Open courseware and open source software (PDF Download Available)

Stefan Baldi, Hauke Heier, and Anett Mehler-Bicher

Open Courseware and Open Source Software Learning from experience?

PAUL WATSON

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eginning as a personal project by Linus TorThe suitability of a product for an open valds, the Linux operating system continues approach is influenced by both the basic nature of today as a community of volunteers and at the product and the motivation of the contributors the same time has generated a huge commercial on an individual and organizational level. The exismarket. In April 2001 the Massachusetts Institute tence of open products in turn influences commuof Technology (MIT) nities and markets. announced the OpenWhile communities are CourseWare project, groups of people inforNature of the making all of MIT’s mally bound together by Product courseware freely availshared expertise and pasable on the Web (see sion for a joint enterocw.mit.edu); MIT’s prise [4], participants in Communities Open Product and Markets intention was not to markets are motivated design an e-learning by expected financial environment. MIT returns. Existing prodMotivation plans the official launch ucts and services in of the Contributions of its courseware this communities and marmonth, with 500 kets are assumed to have Presumed Casual Influence courses online in the a moderating influence Presumed Moderating Influence first stage. Courseware on the nature of the includes lecture notes, product (by providing a Open product framework. course outlines, reading publicly available basis for further development), as lists, and assignments supporting traditional classwell as on the motivation of the contributors (by room teaching. Within 10 years, more than 2,000 enhancing their visibility). The figure here illuscourses will be online. trates our framework, which also forms the While putting individual course material online is roadmap for the subsequent analysis. already a widespread practice, the systematic organization of freely available course material from differ- Nature of the Product Software and courseware both contain codified, ent academic disciplines in a standardized, explicit knowledge. Only the software’s source code searchable archive on an organizational level is an reveals information about its inner workings to innovative approach. The project’s name suggests advanced programmers; they cannot grasp the some conceptual relation to open source software, internal logic from compiled programs alone. As and the first press release was used in newspaper programmers share a large knowledge space—an front-page articles throughout the world. Will this area of mutual understanding—they are able to approach now have a similar impact on university transform the conveyed information into knowlteaching as open source had on software edge for further application. Computers with standevelopment? COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

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Technical Opinion dard operating systems, standard programming languages, and online communities form this shared knowledge space. Courseware teaches knowledge in both content and structure. It can be of interest for persons willing to learn about the course topic, as well as for teachers. They can explore how others teach specific subjects or integrate the material into their own teaching. Depending on their background, students and teachers are able to transform information from course material into useful knowledge. Nevertheless, the shared context (the same curriculum, common classroom experience) for course material is generally smaller and more fragmented than the shared context for open source software. Interaction with experienced human instructors is needed to create a shared knowledge space. In addition to this social context, a common technological basis is missing. While open software builds on a common infrastructure of tools, languages, and development environments, no similarly accepted common framework exists for producing courseware. Comparing OpenCourseWare with the three central requirements of the codified Open Source Definition [3], the different nature of the products becomes apparent: • Source Code: For open source software the program must include the source code. This requirement is satisfied by OpenCourseWare, as it will be available free of charge and in a readable Web-based format. • Free Redistribution: Open source software can be redistributed without royalties or licensing fee to the author. In contrast, MIT excludes any commercial use of its courseware. A specific problem of courseware is the use of copyrighted material. While it can be authorized for use in a specific course, it is often not freely available on the Internet. A bootstrapping process must be established to replace copyrighted material. • Derived Works: The open source software’s license must allow modifications and derived works and allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. MIT satisifies this requirement with its Creative Commons License. The literature cites many different motives for programmers and software companies to produce, license, and use open source software. Broadly, they 106

