Catching
the wave: Open source software, open educational resources, and digital
scholarship
Abstract
Colleges and universities are increasingly aware of the
necessity to use technology to meet the academic mission of the
institution. Technology is the key to
creating learning environments, both in person and online, that will prepare
students to be productive citizens and workers in the twenty-first
century. Students in the sciences and
the humanities equally need experience with and understanding of technology,
especially in an increasingly interdisciplinary world. Solving complex problems such as climate
change requires scientific research as well as an economic, cultural, and
historical framework. Increasingly, open
source software (OSS) and open educational resources (OER) are seen as viable
options for meeting these challenges, especially as a component of
cyberinfrastructure. Many campuses are
recognizing the importance of the interplay or overlap between OER and OSS as
an important feature for providing high quality teaching and educational
experiences that prepare students to be knowledge workers in a knowledge
society.
Understanding
open source software (OSS)
Many terms relating to technology have more than one
acceptable definition or sets of defining criteria. OSS is no exception. In his groundbreaking book The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric
Raymond (2000) provided an important framework for generating OSS, focusing
attention on project development by a decentralized community of users and
developers. As Raymond (2000) describes, a decentralized
community is composed of professional programmers and other enthusiasts
worldwide who are often passionately interested in solving a particular
software problem by developing new or improving existing software. New iterations of the software and source
code are released frequently, allowing the community to continuously review and
improve the product. Frequent peer
review and release of new source code to the whole community allows for the
creation of high quality and less expensive software. Both users and developers of OSS often rely
on the guiding principles put forth by the Open Source Initiative (http://opensource.org/) and
the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org/) as
they undertake open source projects.
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) specifies ten criteria
that must be met for software development projects to be considered open
source. The criteria cover the
development of source code and its modification, licensing, and
distribution. In brief, the OSI
definition specifies that anyone can have access to the source code, that
anyone can modify the source code, that the license must not inhibit
distribution of the source code or its derivatives in any way (even
commercially), that OSS may be used in combination with other software
products, and that there cannot be discrimination against persons or projects
using or implementing OSS for any purpose (OSI, 1998).
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) provides a more
succinct definition by outlining four essential freedoms as follows:
- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose
(freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change
it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a
precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your
neighbor (freedom 2).
- The freedom to improve the program, and release your
improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the
whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a
precondition for this (FSF, 1985).
The Free Software Foundation specifies that all four
criteria must be met for software to be considered open source (FSF, 1985). Both definitions are highly regarded by the
OSS community and are valid frameworks for open source software product
development.
Understanding
open educational resources (OER)
Like open source software, open
educational resources are often defined in several ways. It is widely recognized that the term open
educational resource was coined by UNESCO in 2002 as it sought a definition for
educational content that could be made available through the Web. UNESCO clearly saw the power of the Web to
deliver educational materials throughout the world and especially to developing
countries lacking both traditional print materials as well as access to digital
content. The definition of OER as stated
by UNESCO is as follows, the open provision of educational resources, enabled
by information and communication technologies, for consultation, use, and
adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes (UNESCO, 2002,
p.24). Adapting OER is critical as
teachers in divergent settings strive to make information relevant to the
experiences and learning styles of students.
Emphasizing use and reuse is another
important ingredient in defining OER.
The report Giving Knowledge for Free
(2007) published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) provided the following commonly used definition of OER as: digitized materials offered freely and
openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching,
learning and research (p.10). The Open
eLearning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS) (http://www.olcos.org/english/home/index.htm), a collaboration
formed through the European Unions eLearning Program to promote the production
and use of OER, offers a different perspective.
