Open Content was the topic of the JISC/CETIS Educational Content SIG meeting on 27 May in Manchester http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/ECSIG_May08_meeting.
On the question of openness Cormac Lawler - talking about about Wikiversity - offered his preference for the French word Libre which conveys more a of feeling of liberty, i.e. freedom to do what you like with the resources. Interestingly, commercial uses are included within that freedom. The three parts of Wikiversity are: Learning Materials; Learning Activities; and Learning Communities
John Casey, explaining JORUM's plans to go open, reminded us about the highly risk averse culture in HE, the result of which is a complicated licence regime with high transaction costs. The aversion to the risk of IPR infringement seem curious comparison to much higher risk activities such building programmes and IT projects.
Roy Attwood, Bolton University, stressed that a notice and takedown poicy was a good defence against copyright legal action: in 12 years he only twice had to invoke this policy.
Turning to the question of the value of Learning Objects, Casey cited Cicero ‘my reputation is my wealth'. The often cited belief that content had commercial value is ill-founded and many in HE grossly over-rate the commercial value of content. This reminded me of Cory Doctorow's assertion that for authors, obscurity is bigger threat than piracy.
Part of understanding value is to learn more about how objects are used and by whom. JORUM recognised the need for repositories to generate detailed usage statistics, which would require better repository software functionality.
Concentrating on technical issues is, according to Casey, a displacement activity. We should be looking more at communities, shared spaces, collaboration.
Liam Earney - CASPAR (Copyright and Support Project for Electronic Resources) - noted that the time allocated for rights clearance was almost always seriously underestimated and took place at the wrong end the project (the end rather than the beginning) and that many people lack confidence in their own rights clearance abilities – don’t understand the jargon and don’t know what rights to ask for. This points to need for machine readable licences. IMHO rights clearance often is rather haphazard even in companies which recognise the need for this work - this is one of the reasons few companies can develop rights management software - practices are just so variable between companies.
Phil Barker reckoned that one hour of interactive content required anything between 40 and 400 hours of development time. Which suggests that 'quality' content is unlikely to created 'on the fly' as part of the everyday job. In a brave attempt to explain the basics of quantum physics, Phil compared an interactive simulation with a page of equations explaining the same phenomenon. The first example exploited the computer for computation; the second simply used the computer for delivery
All this stimulated a debate on quality and utility. Does everything have to be top of the range simulation type stuff? Might there be contexts in which a flat page of equations might be more appropriate than an interactive LO? Another aspect of quality is accessibility: if repositories are open for contributions, how doyou ensure accessibility standards are met?
Other issues that surfced were currency and findability. Repositories might learn from dating agencies: put you most attractive offerings on the front page to lure in the clients. Flickr's ranking by 'interestingness' was relevant here. Findability was hindered by metadata quality - it was suggested that a well crafted sentence was vital.
John Casey reckoned that concentrating on technical issues was displacement activity: the priorities for repositories were community building, collaboration, shared spaces etc.
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