Open Ed Week 9: Free Culture, Free Voice

I chose to read Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig.

I think the open education movement can learn a lot about the idea put forth in Free Culture about the importance of free speech and allowing all voices to be heard. These ideas can be applied to the instructional strategies that open educational materials use, the methods in which they are disseminated, and the formative evaluation methods they follow.

It seems to me that most educational materials have one voice. The voice of the creator. Like the MPAA or the RIAA who comprise the few voices that speak for everyone else and take measures to assure their continued authority, some forms of education use a single all-knowing voice tell us what the truth is, and that they are the main authority on a subject. Free Culture talks often about the suppression of technologies that would allow a more diverse set of voices to be heard as well as suppression of the voices themselves. Lessig is clearly very concerned about this issue.

Open education can be seen as a way to spread the knowledge of the few to the many and it is a laudable movement. But in the actual instruction being done does open education allow the few to speak for the many, or does it give ample opportunity for self-expression specifically among its users, the learners and teachers? I think that the former is more common.

Open education needs to take a hard look at what voice is speaking in its resources and whether students who are participating in a class, or teachers using open educational materials can be heard. Perhaps some reasons that the few speak for the many in open education includes the fact that OER generally come from more rich and powerful places, they seldom do any formative evaluation in which they ask for input from the user, and instructional practices that allow for students to have a voice are rarely followed.

First of all, it seems to me that users of open educational resources are most likely not from the same location or culture of those that produce open educational resources. Most OER come from a rich and powerful places of the world because that is who has the money and other resources to create them. So the voice of the rich and powerful is placed into the OER, not because of some evil intent, but simply because that is the mindset of the creator. Localization is very important to help alleviate this concern. The idea that knowledge will forever govern ignorance should continue to be a driving force behind the open education movement, but let's not forget the power of the voice that we use in our materials. As with all education, OER must strike a proper balance between being culturally specific and useful, to being culturally general and ambiguous.

One way to give open educational resource users a voice is to do formative evaluation on those materials by taking input from users. Carnegie Mellon University's Open Learning Initiative attempts this by taking statistics from its users. From these statistics the system can determine in what areas learners are struggling and offer clarification or remediation. Technologies are not quite to the point where artificial intelligence can be manipulated to easily change a lesson in real time based on a person's input. But we are making progress. Things that can be done now with the technologies that we have include giving the user a choice about what to learn first etc., allowing a user to make decisions on what to learn, taking as much learner input as possible and changing lessons based on it, and encouraging teachers who use OER to do all of these things. In this way we are giving voice to a larger number of participants.

Another way to give voice to participants is to use instructional techniques in the actual delivery of instruction that allow for discussion, reflection and learner-centered activities rather than direct instruction techniques. Technologies do not currently make it very easy to hold a quality synchronous meeting over the Internet but they are getting better. Lessig mentions the power of the blog, where people can post items for peer review and content. Ideas are discussed at length and arguments are made. Technologies certainly allow for a quality discussion to happen over the course of time on blogs. The voice of the student is heard.






Now these techniques may seem radical and indeed instruction that relied only upon the voice of the students would probably not meet any standardized goals. Not all instruction can use the voice of the students. Education must strike a balance between meeting the needs of the institution (test scores, learning objectives etc.) and meeting the needs of the student (expression, desire to learn a certain topic, etc.).

I think another point that the open education movement can learn from Free Culture is that there will always be those who are against giving something of value away for free. Lessig mentions that our society has basically said that if something has value, then someone (beside the public) must have rights to it. He calls this, “if value, then right.” Lessig talks about how intellectual property has become very protected and there are many powerful and rich organizations who are willing to fight to keep it from getting to the public. Congress and the supreme court are usually on their side. So the open education movement needs to be careful to have everything legally in order before it proceeds. But it need not view opposition with with as much pessimism as Lessig seems to. When opposition comes, it is a sign that progress is being made enough to awaken those who would oppose the movement. It seems to me that giving away educational materials has been a challenge. I think that giving away credentialed degrees will be more of one.

