The Obviousness of Open Policy
Thursday, November 10, 8:50 a.m. – 9:50 a.m.

Cable Green (Creative Commons, US) @cgreen

Description:  The Internet, increasingly affordable computing, open licensing, open access journals and open educational resources provide the foundation for a world in which a quality education can be a basic human right Yet before we break the “iron triangle” of access, cost and quality with new models, we need to educate policy makers about the obviousness of open policy: public access to publicly funded resources

Notes:

• Cable "O" Green - O is for Open!  :-)
• Slides available at: slideshare.net/cgreen
• What if we had a food machine and we could feed everyone?  Would we turn it on?  Yes!  Now we have a learning machine at our institutions and we need to turn it on.
• Education Dream - Everyone in the world can attain the education they desire, but we need to share resources to do so.  We need to do so quickly to meet the global education needs.
• In 2006 at the heart of the moment "Hewlett Foundation"
• Organizations involved in OER (Open Education Resources) Movement: Hewlett Foundcation, Open Society Foundation, Shuttleworth Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Next Generation Learning Challenges, Unesco, OECD, Creative Commons

David Wiley - If we are not sharing we are not teaching...

• Reuse / Revise / Remix / Redistribute
• Free as in free beer but free as in freedom is critical to the academy as we take resources and make them better
• Saylor.org - Open textbook challenge and free education
• Open Courseware Consortium

OER Definition: Teaching, learning, and research materials in any media that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and repurposing by others.

• Budget cuts have had a negative impact on OER.
• Open community is large and is passionate. 
• Everyone can access and gain knowledge.
• The problem: Policy
  • Most of policy makers do not understand tech and legal tools that can connect and turn on the education machine to make the open education dream possible.  It is our job to help them understand.
  • Tools:  We have the internet, storage is essentially free, and bandwidth is up, new mass willingness to share.  There is a new empowerment to share.
• What can we do about the cost of commercial out-of-date textbooks?  Cost of copy: 250 page book - copy by hand $1,000 - copy by print on demand $4.90 - copy by internet $.00084 --- this is affordable! :-)
• Copy and distribute are free... it's a new conversation.
• Rivalrous vs Non-rivalrous Resources - Digital resources can be non-riveralrous if they are licensed correctly.
• Creative Commons
  • Step 1: Choose a Condition - Attribution, Share Alike, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works
  • Step 2: Receive a License - Provides access to others based on your condition.
  • 500 million items on the web currently in CC
  • Flickr and Wikipedia use it and the Whitehouse too!
  • MIT 900 Courses and OpenCourseware Resources
  • You don't have to ask for permission with these resources because their is access granted and things can happen to advance and leverage the information.  Translation and affordability and customization are provided through the Creative Commons Licensing.  Portability is a big deal.  Search and discovery is a big deal. 
  • If we have common needs... we all teach the same top 100 courses EN101 etc. we can and should share resources.
• Publicly funded resources should be openly licensed resources.  If tax payer money is used the knowledge should be public.

Is public money being used to pay for textbooks at $20 billion per year?

• Most countries spend 5 to 6% of their GDP on education.  $3 trillion is spent on education.  How much is spent on courseware or subsidizing or directly paying for textbooks?
• Because we pay for it = we should have access.  Public access to resources to publicly funded operations.
• Open is the default and closed the exception rather than the other way around.
• We should partner with legislators to:
  
  • efficiently use of national state dollars,
  • saving students money,
  • increasing access
• Cooperate and Share and we all win... faculty will have new choices, more eyes on the problem, affordability, self-interest, and social justice.
• Textbook RFP?  Let's think in new ways...  textbooks are a perpetual lease and we pay over and over - and much of this is coming from financial public aid - the average cost of a textbook is $176. This is insane behavior... we need to have an RFP for textbooks.
  
  • Textbooks for the Top 100 Highest Enrollment Courses
  • Textbooks for the K12 Common Core
• Peer to Peer Universities, OpenBadges, Straighterline, Western Governers University, OER University are new emerging OER models.  These anchor institutions provide credit.
• As you build your courses, when open education resources exist BEFORE buying off the shelf!
• Massive change... gatekeeping is the previous norm.
• Publishers would like nothing more than to continue leasing resources so that you no longer have rights to a tangible good.  Gatekeep and lock up information is the existing business model.
• Strategy - We require public goods go into the public domain.  You don't play by the existing rules, you play by the new rules.  Digital affordances - we build what we consume - we can change how we do things.
• Washington State - We will have textbooks under $30... publishers you can join us if you want...
• We have to think bigger and make smarter decisions collectively.
• Only ONE thing matters:
• Efficient use of public funds to increase student success and access to quality educational materials.  Everything else (including all existing business models) is secondary.

The opposite of open isn't "closed"  - the opposite of open is "broken"