A Broader Form of Openness | Medium

ab1630's bookmarks 2018-08-30

Summary:

"The very concept of ‘openness’ is revolutionary. It’s a radical departure from the deeply individualized, consumer-oriented economy and society that we live in today. Sharing, collaboration, centering the public good, a vibrant commons — these are powerful qualities inherent to openness. When I started working on openness in education six years ago, I saw it first as a way to save students money. At a time when state support for education was flat-lining and our pathways to tackle tuition costs seemed narrow, high textbook prices were a worthwhile nemesis. Even then, I knew savings alone weren’t what I was after. The conversation around permissions, adaptability — open educational resources (OER) have the ability to save students money and the potential to improve the quality of education....

I’m not content, though, with open licensing being the extent of our vision, and I hope many others feel the same way.

So, it’s up to us to find a middle ground. We desperately need a broader vocabulary around our goals, because licensing as a litmus test only gets us so far. We need to add nuance back to the conversation, and most importantly, we need to start assessing our efforts based on their impact, their outcomes, and their progress toward this wider vision.

We need to ask: when we advocate for openness, do we do it in a way that further entrenches these problems, or do we do it in a way that keeps a broader set of values in mind? Moreover, how can we work toward openness and further our progress towards these values at the same time? How can we help others like us — who care deeply about addressing these systemic issues — find a way to infuse these values throughout their own open work?"

Link:

https://medium.com/@ethan.senack/a-broader-form-of-openness-96300c82f636

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » flavoursofopenscience's bookmarks
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » ab1630's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.partial oa.advocacy oa.principles oa.strategies oa.copyright oa.licensing oa.oer oa.education oa.textbooks oa.moocs oa.books oa.libre oa.courseware oa.philosophy oa.open_science oa.data oa.humanities oa.ssh

Authors:

Ethan Senack

Copyright info:

CC BY 4.0

Date tagged:

08/30/2018, 11:49

Date published:

08/30/2018, 13:25