Assumptions and challenges of Open Scholarship

With regards to measuring achievement a platform is being developed at appii.io that is utilising blockchain technology to securely keep records of achievement but also connect students and employers to maximise student's strengths and preferences with employer needs. I am surprised that blockchain technology has never made it into the report, the authors may have their reasons for this but in my opinion this technology will change the educational landscape and beyond in profound ways and I would place this at the mid term of 2-3 years. Am I too optimistic? 

I don't think it would be too controversial to say that the use of some kind of PLE in education is becoming more commonplace as people start to make use of technologies in various areas of their life. Where is this all heading? If we can accept that students learn in different ways and what is good for one student may not be good for another then we have to accept that a one size fits all system is not optimum either. As Weller points out in the Sclater/Weller (2016) podcast that students do not want to use an inferior system in their studies than they are using in their leisure time, they're are some great free tools out there that work very well, but as Sclater counters that students need to be able to interact so they must be using systems that allow this, although it is a red herring to suggest that a good reason for not partaking in the use of different technologies in the form of a PLE is in case of technical failure, of course any platform can fail but if your environment is distributed then it is much less likely your whole environment is down at the same time. It is true that there needs to be some consistency for ease of communication, but at the same time students needs and preferences need to be taken into account for optimum learning potential, after all there are a vast range of technologies waiting to be exploited, along with a vast range of preferences. How would this work? Some kind of hybrid system? Maybe it is fair comment from sclater to suggest that far from the VLE being put out to pasture it could become more of a back end system. This is the direction I see for the PLE. We do need to give students ownership over the tools they use if they are to get the most out of their learning as they possibly can, but their needs to be a route for the students to maintain fluid communication. This currently does not happen with the VLE either, forums are not instant or fluid enough and the whole system is a little restrictive when compared to the tools that can be utilised in everyday life. What would be better and a potential direction is for students to choose the tools that they wish to use and have a system that interacts with these platforms giving students the flexibility of using their PLE whilst keeping the ability to communicate, of course there may be situations that need to be kept in a closed forum or at least desirable, but a more flexible system is surely more beneficial for all. Is this fanciful? Is education heading down the PLE highway? Its already on it, where to next?

As we have seen, technology has been making massive waves in recent years in education and the impact can be seen in the ways in which courses are delivered and also in the way students are interacting with their courses, this can be seen both in the class and on distance learning courses. Education itself is notoriously slow on the uptake of new technologies but of course these technologies are no longer new and the people that are innovating have grown up with these technologies. Chris Jones asks the above question in the context of an activity as part of an MA module. In my view, technology can not cause reform in itself as people need to be willing to use the technology and see the value in its use. In my opinion though it is being used as an instrument of reform, just look at the explosion of MOOCs the sheer number of courses available online now is incredible and the surge in uptake of these courses is equally phenomenal. According to class-central.com the number of students has more than doubled in the last year up from 16-18 million to over 35 million   ( https://www.class-central.com/report/moocs-2015-stats/) These are obviously headline figures and the real story is a lot more nuanced than this, for example are these students that are registered to a platform, or registered to a course, have started a course, partially finished or finished a course, the permutations are endless, but it is plain to see that the interest in massive online courses is growing at a rapid rate. This is a massive subject in itself and is in danger of spinning out of control just like the MOOC figures, so to come back to the original question, I think it is reasonable to say that, yes, technology has been an instrument used to encourage reform, after all the big players in this field aren't creating all this content out of a sense of social justice or just because they can. This is becoming a very big market as people are changing their learning habits, and see the MOOC model as one that is very flexible and one that they can jump in and out of as they see fit. People obviously have different reasons for wanting to learn but the point is that with the MOOC model, the previous barriers of large time and financial commitments have been lowered a great deal and in many cases the financial commitment has been completely removed. Society at large is changing continuously and education is and must change also. 

