Open Education and the Future

David Wiley, PhDBrigham Young University

David O. McKay School of EducationInstructional Psychology and Technology

Openness… In Education?

Let’s begin by defining terms

Open, adj.

Describes educational artifacts

Open Textbooks

Open Educational Resources

Open Courseware

Open, adj.

Teaching materials freely shared with permissions to engage in the “4R” activities

The 4Rs

ReuseRedistribute

ReviseRemix

While Nouns Differ…

The operationalizing actions are the same

Open, adj.

Generous, sharing, giving

Your Inner Two-year Old

Overcoming the impulse to scream“Mine!”

Law and Policy “Enable” Us

To shout “Mine!” ever more loudly,convulse ever more uncontrollably,

and hit each other with ever larger toys

Society’s Siren Song

“Be selfish. Sue each other. It’s legal. It’s ok.”

Education Is Not Immune

This kind of thinking is accepted

Role of Openness in Education?

A terrible, insidious question

Openness is the only means of doing education

If There Is No Sharing…

There is no education

Education, n.

A relationship of sharing

Successful Educators

Share most thoroughly with the most students

Effect of New Media / Tech?

Incredible opportunities for openness / education / sharing

Expertise Is Nonrivalrous

Can be given without being given away

“He who receives ideas from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me.”

Thomas Jefferson

Teachers Would Be Like Bees!

They could only teach once

Expressions Are Different

To give a book you must give it away

Expressions Are Different

To give a book you must give it away

Expressions Are Different

Digital expressions are nonrivalrous

n’t^

E.g., Online Book

We can all read simultaneously

An Indescribable Advance

The first time in human history

Expertise and Its Expressions

Give without giving away

Unprecedented Capacity

We can share as never before

Unprecedented Capacity

We can educate as never before

(Education Involves More)

(It turns out the Internet is pretty goodat facilitating these other things as well.)

Sharing the Stage

Technology always plays opposite it’s nemesis, policy

15th Century

Perhaps the greatest technological advance ever

15th Century

Also the most draconian restrictions on information dissemination ever

The Bible

Huge demand for vernacular editions, but illegal (and expensive)

Instead of Obliging…

Ramped up production of “indulgences” and stricter laws against vernacular editions

“Whosoever reads the Scriptures in the mother tongue, shall forfeit land, cattle, life, and goods from their heirs forever, and so be condemned for heretics to God, enemies to the crown, and most arrant traitors to the land.”

English Law, 15th Century

Collision

Powerful new technology,huge demand,

outdated thinking reinforced by law

The Reformation

Powerful new technology,huge demand,

outdated thinking reinforced by law

Alas

Our day isn’t that different

Course Management Systems

Technology used against its own potential made to conceal and withhold

2008 Professor in Southern US

Claimed (C) of his class lectures, declared student notes derivative works, and

asserted control over their use

Makes Me Wonder…

Can they ever become professors?Can they ever be employed?

Soaring Demand for Education

120M in higher education worldwide150M more projected to enter

In India Alone, That’s…

2400 new universities in the next 25 years

One new university every two weeks

Collision

Powerful new media and technology,ravenous demand,

outdated thinking reinforced by law

Sounds Familiar

Education is on the edge of its own Reformation

Openness

Blessed With New Media / Tech

To be more open?To preserve the status quo?

Role of New Media / Tech

Increase our capacity to be open

More Open We Are

The better education will be

Thank You

http://davidwiley.org/@opencontent