note: Author - Rob Abel, "Open Source and Open Standards". Originally submitted September 19th, 2007 to the OSS and OER in Education Series, Terra Incognita blog (Penn State World Campus), edited by Ken Udas.
About 18 months ago, in February of 2006 I was appointed the CEO of the IMS Global Learning Consortium 1. IMS is a non-profit member consortium focused on developing open standards for interoperability in the domain of learning and education. My sense was that open source software was an important trend in this domain, especially in the higher education segment. I had some fairly recent exposure to higher ed open source in the U.S. having just completed a research study on current usage and prospective usage. In discussions with the IMS Board of Directors, which included at the time several providers of non-open source solutions (and still does, by the way) there was confirmation on the importance of including open source initiatives in the open standards discussion. Since then IMS has included open source and open technology program tracks in our annual conference and added a couple of open source leaders, Moodle 2 (course management platform) and INFORMS 3 (student and administrative system platform), in addition to some existing participation from the Sakai community 4 , to our active participants.
I've also been involved in several invited presentations and panel discussions with some other very smart folks on the topic of open source and open technologies in both the higher ed and K-12 school segments. Through an accumulated experience of two years looking at open source and open standards and how they can, will, or might impact the learning technology segment, I have, at least initially, concluded a few things about open source, open standards and the relationship between them. Since we have a long way to go, I'm offering these as postulates that need to be proven. Here goes:
Postulate number one: Open source reference implementations are extremely critical in achievingadoption of open standards for software interoperability.
I think the greatest proof point of this is probably Apache 5 - the availability of an authoritative reference model while organizations are attempting to adopt new interoperability standards is invaluable in accelerating industry participation. In learning standards, our conundrum is conformance.
One of my favorite sayings of the month is, “learning technology interoperability standards “ great for researchers or consultants, bad for interoperability. The point being that pretty much all the specifications developed over the last ten years of progress are well, not very specific. Ethernet they are not. This, above all, in my opinion and in the opinion of many IMS members is the single largest reason that much very good work has been thwarted in terms of its potential for adoption.
As a result, IMS is doing a bunch of things under the name of “application profiling” to narrow down spec parameters for various communities - either by region or segment. We are also providing value to our members in bringing them together in various ways to support testing. But, while this is helpful, is there anything more efficient then the ability to build to an authoritative reference design?
Postulate number two: Standards organizations are pretty much the only way to get a levelplaying field when it comes to new open source applications for learning - however, that won'thappen unless the open source projects/communities are active participants.
Some very successful open source initiatives leveraged existing investment in operating systems, web servers, etc. making the decision of what interfaces to implement pretty straightforward. Unfortunately, in end-user applications, and especially in education and learning, that prior investment doesn't usually exist.
One of my very repeatable conversations with new open source project X begins with: “OK, Rob, just tell us what standards you have and then we can adopt them.” To which I reply, “well, if you want them to exist you need to help create them.” Let's take course management systems as an example. Who defines the interoperability interface points between a course management system and other complementary components in what we like to call the “learning enterprise?” There is no obvious answer to that question.
If an open source initiative for learning wants to be on the cutting edge of defining that “enterprise architecture,” well, then it needs to be involved in the standards creation and evolution. Another very repeatable conversation with open source initiative X goes like this, “well, Rob, we are implementing open source interfaces and therefore we are creating open standards “ therefore, we don't need to participate in standards activities.” To which my reply is, “best of luck to you!”
The reality is that unless you are Google, or of a similar size and market share, you will have an extremely difficult time getting critical mass around your homegrown standard. And, typically a small open source project (they all start out small usually) has the exact problem of competing against larger competitors, like Google, who are much more likely to pull off that strategy than they are.
Postulate number three: Whether open source or proprietary, it's all about the boundaries ofcustomization.
That may seem like an odd statement but it became apparent to me when discussing open source and student systems with an audience at a presentation of mine at the JA-SIG conference in 2006. What I mean is that at the end of the day, both open source and proprietary solutions are challenged to come up with the right designs in the education segment with respect to what is customizable and what is not.
Those that want open source solutions include in the key factors control and customization. However, if control and customization comes at the price of “forking 6” in the open source world, there is a big problem. You then lose the key benefit of the shared investment in upgrades, evolution, etc. that is so important. So, customization must be done judiciously and most importantly, designed into the core platform for forward and backward compatibility. This is exactly what seems to be the key challenge of many proprietary solutions in the education space. That is, is there enough customization afforded in the right ways so that the institution can differentiate itself, innovate, and so forth?
Postulate number four: Open source can be strategic to the goals of educational organizationsbut I currently only know of one case in which it is.
Wow! Maybe I finally wrote something controversial. Maybe this qualifies as a blog now! It is very sad to me, but also an opportunity for those that wish to lead, that “the technologies of learning” are not strategic in our education institutions. What I mean by “strategic” is that the executive leadership understands that investment in technology to support learning is a key priority - not just to further the educational mission of the institution but also to further society's progress in the use of technology for learning.
I kind of wrote a whole article on this topic 7 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. 8 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 b 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 9 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 10 on trends in learning, technology, and standards of interest or might be interested in joining our online community 11.
- 770 reads