Finally it seems that the open education movement should know (and already knows) how unconstitutional our copyright laws are in the United States and use Creative Commons or other effective licensing as a way to ensure the availability of open educational resources. Part of the discussion that follows is from a debate between Lawrence Lessig and Jack Valenti that I also listened to. It was clear to me that Lessig was much more well informed to talk about both sides of the issues at hand while Valenti seemed only to know his side and nothing more.

Lessig, Valenti Debate (mp3)

An interesting part of this debate involves Lessig advocating a copyright system that the founding fathers of our nation intended. Jack Valenti counters that no one can really know what the founders intended because we cannot read their minds now, and times have changed anyway. Lessig did not have a chance to speak to this subject afterward, but he does reiterate what the actual words in the constitution are. In the book Free Culture, Lessig makes it clear what the founding fathers did intend and the best way we can determine what they intended is by their behavior at the start of our nation. They set the copyright term at 14 years. So it is quite clear to me that something similar to a 14 year copyright term is what the founding fathers of the United States intended. No reading of minds was needed.

I believe that the copyright term as it currently exists in the United States is unconstitutional and also stifles the progress of the same science and useful arts that the constitution was intended to protect. Lessig believes that limiting the copyright term allows for more voices to be heard and that this is a first amendment right. His system of copyright that he proposes imposes a limit to copyright in years (50) and then requires the owner to re-register the copyright after that for another term.

I would think that an optimal time would be around 15 years, the average time calculated by another article we read by Pollock. I would require copyrighted items to be registered once they are created, using a very easy and inexpensive method, if works are not registered on this database, then they are not copyrighted. This cataloging system, as Lessig mentions, eliminates the difficulties in searching to find out whether a creative work is copyrighted. After the 15 year period the author would have the opportunity to renew the copyright for another period specified by the author up to 15 years. Then a third period could be specified up to 15 years, making the total allowed time 45 years. This would be the last term of renewal given to the author of the work. After the last period of renewal expires, or if the author chooses not to copyright a work in the first place, or if they choose not to extend the copyright of the work in the second or third period, the work will fall into the public domain as the constitution states.

Pollock talks about differing terms of optimal copyright with different numbers of years associated with it, but asserts that the optimal time for holding a monopoly on a creative work will decrease over time. Lessig also makes the point in Free Culture that copyright laws need simplicity. For that reason I like the idea of picking an average or optimal number and just saying all creative works fall into public domain after this number of years. Then I allow for the extension in case a particular work is still functioning in a way that promotes the progress of the arts (or the artist just wants it to be renewed). Keep in mind that fair use still plays a part in this program, critiques, parodies etc. can still be done on a creative work even with the more limited copyright term.

Just changing the law to require registration of all works that authors want copyrighted would fix much of what is wrong about copyright laws in the United States. A database would make it easier to find who owns a copyright, and not requiring all intellectual “property” to be copyrighted as soon as it is made will allow much more free culture to enter into the public domain when it is created.

One point of departure that I have from Lessig is the idea that derivitave works should always be allowed on even copyrighted works. Lessig mentions that the founding fathers did not originally protect any copyrighted works from being used for derivative works. He seems to laud this availability of works to be remixed and adapted and desires that all works should allow for derivatives. I think that an original creator of a work would be more likely to release a creative work such as a film to the public with the understanding that no one (for a limited time, at least) will be able to market its characters as toys, or create a coloring book with the characters, or release a derivative which is very close to the original work online for free.

The constitution says that Congress has the power to, "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts...” I believe that the actions that congress takes in giving a monopoly to a creative artist should “promote the progress of science and useful arts” and this should be the main question that congress asks in making laws. Does the law promote this progress for the greatest amount of people, or does it stifle progress for most while promoting it for the few? Making works of art available for remix right at the beginning may very well stifle the progress of art.

I also view a brighter future than Lessig with regard to copyright laws and free culture in general. The next term of the copyright act will end in 2019. I think that there will be more lobbying to once again extend the copyright term from big media, but I also think that opposition will be greater. Lessig argued before the supreme court for a limit to congresses power to continue to extend the copyright term and said that by extending the act they are essentially not limiting monopolies on creative works as they should be. I think this argument may be more powerful in 2019 because a continued extension will only prove Lessig's point. There are always opposing opinions though and like in 1998, the court could say that what has been done before can be done again.

