Disseminating Knowledge Broadly--New Offerings From the Digital Commons Network

I have written about the way in which the efforts of the last decade to financially exploit the dissemination of knowledge has produced an increasingly class based system of knowledge dissemination in which the rich or well funded have access to knowledge denied to poorer individuals and institutions.  (E.g.,Open Access at Penn State: Scholarsphere (Dec., 14, 2012);   Between Scholar and University--Sharing Knowledge, Protecting Revenue and Control--Is the UCSF Approach Worth Considering (May 28, 2012); Opening Access: Course Proposals Archive at Penn State (June 1, 2012); Digital Humanities From the CIC (Oct. 6, 2012).

 (Image from Digitial Commons Network)

As a result, academics and academic institutions in developed states, and the wealthy elites in developing states have access to knowledge production denied to poorer individuals and institutions.  Publishers (but generally not the producers of knowledge) profit from this new market regime, and the perpetuation of systems of academic prestige based on publication through these knowledge exploiting and restricting enterprises compounds and deepens the effect, while hiding its financial objectives.Efforts by some publishers to permit the free circulation of older work is to be lauded as a nod in the right direction, but the pricing structures of new knowledge and the unwillingness, especially of certain market dominant publishers to contribute remains troubling.

It is in this environment that efforts like those of the Digitial Commons Network ought to be hailed and supported.  From their website: "The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work." 

This post includes the latest efforts of that Network to spread knowledge freely. Additions are made frequently HERE. Visit often.

The AAUP Issues a Revised Version of "Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications"

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

Since the AAUP last issued a report on Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications in 2004, the higher education landscape has been significantly transformed by a number of factors, including: (1) the emergence of social media as vehicles for electronic communication; (2) increased outsourcing of information technology resources; (3) cloud computing; (3) expanded security concerns, and (4) new communications devices.  Moreover, the conception of the classroom has been transformed by technology and de-centered by administrative efforts to move education from a faculty driven effort to a markets driven effort to satisfy the demands of wage labor markets.

These changes have emboldened universities to begin to assert more complete control over the efforts of individuals who are employed as faculty.  I say it in that way because it appears to be a strategic calculation by universities to suggest that the mere entry into an employment relationship with faculty entitle them to "own" everything that comes from the individual.  While some might suggest that this transformation begins to touch on the incidents of slavery (there is no space that the individual may call her own, because it is all owned by the university), the courts have not yet confronted that issue.  Yet the trend is felt strongly as universities have sought to exploit all creative activities of faculty however tenuously tied to the scope of employment (on the theory that the scope of employment includes everything that an individual does, at least to the extent that the university wishes to claim it for itself).

This post includes the press release announcing the revised version and the executive summary of the revised version. The revised version may be accessed here:  Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications; Download:

Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications.pdf

AAUP Draft Report: "Defending the Freedom to Innovate: Faculty Intellectual Property (IP) Rights After Stanford v. Roche."

 

 (Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

 Intellectual property has become an increasingly contentious issue across the academy as universities struggle to extract as much value form its faculty as the law permits--and to change the law to permit greater exploitation to the extent that universities can assert the political power to do so. This movement represents a larger movement in which universities seek greater productivity gains from faculty resources.  In this case, universities are increasingly asserting ownership rights over faculty that may at its limit suggest that faculty are essentially property of the university -- and that such a property transaction is made legally palatable through the medium of the salaries and support paid therefor by the university. 

 It is in this context that the American Association of University Professors has released a draft report for comment: "Defending the Freedom to Innovate: Faculty Intellectual Property (IP) Rights After Stanford v. Roche." Particularly worth reading is Part III, pages 10-28 of the draft report.

In releasing this draft the subcommittee of the Association's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure issued a statement that follows below. The committee welcomes comments on the report from Association members and other interested parties. Comments should be addressed to anisenson@aaup.org.

MOOCs International Organizations Expand the Supplier Base While MOOC Supplier Competition Goes Global

MOOCs have been understood as the creature of academics and the institutions they serve.  Universities, along with their business partners, or when joint ventures of universities are created to develop and profit from this form, appear to have a lock on the form.  That is useful, especially where MOOCs are viewed as a revenue generating and labor leveraging device.

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

Two interesting developments may change the planning horizons of American universities in the  MOOCs market.  Both may represent potentially substantial market competitors to universities.  Yet at least of them offers the possibility of reaching market's for learners beyond those that universities may view as potentially available for revenue harvesting. One shows how international organizations may be turning to MOOCs in their capacity building and knowledge dissemination objectives.  The second suggests that MOOCs (and revenue competition ) may be going global.  

Godzilla Versus the Swamp Creature: MOOCs, the Control of Online Education and the Move From Education to Training for Labor Markets

While much attention has been drawn to MOOCs from the perspective of large institutions and those charged with increasing the productivity of teacher-workers to deliver high margin education enhancing capacity, I have been considering some of the side effects of MOOCs.

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

These include the way in which MOOC development has managed to weaken shared governance, and the way in which MOOC operations has deepened recent movements to move education and course/program policy making from the academic side of the university administration to its finance (and non-academic) side. More important, perhaps, have been two additional side effects.  The first is the way in which university administrations have used MOOCs to extend their control over faculty creativity--seeking in effect to capture all individual work whenever produced on the basis of the fact of an individual's hire.  While this has the feel of extraction without compensation, the issue remains unexplored.  The second is the way in which MOOCs may make it possible to leverage teaching by aggregating teaching capacity across universities and using that aggregation and leveraged delivery of education products to reduce the size of expensive staff.

It is with this later point in mind that it may be worth reading carefully the intervention of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) provosts in the contests for the control of MOOCs and their revenue generating and faculty cost generating potential. CIC Ad Hoc Committee for Online Learning, CIC Online Learning Collaboration: A Vision and Framework (June 15, 2013) (The CIC Provost Report).  This post includes the bulk of that report along with the way in which the COIC action was reported in the academic trade press, the Chronicle of Higher Education, in Steve Kolowich, "Universities in Consortium Talk of Taking Back Control of Online Offerings," Chronicle of Higher Education, June 19, 2013.  While the trade press characterizes this story as one of a battle between institutional giants for control of a revenue generating new form of student training (and thus the title of this post); a closer reading suggests a more potent theme, the way in which innovation is being used to continue to strip faculty of control of any meaningful role in setting the direction fo courses, course content and educational programs.

Between Scholar and University--Sharing Knowledge, Protecting Revenue and Control--Is the UCSF Approach Worth Considering

It has become something of a truism that information is power; it is also true that power is money, or at least income.  These truisms speak to a larger issue now confrontation academic institutions--contests over the control of knowledge produced by academics. 

 (Pix from Happy 3rd Birthday, Open Access Directory!, Charlotte Law Library News, May 26, 2011)

But should a faculty to make each of their articles freely available immediately through an open-access repository, and thus accessible to the public through search engines such as Google Scholar?  And should a Faculty Senate spearhead such efforts?  The Faculty Senate of the University of California San Francisco has answered both in the affirmative.  It would be useful for Penn State's Faculty Senate to consider the same.