iterating toward openness – celebrating 20 years of open content and looking forward – pragmatism before zeal

I’ve read some really interesting books this year. As new ideas are supposed to do, several of these have significantly impacted my thinking. The books that are affecting me the most professionally are those that are giving me language and frameworks for making progress on ideas that have been stagnating in the back of my mind for a while. Some of the “slow hunches” I’ve been pursuing run contrary to popular belief, including questions like:

• Isn’t there a research design better than a randomized controlled trial (RCT) for going beyond correlation and allowing us to talk with confidence and rigor about causation?
• Isn’t there a better metaphor for the work we’re doing in OER than “the commons”?
• Isn’t there a better way to think about OER than as static content like a PDF?