OLCOS focuses on the essential skills that todays students need to
succeed in a knowledge society and on the skills that knowledge workers bring
to the table to solve complex, often global, problems. Participation requires that students learn to
critically and creatively analyze and use information. A report published by OLCOS entitled Open Educational Practices and Resources:
OLCOS Roadmap 2012 (2007) acknowledged that no authoritative definition
of OER has emerged (p. 20). The OLCOS Roadmap 2012 (2007) instead
focuses on three central criteria of OER that must be present to promote
instructional practices that will best aide students facing present-day challenges:
- providing
free access to content and its metadata so that these resources are
findable and useful in formal settings to teachers and students and
informally to lifelong learners,
- licensing
educational materials so that they remain available for re-use and
re-mixing with other materials as needed, and
- using
OSS so that the source code for educational tools remains available to be
re-used and modified (p. 20).
Despite these explanations it might
still be difficult to understand the exact content of an OER. Here again, both Giving Knowledge for Free and the OLCOS Roadmap 2012 provide valuable guidance. Each of these reports provides three distinct
categories of OER:
- course
or educational content such as a class syllabus, a lecture, or a learning
module
- software
for a tool such as a learning management system, blog, or wiki, and
- implementation
tools such as a license that specifies how the OER may be used or modified
by others.
One of the interesting aspects of the
definitions provided above is the emerging importance of the relationship
between OSS and OER.
The knowledge
society and the role of OER and OSS
The terms knowledge worker and
knowledge society were both used by Peter Drucker, one of the premier
thinkers about business management.
Drucker, a prolific writer, recognized early the profound changes that
computers and technology would bring to education and the workforce
generally. In an article written for
Psychology Today, Drucker (1989) expressed his view that becoming a lifelong
learner was the most important educational goal, believing that students need
to develop strong basic skills to assist in the acquisition of specialized
skill sets throughout the lifetime. At
the same time, he urged educators to recognize that no teacher can be all
things to all students, commenting that learning is as personal as
fingerprints (19). Drucker believed
that the combination of the teacher as a guide and the computer as a tool for
individualized instruction would produce successful knowledge workers. Writing for the Atlantic Monthly, Drucker
(1994) reminds readers that he coined the term knowledge worker in 1959
(62). The knowledge worker with a strong
formal education has critical thinking skills, the ability to apply knowledge,
and the desire to be a lifelong learner acquiring new bodies of knowledge. The
latter was particularly important as the knowledge worker, an expert in a
discipline, needs to gain new specializations to remain viable and mobile
within the workforce. Although knowledge
workers are learning across the lifespan they cannot master all the skill sets
and must therefore work well in a team.
Teamwork is a foundational element in the knowledge society. Drucker (1994) described the knowledge
society as a social and political transformation where the knowledge worker
becomes the leading class and education becomes the center and the school
its key institution (66). Drucker
(1994) is clear that the applications of these ideas are equally important to
the educational foundation of science, technology, and throughout the liberal
arts (69). Although Druckers
formulations of the knowledge society seem highly prescient, it does not seem
possible that anyone could have predicted the rapid transformation brought
about by the Internet as a social and as an information sharing
phenomenon.
A growing body of literature addresses
the changes and challenges that face both higher education and society as a
result of the advent of the Internet and the Web. Towards Knowledge Societies, a UNESCO World
Report published in 2005, provides an updated understanding:
Knowledge
societies are about capabilities to identify,
produce,
process, transform, disseminate and
use
information to build and apply knowledge for
human
development. They require an empowering
social
vision that encompasses plurality, inclusion,
solidarity
and participation (p. 26).
UNESCO (2005) makes two important
distinctions as it considers knowledge societies. The first has to do with both plurality and
inclusion as mentioned above as the report seeks to emphasize that there is
no value judgment placed on knowledgeindigenous knowledge and formal education
are equally respected. The second
distinction, also part of the above definition, is that information is not
knowledge; rather knowledge is produced by what is done with the information
and how it is interpreted, providing a clear distinction between the knowledge
society and the information society which has expanded rapidly in the online
environment.