Also, creative works that are not copyrighted fully are proliferating thanks to licensing options that turn the copyright laws against itself. It seems to me that more and more people are seeing the value of such licensing options and opposing big media. Hopefully a combination of these two items, a realization of the unconstitutional nature of congresses copyright law extension, and the increased perceived value of creative works licensed differently, will lead to a climate that has more sensible attitudes toward copyright and allows the term of copyright to end.

OpenEd Week 8: One Button to rule them all

Building a sustainable business model around giving away educational materials is, as the readings indicate, tricky. Giving educational materials away for free does not bring in money to pay for staffing of personnel who work to give these educational materials away, or the extra time that a creator of educational materials takes to prepare the materials to be given away. But money is not the only thing that motivates people, in fact, it is not even the main thing that usually motivates people. Many people are motivated by desires to help others, have peer review etc. There are many economic models that creators of open educational resources currently use to fund their initiatives.

Models of funding for OER initiatives
-Endowment model - The project obtains a base funding from a grant or charitable organization.
-Membership model - Members pay for membership for special privileges early access, road map decisions code releases and documentation.
-Donations model- Development is funded by community donations.
-Conversion model - Users are converted into students.
-Contributor pay model - Contributors pay for the cost of maintaining the contribution. The provider makes the Initiative freely available
-Sponsorship model - Advertising pays for an OER initiative.
-Institutional model - An institution takes its own monetary responsibility for OERs.
-Governmental model - A government takes its own monetary responsibility for OERs.
-Replacement Model - Use of OERs can replace expensive systems like blackboard.
-Foundation model - Funding comes from foundations if deemed to be worthy.
-Segmentation model - Value added services are provided along with oers for a price.
-Voluntary support model - Fund-raising efforts pay for OER initiatives.

Wiley also brings up another important model in which the cost of the creation of open educational resources becomes almost nothing and therefore it is sustainable in the long run. It seems to me that this would need several things to fall into place if it were to become widespread. First, technologies (including proprietary systems like blackboard) would have to widely adopt a “one button” functionality to take a course that is online from being closed to open. If this type of functionality is not adopted by proprietary systems like blackboard, then universities that use blackboard would have to make a switch to a different learning management system that either has the potential for allowing the creation of such a “one button” function (open-source programs allow this), or already integrates this function (Wiley indicates that the Sakai project is working on this). Open source learning management systems that do not already contain a “one button” function to take a course into an open course from a closed course would have to be programmed to do so. This, of course, costs money but could be a great money-saver in the long run.

Blackboard is not likely to change their system to allow for a “one button” functionality, so there will be costs involved in exporting a blackboard course to fit another learning management system which does have this functionality. Blackboard now holds somewhat of a monopoly (though I do not know why, especially when other systems are so much easier to use and less expensive) so they are in a position to do whatever they want. When all is said and done, it would probably be faster to take the course from blackboard straight to an open courseware system like eduCommons rather than having universities convert all of their course material from blackboard to Sakai. Still, open source learning management systems are gaining ground especially among academic institutions. Moodle usage has almost exponentially increased since its inception, and Sakai has done the same with a more limited adoption.

There is still the question of courses that are not currently online or are only online as a supplement to face to face courses. Conversion of these courses to an online system such as Moodle or Sakai still takes an enormous amount of work and therefore, cost. The open educational resources movement does not have, to my knowledge, any tool that will help a professor who is not adept at technology to take their own face to face course and add it to Open CourseWare with a type of “one button” function. Such a technology would likely be very complex and require high costs in programming, but would enable a very low cost in the provision of open educational resources. An interesting parallel was a piece of software developed by the ID2 research group at Utah State University. This software followed M. David Merrill's Instructional Transaction Theory. It asked for certain items from the user, and then arranged these in such a way as to become properties of an item that was to be learned. So the system asks for the information that it needs, allows the user (subject matter expert) to enter that information, and then as long as the system has all of the information that it asked for, it can organize and place the information in a purportedly instructionally effective manner. Can a similar approach be taken to help professors provide open educational resources? A system could ask the professor or an assistant for certain files and the professor/assistant can explain what module these files belong to. Then the system can take them and arrange them for final approval. All of this would have to be done using terminology that the professor/assistant understands, and would avoid arcane technical terms. Of course there are still those who have class materials on paper only and these would have to be converted to a digital format.

