The Battle For Open: How openness won and why it doesn't feel like victory

by Martin Weller

With the success of open access publishing, Massive open online courses (MOOCs) and open education practices, the open approach to education has moved from the periphery to the mainstream. This marks a moment of victory for the open education movement, but at the same time the real battle for the direction of openness begins. As with the green movement, openness now has a market value and is subject to new tensions, such as venture capitalists funding MOOC companies. This is a crucial time for determining the future direction of open education. In this volume, Martin Weller examines four key areas that have been central to the developments within open education: open access, MOOCs, open education resources and open scholarship. Exploring the tensions within these key arenas, he argues that ownership over the future direction of openness is significant to all of those with an interest in education.

244 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2014

Reviews

[Colby Moorberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting and easy read. In my opinion there was a little too much attention paid to MOOCs, but that may have more to do with the media hype over MOOCs when this book was first published in 2014 that seems to have faded since. Weller did address this hype directly, which was interesting.

This book also desperately needs a new chapter covering recent schemes from commercial publishers designed to co-opt the messaging used by the open community, particularly regarding "inclusive access" and their so-called "affordability" initiatives.

Lastly, this book is available for download for free from the publisher, Ubiquity Press.

[A.J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an unrepentant MOOC addict and advocate of openness in the cultural heritage universe, this insider's view of openness in higher education was very interesting to me. Weller works for the Open University in the UK, which has had a long history of widening participation in education and of supporting its learners, so it is intriguing to see his take on where we are now in terms of increasing access to educational resources and to scholarly works of various kinds.

"There seems to be a clear trend that the majority of users of open education material are those who are experienced learners already." "...learners tended to be young, white, educated employed males." These findings are interesting to me: the people most likely to access free online learning opportunity already have a certain level of education and of employment. This raises important questions about what the point of these resources is, which Weller goes into in this book.

The book argues that we are at a turning point in the way that people access materials and their education. It analyses the development of Open Access publishing, MOOCs and Open Educational Resources, and open scholarship in general, with an assessment of the current state of play in all these areas. It is an accessible, well-written exploration of important issues.

It seems to me that there is a huge disconnect between the current management structure of universities, which are increasingly run as major business corporations (usually by accountants), and the desire of many of the people working within those institutions to share their work with others and advance research in their fields. It's certainly an interesting area to watch (particularly from the outside!). I definitely see more of a future for the kind of 'guerilla research' that Weller describes: perhaps with funding being directed to such researchers without the involvement of the university at all. Research without managerial interference? Now there's a radical idea.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book should be required reading for anyone who works on Open in any form. Although the focus of the book is on Open Education, Weller makes excellent connections between the various flavors of Open, notably Open Access and Open Source. The book provides a critical look at some of the issues involved in Open, such as the tendency towards making Open a checklist of behaviors, as well as vagueness in definitions of Open allowing it to becomes a 'buzzword' that leads to a loss of meaning for the term. He describes how Open is a function of a community and some dangers and lessons from the commercialization of Open (and other educational technology). I think my favorite chapter was the one on resiliency, borrowed from ecology, that attempts to describe educational and scholarly communication systems in ecological terms while identifying how resilient these systems are to change. There was a lot of good vocabulary and perspective in that particular chapter.

[Rich · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great look of the Open Education movement as it transitions from an outsider movement, to an incumbent. Topics covered include Open Educational Resources, Open Access publishing, Open Data, Massively Open Online Courses (MOOC's) and Open Pedagogical Practices. One of main questions Dr. Weller raises is who or what will shape the next phase of the open movement: educational institutions, or corporations? A great read for all educators.

[Benji Bacchus · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book gives a great overview of changes in higher education since the development of digital technologies. Professor Weller succeeds in representing the influences behind the rise and fall of educational platforms, especially MOOCs, while more generally discussing the notions of "open" and "free", which remain ambiguous at a time when their relevance is being brought into question.