The OLCOS Roadmap 2012 (2007) also devoted considerable attention to
new challenges to the knowledge society, focusing, as did Drucker, on education
across the lifespan beginning with elementary school and continuing through to
higher education and beyond. One of the
strongest points made by the report is that the focus of higher education
should be on using OER first and foremost to promote the skills needed in the
current knowledge society through a transformation in educational
practices... Pedagogy must focus on
innovative approaches that foster self-management, communication and team
skills, and analytical, conceptual, creative, and problem solving skills
(37-39). Although the method for
educating students in these areas is somewhat undefined, the end result is not
very different from the knowledge worker described by Drucker. However, as the OLCOS Roadmap 2012 describes the competencies needed by students
the impact of the Web becomes more apparent.
Students, future knowledge workers, must demonstrate that they are
grounded in the twenty-first century through their ability to systematically
access and organize relevant digital data and information that can be used
creatively to solve problems, to clearly organize and present data in graphical
and other formats showing an ability to translate complex information, to use
Websites and other electronic resources effectively to gain objective
information, and to gain information and communication technologies (ICT)
skills that foster creativity and innovationat home, leisure, and work (p.
39).
With the advent of Web 2.0
technologies these applications have rapidly become possible in our everyday
lives. OReilly (2005) and Downes (2008)
each highlight crucial ingredients of Web 2.0.
From a business perspective, OReilly (2005) explores Web ventures that
survived or developed following the bursting of the dot.com bubble. He emphasizes that the survivors were able to
use the Web as a platform for providing services to users. Rather than purchasing software that is tied
to a particular machine, Web 2.0 services are available anytime, anywhere (e.g.
GoogleDocs, Flickr, and del.ici.ous).
OReilly (2005) sees the platform as a system without an owner, tied
together by a set of protocols, open standards, and agreements for
cooperation. And, OReilly (2005)
emphasizes that the most successful Web 2.0 initiatives such as Wikipedia, much
as the OSS movement, have harnessed a decentralized community of users and
developers, continually improving content and enhancing the product. Downes (2008) takes the discussion one step
farther to show the relevance of open source Web 2.0 technologies to educators
and students. In a recent presentation
Downes (2008) described Web 2.0 as a personal learning environment that can be
used by communities of learners. These
Web 2.0 characteristics emphasize Druckers vision of the knowledge worker as
an integral part of a team, UNESCOs focus on the dissemination and application
of knowledge for the benefit of all, and OLCOSs understanding of the skills
people need to accomplish everyday tasks, meet educational goals, and be
engaged in productive work.
Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and
wikis are one way that both teachers and students can meet these demands. The beauty of these two technologies in
particular is that they are readily accessible through OSS options and require
minimal training and practice for both teachers and students to use
successfully. As OER tools, both blogs
and wikis meet many of the criteria outlined in the discussion above. Teachers can set parameters for use that help
students achieve course goals, providing both focus and guidance. Wikis and blogs present perfect forums for
self-guided student learning and opportunities to demonstrate their ability to
gather, organize, analyze and present information. Both technologies can be used to explore
problems and provide avenues for discussion and feedback from a community,
using developing ICT skills. The wiki
presents a more robust format for collaborative efforts for designing and
developing course projects due to its reliance on the community to make regular
contributions and provide relevant feedback.
Although their rationale and approach
are somewhat different, Seeley and Adler (2008) clearly see the benefits of Web
2.0 technologies in the classroom to fulfill many of the same needs of the
knowledge worker in the knowledge society.
The authors place more emphasis on Web 2.0s power to blur the lines
between producer and consumer for example by providing students with
opportunities to conduct real-time research with scientists from around the
world. Additionally, Seeley and Adler
(2008) see a shift from the focus on information access to accessing people,
providing myriad paths for social learning (p. 18).
Social
learning is based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially
constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded
interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions the social
view of learning says, We participate, therefore we are (p. 18).