Giving away credentialed degrees for free is quite of problematic, especially when students are still paying tuition for their education. You really have to justify this method of giving away degrees when others have dutifully worked to pay their tuition and make it through a difficult 4 years at an institution of higher education. I think that so far the two cannot be reconciled. If education is going to be free for one, it will have to be free for all. The only sustainable model that would make this work is having the government take care of the bill. This is the case in our education system except the government is only willing to pay so much. Grants, donations, and students have to foot the rest of the bill. So until the government is willing to pay more, or grants and donations take over, it seems to me that students will have to pay for credentialed degrees.

So should governments step in and fund open education initiatives? I think they should. Let me just say that open educational resources would be best served if the production of them can be made as inexpensive as possible. Then let the government come in and help fund OER initiatives. Developing countries can benefit from aid or their own government's money to make OER initiatives work locally. OER initiatives are a way for a government to give the result of the tax dollars that are spent on higher education (and paid by the general population, including those who never attend a government-sponsored university) back to people who are not currently attending a university.

Open Ed: Fuzzy and Blue

Creative Commons offers some good options for licensing, but after reading about licensing with the GFDL, Creative Commons and Public Domain, I realize that there are several options missing. What if I want someone to be required to share-alike all derivative works but not give attribution, keeping the work in the creative commons but not telling who originally created it? Apparently this is not an option. Why is attribution the basic requirement for a creative commons license? Perhaps attribution is there so that any future users of the material can be more easily held to the requirements of the author, but attribution often creates extra effort for the re-mixer of a creative work because they are required to attribute the work to someone in a way that the author requires. Often this means that the work cannot be used without attribution having to be placed in the work or on another prominent position of the derivative which does not look good. Indeed the attribution requirement restricts the very people we are trying to empower, the user of the work. The Creative commons website speaks about the most liberal of the licensing schemes, “By attribution you let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it” seems like you should have the above options or even the option to require no derivatives of your work without attribution. I noticed that Houshuang agrees that there should be a creative commons license that does not require attribution.

It looks like the Creative Commons and GFDL licenses are incompatible and do not allow for people to put them together. David Wiley explains this in his posts. A few years ago Lawrence Lessig posted that you cannot legally mix items from OCW to Wikipedia. Lessig talks about how items from Wikipedia are required to be re-shared under the FDL license and items licensed as share alike in OCW require re-licensing under that same license. These licenses were incompatible when he wrote this in 2005. He also explained that the people at creative commons are beginning an effort to put the licenses together in a more compatible way. Hopefully there has been progress in making these licenses more compatible, but maybe that is not the point. Is any restriction of freedoms bad? I can see the value of having intermediary licenses such as share alike and non-commercial as a kind of gateway to help apprehensive individuals begin to license their original work. These licenses, however, still restrict end users from using resources in certain ways as David Wiley points out. I agree with him that the ideal and future goal is the public domain.

Moving on to the share alike and non commercial clause, it seems likely that share alike would fill most people's needs because it requires an item to be used and shared by the remixer with the same license. Non-commercial basically states that users cannot use a work for commercial gain. Would this restriction mean that businesses simply cannot use these items, even if they are not using the actual creative work to make money? A business may need a training on how to do good customer service. They find a great non-commercially licensed item on the internet that teaches about an aspect of good customer service. They desire to use this in their internal training. Would this be allowed since its use does not directly lead to the business making money, or would this be restricted because it is a business using the item? In my opinion the business ideally should be able to use the resource.

I think that when people say that share-alike will cover all of the needs of the non-commercial clause, they are correct because of the above scenario. If the business in the above example were required to re-share their training material it would make not make a difference in their use of it. If a company sells a creative item that is licensed with the share-alike clause and not the non-commercial one, then they are also required to release this item for free to the general public. Selling an item that you must also provide free to the public would not work very well.