I spend a lot of time thinking about this technology, hence the title, and how it can, and is influencing so many areas, Weller (2014) speaks about the problems in open access publishing and there really has been no dramatic shifts since that was written. The current system really is a hinderance especially when you think about how long it can take from writing to publication, with lengthy peer review times in between, not to mention the costs involved.  There are of course solutions to this, as far as I can see, and I have written about this in a few places already, one of which can be found at https://steemit.com/blockchain/@chavboy/how-can-a-social-network-be-used-to-increase-the-dissemination-of-research#@steemitboard/steemitboard-notify-chavboy-20170610t134624000z, these are just a few extra thoughts on the topic. The gold route to open access publishing is really not a viable long term option as far as I can tell, one could argue that we still need a system such as this to secure the knowledge base and give academics a secure place where they can release their material without fear of their work being misused by others. I do speak about this very problem in my extended abstract which is linked to in the post above, so I won't trawl back over that topic here. So even with this argument there really is no place for the practice of double dipping whereby publishers get to charge twice for the journal, Weller speaks about this in the brilliant "The Battle for Open: How openness won and why it doesn't feel like a victory." This is, in my view, a cynical attempt to extract every last penny out of this industry before their outdated model breaks down and fails to produce anymore income. The route that interests me is the green route type of scenario (again for a clear discussion on this route please see Weller (2014) titled as above), we have the technology where this is a viable option, publications can be held in a repository, with minimal cost incurred, and tagged so they are fully searchable. Where blockchain comes in, of course, is for the security aspect and also to cover the peer review process. If the repository has blockchain technology built into it, it would mean that academics can upload their papers to the repository knowing there is a secure record of the upload. There could be further discussion on how peer review could take place but a good starting point would be a reputation based system, similar to the demo over at blockchain.open.ac.uk. This would very much be community led and could lead to a much more frictionless process. Steemit uses tokens to encourage participation, and this community has grown quite rapidly in a short space of time. Clearly there needs to be a movement away from the current system as it does not lend itself well to fast paced sectors where the pace of change is quicker than the process itself. If we are looking for technology that can provide us with solutions to the current problems in this area then I would shout it from the rooftops Blockchain, Blockchain, Blockchain!!  

On reflection maybe I should have called this blog priorities or the illusion of time or something like that, but it wasn’t planned in any way and I just started writing and so I’m not prepared to contrive it in this way, so Sporadic Blogging is the name by which it is known.

Thursday 9th February http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2994

The academic paper I am undertaking will be looking at these problems and ways in which they can be addressed. The academic paper will be part of a larger project where the findings are used to create a workable real life solution in which the dissemination of research is increased, allowing for the collective intelligence of the masses to be harnessed so we can start to see some exponential progression

Please join us at http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloudscape/view/2994

Openness eh, it can be a sordid affair

I will only publish in open access journals.Whilst I understand the sentiment, I don't think it is neccessarily helpful to limit yourself in this way, you could actually argue that this action in itself flies in the face of open access by only publishing in a set area. I think in order to make changes you have to stay in touch with the thing you are trying to change. I think there are other and better ways of making sure your material is also in the open access arena. I will share all learning material that I create and own openly onlineFor me, this is black and white and yes I believe learning material should be shared openly, as for me with the tools we have at our disposal we should be working towards a situation where duplication of work is not necessary and in the spirit of open source work can be used, reused and changed to suit the individual need at that particular time.  I maintain an online social media identity as a core part of my professional identityThis statement makes less sense to me. Over the years I've used social media and it has formed part of my professional identity over that time but as a core part, I don't think so. I would say that when it comes to my social media identity then various aspects of me are incorporated. I take a pragmatic approach and release some resources openly if it’s not too much extra work.I disagree with this statement, and would go further to assert that it makes little sense, to me anyway. I can not agree that this type of approach could in anyway be pragmatic. I have concerns about intellectual property and releasing my content openly.I have no such concerns and am a great believer in open content. It stands to reason that  we can gain a whole lot more by sharing content and at the same time reduce duplication. As the pool of open content increases then the gains will also grow exponentially. I will share all material that I create and own openly online, as soon as I create it.Why the immediacy? It also depends what material we are talking about of course, you may create material that is just your friends or family, there needn't be a need to publish absolutely everything that you create and certainly not the instant you create it.