As Seeley and Brown (2008) further
explore social learning, they highlight the concept of learning to be. Students need to do more than learn about a
subject, they need to become part of a community of practice through active
engagement. The development of OSS
provides a strong example of a community of practice in which a group
establishes how it will function to meet project goals. New participants must transition into the
community by learning how it functions as they make contributions to the group
effort. Seeley and Brown (2008) believe
that all students must learn to be a full participant in the field [by]
acquiring the practices and norms of established practitioners in that field or
acculturating into a community of practice (p. 19). Seeley and Brown (2008) provide a useful
review of Web 2.0 technologies from wikis to virtual worlds and examples of
their use for teaching and learning.
Some classrooms, virtual and in-person, are actively using OSS and/or
OER embedded within class projects. Students work in groups with the teacher as
a mentor or guide, modeling both social learning and often the same underlying
principles that guide the production of OER and OSS. Wheeler (2007) refers to the combined use of
these technologies within the classroom and for research as Scholarship 2.0defined
as the increasing role of IT, digital repositories, and electronic
collaboration in maintaining or improving the quality of the scholarly
endeavors of research, teaching and learning, and service (59). Scholarship 2.0, cyberinfrastructure,
including eScience and eHumanities, are a few of the terms generating intense
discussion about the focus and future of higher education.
A brief
overview of cyberinfrastructure also known as eScience and eHumanities
The concept of cyberinfrastructure is
not new. But, within the past decade as
digital scholarship and research has accelerated, it has increasingly become a
focus of concern. Highly collaborative
and large scale research projects using digital resources are rapidly becoming
the norm. The National Science
Foundation (NSF), through a series of reports, has helped to define and
establish a vision for cyberinfrastructure that is inclusive of the needs of
the government, higher education, and other research institutions at home and
globally. One frequently referenced
report is Revolutionizing Science and
Engineering through Cyberinfrastructure: Report of the National Science
Foundation Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure (2003), also
known as the Atkins Report after the committee chairperson. The Atkins Report (2003) arose from concerns
that science research could become fragmented and unable to reach its true
potential without appropriate human and financial resources to support
cyberinfrastructure (4). The end result
was a definition of cyberinfrastructure, a thorough review of the current scope
and potential ability of cyberinfrastructure to support research, and
recommendations that remain a recognized framework for capacity building.
The Atkins report described
cyberinfrastructure as the middle of three layers. Beneath the cyberinfrastructure layer, a base
layer includes underlying technologies such as integrated
electro-optical components of computation, storage, and communication
Fiber-optic cable is one example of a base layer component. The middle layer or cyberinfrastructure
includes, enabling hardware, algorithms, software, communications,
institutions, and personnel. Cyberinfrastructure is a necessity because no one
individual or agency can accomplish large scale research alone. Governments, higher education, the corporate
world, and others must pool their resources and expertise. As the Atkins report states, This layer
should provide an effective and efficient platform for the empowerment of
specific communities of researchers to innovate and eventually revolutionize
what they do The third layer in the
scheme presented by the Atkins report is composed of software programs,
services, instruments, data, information, knowledge, and social practices
applicable to specific projects, disciplines, and communities of practice. It is here in the third layer that
Scholarship 2.0 as well as the development of OER and OSS takes place. Again,
the Atkins report: If infrastructure is required for an industrial economy,
then we could say that cyberinfrastructure is required for a knowledge economy Although framed differently, the knowledge
economy as used by the NSF, Druckers knowledge society, and Seeley and Browns
(2008) emphasis on social learning are interconnected with the development and
use of cyberinfrastructure.
The Atkins report
recognizes that many global challenges such as climate change require
interdisciplinary and interorganizational activities that must be led by a
new work force. In addition to
scientists in this interdisciplinary mix are professionals who are trained to
understand and address the human factors dimensions of working across
disciplines, cultures, and institutions using technology-mediated collaborative
tools (26). Those trained in the
humanities play an important role.
Humanities scholars recognize the importance of teaching digital
scholarship to students as a means for preparing them to participate in an
increasingly digital world as the next generation of scholars and/or successful
workforce participants. Our Cultural Commonwealth: A Report of the
American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the
Humanities and Social Sciences (2006) presents an overarching view of
accomplishments and barriers faced when developing digital humanities
scholarship.