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can be divided into social, methodological, economical, and political/ethical reasons. Peer recognition is an important individual social motivation for software developers, as well as for researchers and teachers. In addition to instrumental (monetary) rewards, contributors value status and reputation as symbolic rewards. The methodological motives of the two concepts differ widely. For open source software, widespread cooperative development is expected to lead to better results than an isolated, protected approach. Contrary to this, it is not one of the main goals of OpenCourseWare to improve the quality by international cooperation. One might even assume the opposite: OpenCourseWare aims to show how well made centrally developed MIT material can be. The economic motives differ as well. For MIT, the economic gain is presently much more limited than the benefits individual programmers of open source software can gain. They can rely on existing efforts of others that can be used with the acceptance of the open source license. For MIT, the opposite holds true. It does not need to open its courseware in order to make use of its past achievements. Whether gains in reputation or other organizational benefits will compensate for the expected cost of some $100 million is difficult to judge. Nevertheless, OpenCourseWare, as well as open source software, can be the base for complementing commercial services, such as seminars. Open source software and OpenCourseWare both share the political/ethical motivation, a spirit to share knowledge with other people. The underlying assumption is that shared knowledge is more beneficial to society than proprietary secrecy. In both cases an idealism to give to those who cannot afford to buy knowledge can be assumed. Impact on Communities and Markets Open source is a concept shared and used by programmers around the world, and a substantial pool of open source software currently exists. In contrast, OpenCourseWare is initially restricted to MIT and its courseware authors and has no substantial basis to build upon. While the development of open source software is often a self-organized and distributed effort for a single product, the OpenCourseWare project is centrally

coordinated and funded by MIT. There is no established culture of competing solutions and distributed conflict resolution. Both concepts are valuable to the scientific community. Open source is a substantial improvement in development cooperation, and open courseware can be of great value to distribute academic knowledge to students worldwide. The open access to source code and course material fosters the exchange of ideas between people and innovation. It has been observed that successful open source projects are often initially developed by a small group [2]. The MIT project might have the potential to stimulate more development in this area, resulting in positive network effects. While both concepts challenge the currently dominant business models, the true longterm impact of the two movements is subject to speculation. Conclusion We see some similarities between open source software and MIT’s OpenCourseWare. They can be found in motives and in impact on markets and communities. However, some important differences are apparent. Open source is much more than knowledge sharing. It is a system of software development, a legal framework, and a philosophy. OpenCourseWare lacks most of these attributes. First, it does not include the participation of nonMIT staff in the courseware development. Second, an integrative legal agreement under which other universities might publish their courseware is missing. Third, it is not a philosophy by nature. Although the project’s name invites comparisons with open source software, the analogy is limited to the concept of making information freely available. Our survey of ISWorld mailing list subscribers shows strong global support for the idea of open courseware. The strongest support comes from Europeans, who have also been identified as main contributors to open source software projects [1]. The weakest support has been shown by the Australian/New Zealand respondents; only half of them are in favor. As anticipated, the results show that support for open courseware is positively correlated with the expected benefits (for teachers, students, and the reputation of the publishing institution) and negatively correlated with the fear of giving up a

competitive advantage. Moreover, people convinced their own courseware provides a high value show a stronger interest in MIT’s material, probably for benchmarking purposes. Our findings reveal a strong positive correlation between the respondents showing an interest in MIT’s courseware with those supporting the free distribution of their own courseware. In addition, the perceived competitive advantage of their own courseware and the support for publishing the material correlate positively. This is an encouraging indicator that positive network effects can be established for open courseware. Courseware incorporates many of the same factors that have been identified as supportive for the development of open source software. Due to its potential impact on university teaching, the idea of open courseware deserves an active discussion in academic circles beyond MIT’s OpenCourseWare project. A closer look at the open source movement can help advance the idea and build an integrative legal and community framework for the sharing and improvement of courseware. Open development environments for educational knowledge, legal frameworks, and philosophy should be considered, along with technical approaches to make course content interoperable. While the discussion about free access to scientific research papers has already received some public coverage (for example, in Nature and Science), the development of educational resources deserves a similar debate. MIT’s OpenSourceWare is a good reason to intensify the discussion now. c

References 1. Dempsey, B.J., Weiss, D., Jones, P., and Greenberg, J. Who is an open source software developer? Commun. ACM 45, 2 (Feb. 2002), 67–72. 2. Johnson, J.P. Economics of Open Source Software. Cornell University, 2001. 3. Open Source Initiative. The Open Source Definition–Version 1.9; www.opensource.org/ docs/definition.html, 2001. 4. Wenger, E.C. and Snyder, W.M. Communities of practice: The organizational frontier. Harvard Business Review 78, 1 (Jan. 2000), 139–146.

Stefan Baldi ([email protected]) is a professor of information systems at Munich Business School. Hauke Heier ([email protected]) is a lecturer in information systems at European Business School, Leiden University School of Management, and Munich Business School. Anett Mehler-Bicher ([email protected]) is a professor of information systems at Mainz University of Applied Sciences. © 2003 ACM 0002-0782/03/0900 $5.00

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