Copyleft, or share-alike, is very good for the open education movement. Most importantly, it gives people the freedom to use, remix, modify and share a creative work. These rights must be given by an author or else the open education movement could not even exist. I think that a better question is, “is public domain good for the open education movement.” Copyleft contains freedoms, but it also contains restrictions too, the main one being a requirement to share again any derivitave works under the same license. Public domain does not carry any non-commercial or share-alike restrictions. David Wiley also mentions how much better this is for the open education movement, mentioning the idea of privileging people over content.

Last weeks discussion was about the value of items published in the Creative commons vs. Public domain. I read several posts that did not differentiate these two values. They essentially said that 100 percent of the value of Public domain is realized in a creative commons license. I strongly disagree. In my post I set it at around 50%. This is just an arbitrary number at best, but if you have ever had to reuse creative commons vs. public domain licensed work, you understand that you have to put forth a lot of extra effort when using creative commons, and none when you are using public domain works. Lets look at the scenario of an instructional designer creating a training slide show featuring a creative commons attribution share alike licensed creative work. The instructional designer has to determine how the original author wants to be attributed. This often means defacing the training by adding attribution on the actual slide. The the instructional designer must also figure out a way to license the work again in the same way as the original work. If the instructional designer has a choice of this and a work that is already in the public domain, they will choose the public domain every time. Another scenario could involve a teacher in the developing world, but it would be very similar. So the value of the public domain is not 100% realized in creative commons or GFDL licensing in even the most liberal renditions. Not to mention the commercial value that can be applied to a public domain work which cannot be attached to a share alike or non-commercial creative commons work.



On the flip side of things, we should also look at the creator of a work too. What is the difference for them if they release a creative work in public domain and creative commons. The only real value for releasing a work into the creative commons over public domain is the fuzzy and blue feeling inside that they know the work will be attributed to them and that it will always released using a creative commons license (if they release it with attribution share alike). They could use other clauses, but these would only result in more blue fuzzies for the author, but no increase in the real value of the work to them or others.

Open Ed: A Juvenile Delinquent and Public Domain

I am not sure off hand what percentage of the value of the public domain is realized with a creative commons or GFDL license, but I think that it is less than half with even the most liberal creative commons license, the attribution one. Creative commons has many levels of usage requiring the re-user to tell who the original author was, restricting the user from making money by using a work, requiring the user to re-share what they have made and even restricting the user to change the original work in any way.

It is clear that if the non-commercial creative commons license is applied, the re-user cannot even sell a derivative work. The value of that potential sale would have to be factored into the percentage value of creative commons vs. public domain. But just the simple fact that a re-user must attribute a work to the original author is enough to stop many from using the work. The derivative work may need to be formatted in such a way that does not allow attribution for aesthetic reasons. Placing works in the public domain does not preclude a re-user from doing anything she wants with the original work.

Take a look at this video in which I combined 2 videos in the public domain with the soundtrack from a public domain song and my own voice to teach about setting up a blog for use in a classroom (some of you may have seen my other video Rick Noblenski at OpenEd 2007, this is the other one about blogs).



Our project group cited the sources from our videos at www.wikiblogedu.org out of courtesy but in this case they are all in the public domain so I don't have to worry about attribution etc. One of the original videos teaches about vandalism and encourages youth not to vandalize. The other video is of a career counselor who meets with a student who no longer wants to sell shoes for a living. The student has dreams of being an architect but the counselor effectively shoots down those dreams and helps the student to be happy amounting to less in life and continue to sell shoes. If a no derivative works license was put on any of the elements of this video, then the video would not have been possible to make (perish the thought!).

OERs are different though. I don't believe that their value is less than half of the public domain because most of them have instructional value and are somewhat polished. Putting them in the public domain may not result in a significant increase in value except in the areas mentioned above.

I find it interesting that a mathematical calculation can tell us the optimal time to allow a monopoly on created intellectual property. Especially since the calculated times given are much shorter than those currently in place in the United States. I feel like our copyright laws have gotten far out of hand. Especially when you hear of people saying that copyright should be “forever minus a day.” Ridiculous.