Our Cultural Commonwealth
(2006) makes several key recommendations that speak to the importance of open
access, open source software, and open educational resources. First, the report focuses on the vast
individual and institutional collections, pieces of the human record, which
have been the focus of humanities scholarship for generations and are increasingly
available as digital objects. Digital objects are stored at a wide variety of
institutions including archives, museums, and libraries throughout the world,
making open access a natural premise for eHumanities which relies on the
development of standards that encourage preservation and data sharing. Second, digital collections need to be
available for use and reuse for research and teachingone of the most important
features of open educational resources.
Finally, new tools for digital scholarship that promote data mining and
visualization to enhance teaching, research, and writing are leading the way
forward for digital scholarship. Our
Cultural Commonwealth strongly states the case for ensuring that open source
software plays a role so that development can be efficient and effective:
it
is incumbent on the university community to provide and encourage the use of a parallel
community infrastructure for open-source software development, in order to
avoid duplication of effort and ensure that tool builders in academic settings
are not specially disadvantaged compared with tool builders outside
universities. Such an effort could begin with a consortium of major
universities (for example, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation)
licensing the SourceForge software and then making it available for use by
academic open-source software developers on acceptable terms (36).
Emerging
tools for digital humanities scholarship at the crossroads between OER and OSS
There are a growing number of software
tools that are dramatically increasing the breadth and depth of OER for
teaching and learning. For example, the
University of California, Berkeley created a 3D virtual environment of an
actual archaeological dig in Turkey. The
Website called Remixing Catalhoyuk (http://okapi.dreamhosters.com/remixing/mainpage.html) provides an
interactive experience that uses videos, maps, timelines, music, and still
shots that exemplify the practice of archaeology. Students and teachers are invited to
download, share, remix, and republish any of the materials found on the
Website. All of the tools used to
develop the Website are open source. The
Science Museum of Minnesota's Learning Technologies Center hosts the Open 3D
Visualization Toolkit at <http://ltc.smm.org/visualize/about>. The project is
a strong example of an opportunity for students to actively engage in a
community of practice and social learning.
Visual Understanding Environment (VUE)
is an OSS tool that allows individuals and groups to generate concept
maps. Developed at Tufts University, the
Website (http://vue.tufts.edu/) describes VUE as a
flexible tool for managing and integrating digital resources in support of
teaching, learning and research. VUE
allows both individuals and groups to find new ways to organize information and
create new meaning through the formation of unique concept maps. Kahle (2008) emphasizes the careful design
criteria that enabled the development of VUE, paying close attention to the
adaptable design principles that make VUE useful for collaborations as well
as individuals. Concept maps can be used
to provide a visual explanation of a body of knowledge, to link digital content
for contrast and comparison and provide new meaning, or to generate a visual
understanding of an organization or project.
VUE provides a way for teachers to guide students towards an existing
community of practice or to develop a new one, to develop ICT skills, and to
develop concept maps collaboratively as a social learning experience.
The KEEP Toolkit has been used by
teachers to provide a visual record or online portfolio of their teaching
experiences and practice. Iiyoshi and
Richardson (2008) report that between 2004 when the Keep Toolkit became
publicly available and 2007, over 30,000 students and educators worldwide have
produced over 100,000 online representations and collections (p. 348). The site is designed so that no Web
development is necessary to generate an attractive ePortfolio that includes
text, images, or links to resources. The
KEEP Toolkit has also been used to create student ePortfolios that display
their accomplishments. Again, the ease
with which a student can achieve success makes this OER very user
friendly. Developed by the Knowledge
Media Lab of the Carnegie Foundation, the KEEP Toolkit can be downloaded from
SourceForge or it can be used online. A
prominent goal of the KEEP Toolkit was developing a strong community of
practice amongst teachers and a means for enhancing pedagogy. The Carnegie Foundation hosted the KEEP
Toolkit through its development, release, and early years of use. Recently the KEEP Toolkit transitioned to the
MERLOT Website. Information about the
KEEP Toolkit and its move can still be found at < http://www.cfkeep.org/static/index.html>.
