The Content Paradox: The Open Ethos in the Abyss of Access
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Presentation for Open Education 2016. As the 'family reunion' conference (and the field) grows, the primary increases are in research on open education resources and subsequent free or low-cost textbooks. There is need for a criticism of the conference and the assumptions of Open Education.
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The Content Paradox: The Open Ethos in the Abyss of Access
- 1. The Content Paradox The Open Ethos in the Abyss of Access Rolin Moe, Ed.D. Director of Innovation Seattle Pacific University @rmoejo …the shout Of Battel now began, and rushing sound Of onset ended soon each milder thought. High in the midst exalted as a God Th’ Apostate in his Sun-Bright Chariot sate Idol of Majesty Divine, enclos’d With Flaming Cherubim, and golden Shield Then lighted from his gorgeous Throne… - John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book 6, 96-102) Illustration: Satan Calling Up His Legions by William Blake (Public Domain)
- 2. Paraphrasing - The performance of professional wrestling is built upon the knowledge of it as fantasy. That both the audience and the performers know and accept this pretense gives this communication a superiority over other forms which purport to be natural and serious. - Roland Barthes, Mythologies Paraphrasing – The group in power in society always insists that intellectual discussion should take place in the kind of language which it uses to see, interpret and dominate the world. - Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks
- 5. There is an ‘escape hatch’ from the reusability paradox: using an open license.
- 6. The Content Paradox The Buried Hatch Cover by Alan Levine CC BY 2.0
- 10. This slide is ironic. Henry of Germany By Laurentius de Voltolina (public domain)
- 13. A dreadful interval, and front to front Presented stood in terrible array Of hideous length: Before the cloudy van, On the rough edge of battle ere it joined, Satan, with vast and haughty strides advanced, Came towering, armed in adamant and gold; Abdiel that sight endured not, where he stood Among the mightiest, bent on highest deeds, And thus his own undaunted heart explores. - John Milton, Paradise Lost (Book 6, 104-112)
Editor's Notes
- I’m going to start with a bell hooks story. In the early 1990s as the cultural studies movement was gaining headway, Stuart Hall delivered a keynote address about the growth and movement of the field, a seminal piece to this day. How could cultural studies have a wider impact on the world, break outside of the ivory tower and become something for a wider engagement? When he was finished, bell hooks offered a critique not so much of Hall but of the venue – the architecture of the space was stifling, attention had not been paid to seating arrangements for various needs, the microphones were at the front and not easy to access (not to mention the march of anxiety up to it, to stand below Dr. Hall in question or critique). How could cultural studies grow when the action of the conference supported not it but rather dominant notions? Milton here – Gardner’s talk highlighted many of the foundational problems I have been researching, so I engineered things around that. The quote of literature – why? Well, it’s pretty. That’s really about it. No great meaning here. Jesus on a flaming chariot. Even saying this is just about being cool, there are some assumptions which have been made here. I’ve brought fine literature into the practice, Milton, as well as art from William Blake. I’ve taken a quote, and even though it has nothing to do with this talk, it creates a gravitas here or a high seriousness.
- Quoting Sian Bayne Crucially, the field has lacked coherent definitions of ‘open’, and too often tended towards optimism, advocacy, and conviction, rather than a critical understanding of what openness might mean for education. Moreover, it is the vagaries of the term itself that have allowed it to be attached to other ideas so readily: to notions of self-directed learning and cohesive community interaction; and to technology and the presumed capacities of the digital networks that enable educational activity to take place. In these ways, ‘open’ has too often accounted for the assumed ease with which educational hierarchies can be horizontalised, and economic and geographic barriers can be dissolved.
- Quoting Sian Bayne Crucially, the field has lacked coherent definitions of ‘open’, and too often tended towards optimism, advocacy, and conviction, rather than a critical understanding of what openness might mean for education. Moreover, it is the vagaries of the term itself that have allowed it to be attached to other ideas so readily: to notions of self-directed learning and cohesive community interaction; and to technology and the presumed capacities of the digital networks that enable educational activity to take place. In these ways, ‘open’ has too often accounted for the assumed ease with which educational hierarchies can be horizontalised, and economic and geographic barriers can be dissolved.
- Where were we last year? (Lyotard and pomo, no truth, etc.) Content Paradox – the escape hatch Wiley describes has merit as truth but not Truth; however, content in and of itself is problematic in the same way open is problematic. The dominant paradigm of content is a long tail associated with it (beyond discipline information and to include field information, analytics and metadata). It is related heavily to sales and markets, the glacier metaphor. The obvious metaphor is Neo waking up in The Matrix…his open hatch lands him in a dystopia. The open licensing of content forces us to negotiate what we mean when we say content versus what content means. When we open the escape hatch from the reusability paradox and let the content out into a world unencumbered by copyright, we leave the safety of discussing open as a copyright problem and enter into a larger and more problematic space where open cannot be a use-value product nor a universal value. By opening the escape hatch and leaving the reusability paradox, we make open less absolute than when the hatch was closed. Note – Textbook Successes are a very good thing. In many ways, the battle for Open saw Open as the winner.
