the types of systems and software we employ, but in our academic materials. He reminds us that the fundamental reason we are in higher education is to educate and share knowledge. What difference does it make, really, if people can download our course materials? Why shouldn’t they? Because they haven’t yet paid for them? Why is that important? To get any kind of degree the will actually need to enroll, so I fail to see how that would affect the school’s bottom line.
MIT has for a number of years now offered most if not all of their course materials online for free. Think of the savings to students in not needing to purchase books every semester. What if the students did have access to all of the course work ahead of time, wouldn’t that just make it easier for them to complete the work and do better? Perhaps they would get more out of the course if they were prepared and could be ready when the semester “clock is ticking?”
Here is the video clip of his presentation. I’d love to hear what the university community thinks about this.
Cultural Agoraphobia: What Universities Need to Know About Our Bias Against Openness
In this presentation, Professor James Boyle will argue that we have a cognitive bias–he calls it cultural agoraphobia–that leads us to underestimate the potential of open networks, open culture and open productive processes. What is the evidence for such a bias? What should a university do about it–from the library to the classroom to the archive? Using examples ranging from the development of the World Wide Web to Wikipedia and open source software, this talk will try and answer those questions.
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I have often thought that if professors can be replaced by their course materials, they should be. While great materials are important, learning is constructed within the context of the interactions with faculty (most important) and other students. Lecture notes and PowerPoints are not the value of the university experience.