How are
teachers responding to OER and OSS as tools for changing pedagogy?
Research on the impact of new tools on
teachers and/or their practice is emerging.
Harley (2007) designed and conducted a survey of humanities and social
sciences professors to get a better understanding of the use of educational technology
environments, the users, and the barriers for nonusers. The survey was delivered to 4,443 faculty and
831 valid responses were received. The
survey, which does not ask the scholars to rate an educational resource, seems
to provide genuine feedback about the scholars because they were asked about
themselves. Findings indicated that
there was a range of faculty use of technology resources from the nonusermany
of whom were passionately opposedto the avid user of these resources. Faculty rated their proficiency with
technology as a teaching tool from novice to expert. Perhaps most importantly as seen from the two
groups at either end of the spectrum teaching philosophy and style greatly
influenced the use of technology resources. A second key finding was that
faculty in different disciplines make use of different resources and those
teachers who have built personal collections of teaching materials are
reluctant to give them up. A real take
home message is that developers of OER/OSS tools need to be very careful about
assuming that all humanities teachers share the same guiding principles. Finally faculty non-users site very real
issues such as an inability to access the resources, lack of funds to purchase
classroom equipment to support resource use, and shear lack of time to find and
learn uses for these resources.
Little, et al. (2009) provides a
description of the Top Ten Teaching and Learning Challenges of 2009. Through the use of a wiki Educause, in
effect, created a think tank to look at the issues most worrisome to academics
and administrators. Challenge number
four on the list was encouraging faculty adoption and innovation in teaching
and learning with IT (p. 34). One
commenter remarked, Keeping faculty one step ahead of emerging
technologiesand providing them with the support to manage what often feels
like a rising tide of new tools and learning resourcescan indeed be
difficult. Managing the widening gulf
between early adopters and less technologically savvy faculty can be downright
frustrating. And then theres the
delicate balance between promoting technology tools and encouraging teaching
and learning with technology (p. 34).
These comments are an anecdotal reflection of the findings in the survey
described above.
Although these descriptions paint a
less than rosy picture of the potential uses of OER/OSS resources there are
anecdotal stories of successes as well.
Calogne (2008) offers a detailed description of virtual worlds as a
teaching tool, providing guidance about how to structure individual sessions,
the roles of the teachers and the students, and the overall use of the virtual
world as a classroom resource.
Concluding with a case study, Calogne (2008) describes her own experiences
and those of the students. Although
Calogne (2008) focuses on the use of Second Life her advice and the lessons
learned are transferable to the use of other new technologies, particularly on
the role of the teacher as a guide for students. Little, et.al. (2009) also describes a digital
history project designed and implemented by students as part of a history
seminar. The authors particularly emphasize that the students become part of a
history community of practice that recognizes the use of new tools for
experimentation (p. 38).
Finally, Taylor and McQuiggan (2008)
developed and implemented a survey of 221 faculty which focused on the actual
needs of faculty for successful online teaching. The authors provide a very thorough review of
the literature and the development of similar survey tools. Their findings indicate that for faculty
there is a real disparity between training that teaches one how to use a given
tool and instructional design that best uses these tools. Clearly these findings are in accordance with
the comments made in the article by Little, et.al. (2009) bringing the
discussion full circle.
Next
steps for digital scholarship using OER and OSS
One of the most important current and
ongoing developments for OER and OSS is their recognition as valuable
components of cyberinfrastructure, particularly in connection with digital
humanities scholarship and eHumanities.
Seeley and Adler (2008) see OER as a key building block in a stack
that also includes eScience, eHumanities, and Web 2.0 tools feeding into an
open participatory learning ecosystem (p. 30). In their discussion of cyberinfrastructure
for the humanities, Green and Roy (2008) recognize that fitting these same
puzzle pieces together requires the close coordination of a number of
professionals from varied fields including: software programmers, designers,
project managers, digitization specialists, copyright lawyers, and others (p.
