Raleigh, NC
I'm a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University with an intense affection for all things FOSS. I'm particularly interested in leveraging Open Source in the classroom and expanding the commons of freely-licensed educational courseware. I'm a Computer Scientist, so FOSS is obviously a big part of what I'm interested in, but I would particularly like to see Open Source and Libre Culture penetrate the non-technical disciplines, since there's a whole lot more to it than computing!
Authored Comments
One of the more recent buzzwords in innovative teaching techniques is a concept called <a href="http://www.thedailyriff.com/articles/how-the-flipped-classroom-is-radically-transforming-learning-536.php">flipping the classroom</a>. In a flipped classroom, rather than the instructor getting up and giving a presentation to deliver the content to students, students will go online to watch a pre-recorded lecture (or check out open courseware like Kahn academy) and then spend their time in the physical classroom asking questions, working in groups, and so on. This helps keep the class engaged, keeps the students working, and gives the instructor a chance to see if the students understand the material and correct any misconceptions.
Initiatives like Kahn Academy and the courses offered via the Saylor foundation (I haven't explored MITx, yet) only cover half of the instruction equation. While they handle the <em>delivery</em> of content, they are not in the best position to <em>respond to</em> or <em>assess</em> students. While a stand-up lecture can't compete with a carefully-edited video lecture, computers are still a ways off from being able to accurately evaluate student performance and give them targeted help based on their misconceptions of the material.
I think that Universities can coexist, and even leverage, open courseware when it comes to education. It's just a matter of rethinking and addressing the shortcomings of freely available resources.
It's a shame that the researchers who are in the best position to protest are the ones who aren't really affected by not having access to research works. Scientists and students at top-tier institutions don't find themselves running into situations where they have to personally buy the articles they need thanks to having blanket licenses through their institutions. Sometimes I even take for granted that I can easily fetch an article I need by taking my laptop to campus or tunnelling through my professor's research server. <a href="http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2012/05/12056/ucsf-implements-policy-make-research-papers-freely-accessible-public">Articles like these</a> give me hope for a change in the future, though.
In younger fields like Computer Science, we may yet see some changes in the traditional academic model. Computer scientists have started a trend against traditional publication in journals <a href="http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2009/8/34492-viewpoint-time-for-computer-science-to-grow-up/fulltext">in favor of conferences</a>. As the discipline closest to the notion of Open Source, maybe they're in the best position to set a trend in Open Access as well.