Assumption 1Ideals of Democratisation, Human Rights, Equality, and JusticeVeletsianos and Kimmons (2012) set out a number of assumptions around open scholarship. Assumption 1 being democratisation, human rights, justice and equality. They pose the question as to whether these are essential components of open scholarship or merely just incidental to those early adopters pioneering the field. This is no straight question to answer as you would need to know the journey that open scholarship is going to take. In order to just publish an item in an open manner for anyone to use then these attributes are not necessary, the pieces will be sitting on a server until deleted. You may argue that there will be certain democratisation as without views it will not be ranked by google or whoever and therefore will not get the coverage it might, but it will still be sitting there, and can be viewed and is therefore open. We are not just talking about a few papers existing on a server though, that can be viewed as there is no closed licence attached to it, we are talking about something much bigger which indeed needs these components to operate or at least certain aspects of open scholarship will require certain components to operate. Weller (2012) talks about the problems surrounding peer review with regards to publishers and accreditation with regards to universities, for this to take place in an open system then some or even all of these components are necessary for such a system to be taken seriously. Of course the nuts and bolts of how this might happen is a much bigger topic. My personal view would be that these components are not necessarily prerequisite of open scholarship, but should be in order to realise its potential. Veletsianos and Kimmons (2012) go on to talk about MOOCs which is a very exciting aspect of open scholarship, they say that certain MOOCs do not resemble each other which is not at all surprising as there is no narrow definition of what constitutes an MOOC and I would say again for the MOOCs to realise their full potential then these ideals will need to be embraced. Assumption 2 Emphases on Digital Participation for Enhanced OutcomesVeletsianos and Kimmons (2012) cite Jenkins et al (2006) in what they call the participation gap, this is the unequal access to technology and/or digital literacies. Even just 10 years ago this would have been a bigger problem than it is now, this is not to say that this is not an issue, but will be considerably less. There does need to be an emphasis on digital participation to enhance outcomes, but the skills needed for this are quite basic and can be learnt very easy for the average scholar/student, especially considering the amount of people in possession of the skills needed. Assumption 3 Co-evolutionary relationship between technology and cultureVeletsianos and Kimmons (2012) argue that although social media affords opportunity for connectedness and knowledge sharing, but that we must remain vigilant as there is a tendency to follow like minded people and reinforce existing structures. This is no different though than befriending like minded people in everyday life, although this is amplified online as the opportunities in regards to numbers is greater. This can be the case on Twitter for example, where one follows feeds they like and this can be a self confirming feedback loop, and as such becomes a diluted, bland way of consuming content. This is really just a matter of self awareness and can be mitigated by making sure a good proportion of the feeds are from sources you don't necessarily agree with.Veletsianos and Kimmons (2012) go on to talk about a service like Google gives a great deal of access to a vast array of information, but that information may be based on the person who is searching's opinion, this is more or less the same problem as can arise from the use of social media. Again this can be mitigated by using a search engine such as Duck Duck Go as it does not take into account personal information and so the search results should not be influenced by the individual. Assumption 4  Practicality and Effectiveness of achieving scholarly aimsThe authors argue that there has been such a deluge of data that is suddenly available that people can become inefficient, finding it increasingly difficult to find anything amongst all the extra information. In reality digital scholars just need to use the available tools to aggregate the information it needs. It could never be seen as acceptable to stem the flow of information just to make it easier to sieve through the information we have. Although there has never been such a large amount of information available it is not the first time in history that suddenly a massive amount of information has become available for example when the printing press was invented suddenly the masses had access to much more information than they had in the past. This did not mean that suddenly everybody became an efficient reader, but it did mean that an opportunity existed where it hadn't before.

Here’s to hoping this course lives up to the high expectations I have for it.