10.1 Not it, not business processes, but organizational culture  (Page 8/13)

In response to your question about whether I think this move is a first step in opening content more broadly, I would say that openness within the institution allows us to begin thinking about opening the content to an even wider audience. Limited openness gives faculty members and the management team time to realize some of the implications of openness, adapt and begin thinking about the implications of even greater openness. However, whether that wider openness will ever e realized will depend on a lot of other factors such as what other tertiary institutions are doing, how or whether this wider opening will benefit the institution and the individual faculty members, and the other usual questions about a viable business model. In other words, I think that it remains to be seen when open source learning-teaching will be realized.

7. ken udas - june 28th, 2007 at 4:52 am

Craig, Thank you. It sounds as if part of your institution’s successful entry into internal organizational change is due to faculty leadership from the beginning of your efforts and ongoing communication. I think that it could be a great service to the larger education community for you and some of your colleagues at UWI to record your activities and make your story available to learn from.

Once again Craig, thank you for your contributions. Ken

8. pat masson - july 4th, 2007 at 8:42 pm

Craig,

Very interesting read. I think many of the points you raise regarding benefits to smaller institutions are spot on. However, while I wholeheartedly agree FLOSS provides the means for implementing a broad array of systems and services, especially in resource restricted institutions, many who argue against the use of FLOSS site the same as the very reason to use commercial offerings, emphasizing contracted support supplements the limited resources on campus.

While there are many examples of service providers who will gladly enter into a support contract to support open source applications, the arguments seem to persist. Considering the above, what really struck me was your comment, “I am very happy that I do not have to worry about my clients rejecting an open-source application because of a stigma attached. Except for the more tech-savvy clients who want to know that the applications they are using are open-source, few clients raise the issue of the license type.” Am I correct in assuming your clients do not raise issues regarding, “total cost of ownership,” “long term support,” “quality,” “added staff,” etc.?

In my post, I posed this very culture as the ideal: a faculty and administrative body who derives functional requirements/needs based on their business processes and leaves the technical requirements to the IT department.

Please share you secret, how did you achieve such a paradise?

9. craig perue - july 6th, 2007 at 8:34 am

Thanks for great questions. I hope my answers do them justice.

However, while I wholeheartedly agree FLOSS provides the means for implementing a broad array of systems and services, especially in resource restricted institutions, many who argue against the use of FLOSS site the same as the very reason to use commercial offerings, emphasizing contracted support supplements the limited resources on campus.