- Open Education 2012 was titled Beyond Content, and whether it was MOOC Mania, a tangible opportunity to see cost savings with textbooks/oer, or something else, in 2016 10% more of the sessions are about OER and 25% more about textbooks. Why?
- The conference has grown considerably, and in that time it has moved from a mixture of pragmatic procedures and edupunks into a larger arena to serve more aspects of the growing field, as necessitated by the successes of UNESCO, Creative Commons and #GoOpen. But why should those successes mean we have negated the uniqueness of the conference We cannot capitulate back to content. If Open is the absence of restriction, then open education is the absence of restriction on a formal or quasi-formal learning engagement. Content is but one piece of that puzzle. It’s the easiest to think about financially.
- Books are good. Great success. Huzzah. But what are we missing by this increased focus? Yes, we have started the conversation…but in and around a higher % of Textbook presentations this year, as well as a cavalcade of textbook memes playing during lunch.
- Two familiar critiques of education ‘looking the same’ as it did [insert number here] years ago – locked down contents and locked down structure. The precursor to the modern university was a repository where people accessed information. The energy around the earliest modifications to this system was not unlocking contents but enabling two-way communication opportunities, providing greater access to the institution and communication opportunities. This was the promise of radio, the promise of TV, and the promise of the Internet.
- Interestingly – we continue to define our progress in terms of assumed content accessibility. First Generation was correspondence, second was radio/tv/film, third was the Web. Open Communication has given way to open access which is now about open licensing. IS THE PROBLEM WITH ‘THE OLD GUARD’ OF EDUCATION THAT INFORMATION WAS SCARCE OR THAT THE RELATIONSHIP WAS AMISS? It’s kind of both, right? And we can’t talk one without the other, yet that is what we seem to constantly do — information society, information economy, knowledge economy. Yet the early energy is always around two-way communication and new opportunities for interaction. We then capitulate to content. Content can be facilitated more easily, we can employ ourselves as practitioners IF WE JUST FOCUS ON THE CONTENTS WE ARE PUSHING THE PROBLEMATIC RELATIONSHIPS AND HIERARCHY THAT PLAGUES EVERYTHING THAT HAS COME BEFORE THIS. WE BUILD NOTHING BUT EDIFICES BASED AROUND A WELL-INTENDED BUT MINOR OBJECTIVE. We are so focused on content and licensing we are pushing the very things open intends to question, criticize and amend To easily and blithely write off the content industry to the commercialization of the Free Internet of the 1990s, moreover, is to accept a grand narrative of promise and potential without considering the negotiated history which views the content industry as the logical progression of the knowledge economy, shaped because of how Western societies of control marry surveillance and commerce in the governance of society. If we consider the manner in which the Global South negotiates the concept of openness, open looks much less Right and much more problematic. This has recently been negotiated within OER circles by the promise of lower-cost or free textbooks, a beacon of emancipation through the promise of education and the pragmatism of economics. These are high promises on a well-intentioned (and often helpful) product whose shelf life is, however, considered limited. It sounds like the MOOC mania of 2012 (the world's education through less expensive and/or editable textbooks), except this time the open advocates are spreading the platitudes rather than critiquing.
- Jean Racine is considered one of the three foundational playwrights in French, most notably for his adherence to the style of writing called French Alexandrine, which is verse but not as an English language speaker would consider. The rules are highly detailed, and historically Racine has been considered a great for his deliberate and conscious creation of prose. Roland Barthes critiqued this view of Racine…yes, his ability to formulate a script of the time was impressive but inconsequential. In adhering to the modes of French Alexandrine he also adhered to the contextual and subtle modes of the time, specifically power struggles in male-female relationships. Racine’s work has aesthetic beauty, but in large part through that form Racine solidifies hegemonic dominance.
- This is where I am supposed to have an ending. If I were a keynote rather than a Thursday before lunch speaker, I would have the solution or a solution for us, a direction to go. It would be easy to say to look at the microphones in the room, either literally or figuratively. My bell hooks anecdote has a postscript. Several years after Stuart Hall’s foundational speech, he gave another impassioned keynote at another cultural studies conference. And bell hooks came up again. And her criticism in this case was how the need to simplify the problems of the field led to her contribution in that keynote to be seen as complaining about the microphones. And so while those in the field or those in deep study understood the complexity of this issue, most people who engaged a summation saw microphone placement. Complaining. Whining. By pointing out the structural barriers in the space which was itself dedicated to growing a larger space for understanding barriers, she was villified . We have our form, like Racine, or professional wrestling, or TED or Khan Academy. It’s not that the edupunk scene is gone (perhaps a name change) or that there is no work happening on the bleeding edges of openness. There is a desire to see Open Education as a beacon of pedagogy or transformation or structural change, but the work on the ground is largely tied to OER cost savings. Those new to Open Education will be brought in by something, which coverage in media, policy and this conference would show to be free or low-cost resources. Saying it’s not about this and then making it about this is not going to solve the problem.