42).
There is no one formulation about the
best way to bring all of these professionals together to develop new research
tools. But, there is awareness of
community source software as a potential solution. Courant and Griffiths (2006) distinguish
between the open characteristics of open source softwareand the manner in
which it is produced. We refer to the
community-based volunteer model associated with the likes of Linux and Apache
as community development, and note that it is also possible to produce
software with open source code through a centrally managed (and often funded)
process which we refer to as directed development (p. 4)
Courant and Griffiths (2006) go on to describe the process for
coordinating the development of software amongst colleges and universities with
similar needs to create more efficient administrative functions particularly
around billing, budgeting, and admissions.
It is easy to extrapolate from the community source or directed
development model to meet digital scholarship needs. Wheeler (2007) in his
analysis of projected trends for open source software development by higher
education through 2010 seconds the motion for community source
development. He cites the impact that
developers and users from within higher education can have on the market
(despite the relatively small number of institutions as compared to other
consumer groups) when they are direct producers of OSS as well as when working
in collaboration with outside developers to create OSS products that truly meet
community needs. Wheeler (2007) endorses
the community development model as a good fit for higher education as the core
values of higher education are steeped in discovery, knowledge sharing, and
scholarly communities. Thus the
behaviors of staff in open source software communities align with the subtle
but pervasive values of the community (54).
Freidlander (2009) is primarily
focused on the needs of the eHumanities community for accessible digitized
materials and their preservation.
Although she does not explicitly mention the production of open source
software through directed development she does clearly see the need for ongoing
collaboration. Freidlander (2009)
particularly recognizes the importance of such efforts as the Bamboo Project
which was funded by the Mellon Foundation in early 2008. According to the Website the Bamboo Project (http://projectbamboo.org/) is mapping out the
scholarly practices and common technology challenges across and among
disciplines to discover where a coordinated, cross-disciplinary development
effort can best foster academic innovation.
The Bamboo Project has developed
demonstrator projects one of which is The Software Environment for the
Advancement of Scholarly Research (SEASR).
The SEASR Website (http://seasr.org/) explains that the
project was also funded by the Mellon Foundation and provides a research and
development environment capable of powering leading-edge digital humanities
initiatives. The SEASR platform
includes OSS such as Zotero, VUE, and a program called MONK which analyzes text
patterns.
UNESCO, a long time supporter of the
OER movement understands the confluence between OER and OSS from the
perspective of development by a community of users as well as sustainability
issues. UNESCO has continued to promote
both OER and OSS. Most recently, UNESCO
published the OER Toolkit which outlines the history and uses of OER,
developing and publishing OER, and OER project development. UNESCOs continued support is evidence of its
belief in the core principles of OER and in its potential to provide
educational options for people in developing countries. Perhaps UNESCO continues to bank on growing
awareness that issues such as the ecology and conservation of natural resources
requires the close coordination of peoples and governments. OER can play a vital role in harnessing
intellectual power, in developing the political will to work in collaboration,
and in understanding cultural and historical differences.
Predicting the future of these OSS and
OER efforts or of any technological endeavor is a difficult proposition. For higher education leaders it seems nearly
impossible to know which tools and technologies will become popular enough to
have a long-term future, which will make an initial splash before fading away,
and which will signify the next wave.
Alexander (2009) provides a range of forecasting models that can be used
by higher education. Forecasting, while
not without some risk as to its accuracy (as we sometimes learn, for example,
from economic forecasting), can have a place in strategic planning, providing a
process for choosing a technological path forward. Strategic planning for digital scholarship
might also include a very thorough evaluation of the academic mission, determining
if the institution is fulfilling its stated obligations and responsibilities to
students, teachers, researchers, and other stakeholders. And, the planning process might also include
a complete assessment of IT capacity and needs, awareness of the institutions
ability to participate in a community development process and potential
collaborators, and funding sources.
eHumanities and eScience cannot move forward without community
engagement at the disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and inter-institutional
level.
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