If You’re Good at Something, Never Do It for Free.
I’m writing this blog at the end of May 2018… Well, I am! But I won’t be borrowing liberally from the investigation of the intersect between executive education (my area) and ‘openness’, despite the CC0 license. This however does highlight one of the points of contention between executive education (considered premium and bespoke) and openness (although ‘open’ and ‘free’ are not necessarily synonymous, low or no price tags are often perceived as proportional to quality and novelty) that I have been trying to engage with to examine the concept of openness as it relates to my professional practice.
The OKHE course unit has felt like familiar territory as I have experience in open source software and I am supportive of the movement and its values of open exchange, collaboration, community, meritocracy and transparency. Open source software and open knowledge in higher education have unique features, but many of the underpinning values are the same. As something of a parallel development, as a kid in the 90’s whose parents could not afford to pay full price for video games — most computer fairs of the time were my saviour and provided at least one vendor of pirated software. I remember a one in particular who (loudly) reasoned that he ‘wanted to everyone to be able to enjoy playing the games [he] was lucky enough to be able to afford to play’. By way of contrast, I also remember friends whom would proclaim that they ‘would never buy a copied game, [they] would rather have a proper copy!’ (at this point the author would like to self-reference: ‘low or no price tags are often perceived as proportional to quality’).
This modern day Robin Hood was noble in some respects (albeit making a small profit on the side), yes the producer (or publisher) sets the price tag — and although my friends’ arguments were based on a sense of prestige rather than economics, there does need to be a balance between funding and accessibility. So, these thoughts and questions have been floating around in my head for some years — particularly how we meet the needs of both the content creators and the consumers.
Shifting gear from piracy to knowledge accessibility and openness is somewhat difficult — there are so many facets to the area it is difficult to know where to start (looking at you, word count). The UNESCO policy brief on the impact of openness in higher education provides a good overview. Digging through material threw up what felt to me like one of the more stark facts driving a push towards openness — the cost of textbooks, which has allegedly risen almost four times faster than inflation standing at a whopping 1,041% since 1977. Textbooks be warned, the excessive profiteering of academic journal publishers has potentially left them dead in the water with the somewhat necessity driven endeavours of Sci-Hub. I would argue that all resources are finite, whether the depths of student pockets, the goodwill of academics, even the paper the texts are printed on. New modes of delivery and a sense of responsibility in balancing profits against accessibility are required to ensure a sustainable model.
This article does a reasonable job of summarising executive education whilst also highlighting some of the risks of openness (lack of structure and readability, uncited and unfinished — possibly too many chefs and not enough ownership?).
Martin Blake’s post was a great starting point for me as his professional area (Estates) is not something I would find easy to associate with openness. I had to look in some depth and perhaps go off on a slight tangent, but I thought an interesting example concerned my work with China. A regular challenge is a combination of the necessity to produce materials (whether presentation slides, case studies, safety information etc.) in Chinese and the very short lead times (‘premium’ education, ‘premium’ expectations). In an ideal world, required teaching or support materials would always be sent to a professional translator. Unfortunately however the time frames often dictate I find a quicker solution.
Enter my rudimentary knowledge of Chinese and certain tools: Google Translate, LINE Dictionary, and Yellowbridge. All are free but Google Translate is worth noting as it is open — users are encouraged to contribute to the translation community and improve the services’ accuracy. Is this human-machine hybrid a perfect substitute for a professional translator? Not quite. Does it get the job done reasonably well? Yes. However I do think it is a good example of openness in my practice. I subsequently share any created resources with both delegates and colleagues for future use (for example, IT account registration information). What is also positive about this method is it consists of both open input (free and open tools/knowledge) and open output (creation of open resources).
Looking forwards it could perhaps be worth investigating working across teams (or perhaps even institutions) to develop open educational resources (OERs) that satisfy common needs. One such need is the variable English language ability of executive programmes (due to no IELTS requirements). Perhaps an online OER could be developed collaboratively to assist in bringing all executive students to a certain standard? The very nature (variability of delegates) of the project dictates a broad input. This is something I will explore going forward.
It was interesting to read Kate’s piece concerning collaboration — I am part of the team that won and delivers the UK-China Infrastructure Academy. Working with an array of partners (local, national and international governments, commercial organisations, other institutions) brings some difficulties to the table. However, by recognising the importance of a strong overarching goal (the national interest, in this case) and soliciting buy-in from partners, we were able to work collaboratively and openly (sharing experience, knowledge and research) to deliver the programme to the highest educational and business standards. Granted, this is only pseudo-open practice in some ways as the end result is a paid for product, however I think it demonstrates that in principle some of the issues working against openness (ownership for example) can be overcome.
In closure I would suggest there are significant challenges facing the open movement (would you give up that juicy 1,041%?), however as my hybrid human-machine translation approach and Sci-Hub perhaps demonstrate, it may well be about taking baby-steps towards openness, and necessity certainly begets ingenuity!
