16.1 Open source and open standards  (Page 3/10)

Postulate number four: open source can be strategic to the goals of educational organizations but i currently only know of one case in which it is.

I kind of wrote a whole article on this topic earlier this year for Educause Review. For the purposes of this discussion, I want to point out that the same seems to be true of open source learning applications. The only exception I know of (there may be others I have not yet been exposed to) is the Open University in the U.K. and their evolving adoption of Moodle.

Open U. sees participation in an open source community as a way to leverage investment and innovation. As such, Open U. has stepped up to a key leadership role in that community and sees this as an ongoing core investment. Again, the difference between this strategy and others I am aware of is that it is not an IT department strategy. It is an institutional strategy that goes hand in hand with the philosophy and strategy of Open U.

I realize that this sort of thing is not easy to pull off in higher education institutions, especially the elite institutions with many diverse and largely independent schools, divisions, departments, etc. And, as I already mentioned, this may be more of an issue with technologies for learning in general versus open source versions of that technology. It will be interesting to see if other institutions can follow suit and which ones will emerge as the leaders in learning technology, open source, or both. The relationship to standards should be obvious – institutional buy-in to learning technology standards will help move the market to the great benefits of standards adoption.

OK, so that’s about all I think I might have learned. I’m very interested in your reflections on the topic. We have been very active in transforming IMS Global Learning Consortium into a venue where these sort of bigger picture ideas are discussed, in order to help inform the global learning segment. You may find our annual report on trends in learning, technology, and standards of interest or might be interested in joining our online community .

Comments

1. ken udas - september 21st, 2007 at 4:22 am

Hello, First, I would like to offer a big thank you to Rob for his thought provoking post. I think that there are lot’s of practical hooks here and I would like to take advantage of them. I concur with Rob’s third postulate

Postulate number three: Whether open source or proprietary, it’s all about the boundaries of customization.

but I have some practical questions.