Open Science: A Fundamental Tension

The module on Open Science in Wiley's course seemed to me an amalgamation of all the other "open" topics and concepts covered in the course thus far.

There are also some very familiar and consistent themes in the conversation about Open Science: there are many and varied views about what, exactly, is meant by "open science;" there are many different applications of "open science," and there are quite a few barriers to the implementation of "open science."

Open Science was the first module in the course during which I started to feel really unsure about this whole "open" thing. Up to now, everything sounded just great. Yes, let's share resources and educational content! Yes, let's allow each other to build on and improve our work! Yes, let's make resources cheaper and more accessible to anyone interested!

And then I read about Open Science. To be clear, I still very much appreciate the idea of openness as it applies to science, but this topic seems more complicated than a few of the others Wiley approaches. For the first time in the course (for me, anyway), the concept of  "openness" is transposed over a really specific topic, and that's when things really start to fall apart. There seem to be more questions than answers when it comes to Open Science.

As with any other community of experts, scientists belong to a culture all their own. The culture of science promotes some fairly conservative values about sharing information. In fact, according to Michael Nielsen in his speech at TEDx Waterloo in April, 2011, traditional scientists actually look down on sharing. There is no prestige to be had from sharing your data with someone else. Data is considered a highly personal, sometimes even secretive aspect of scientific exploration. As a result, science tends to occur in isolation, with scientists hording sets of data for their own use, and hiding their work from each other.

Certainly, there have been some changes and shifts in the culture of science over the centuries. Again, back in the 15th Century, the printing press comes on to the scene and changes everything, even science. For the first time ever, scientific endeavors can be widely communicated and acknowledged.  But even with that information revolution, the mores and values of the community of science didn't change much. Typically, scientific results are shared by way of professional publications and academic journals. Results are achieved when specific data or sets of data are manipulated in specific ways (can you tell I'm not a scientist?).  So, while there is value to the results of scientific exploration, what's not being shared is data. Scientists do not like to share their data, and there's is no incentive for them to do so. In fact, there are drawbacks, which must be obvious at this point - they must not like to share for a good reason, right? Right. If they share their data, they give someone else - a peer, a competitor, a colleague - the opportunity to change, mix, or even damage their work (Bissell and Kirn, Open Science and OER: Where Do They Intersect? 2011).

In order for science to begin to entertain the idea of sharing, Nielsen says we need to make scientists see sharing as part of their job, and we need to reward them for it. Providing incentives to share, promoting conversations about the values of sharing - these all need to happen in order for science to look upon "openness" as a truly worthwhile endeavor.

According to the Science Commons, there are several dominating principles that must be followed by institutions or individuals, in order to participate in Open Science. Institutions, organizations and people must:

1. Provide Open Access to Literature from Funded Research,
2. Provide Access to Research Tools from Funded Research,
3. Put Data from Funded Research in the Public Domain, and
4. Make Investments in Open Cyberinfrastructures.

Retrieved from: http://sciencecommons.org/resources/readingroom/principles-for-open-science/

What's most confusing and thought-provoking to me about Open Science is the global relevance of science in general. Science affects every aspect of our lives as human beings. It shapes our world in very specific and influential ways. So, in that sense, the culture of science as it is now, is a global problem. Scientists all over the world are potentially duplicating each others efforts and results, redoing each others' work and research.  Wouldn't it make more sense - to everyone, not just scientists - to share? Share the work, the data, the results; share the prestige, the fame, the failure? Without sharing the work, how much time are we losing, in the battle against things like cancer, diabetes, HIV? These are diseases that affect everyone, everywhere. Why wouldn't the scientific community want to contribute to each others' work and knowledge? Wouldn't societies as a whole stand to gain more through that type of sharing than any one scientist could lose?

Well, it might make sense, and we might gain more as a society if science were more open, but it's not happening - not now, and not for a while - if ever. The other troubling part of implementing Open Science is the sub-concept of "Open data."  Data, in and of itself, drives much of what science is and means and does. And it's the data - what it can do, what it can mean, and what it can change - that's so controversial in this context.  Let's say, for example, an experiment leads to the discovery of a biological warfare method. If we are applying the principles listed at the Science Commons,  and this data is in the public domain, accessible by way of technology, what harm can then be done if the data were to be found and used by someone who, let's say, isn't a scientist, or someone who doesn't have an altruistic purpose in mind? If this data were to fall into the hands of someone who wants to cause other people harm, using this data to recreate the biological warfare method is a possible outcome. Application of the result may be detrimental to society - how much of society, I can't say, but one or more people/places could be negatively affected. So clearly there is an ethical concern to "open data," as it's understood in the context of open science.

However negative I may sound towards Open Science, in some ways I do support it, and I do understand its value. And I think behind any and all of these movements towards being open, we do recognize that technology affords us connections to a global community that we can all participate in if we choose to, and that's something that was never possible before. Technology can remove all sorts of barriers, but it can also raise a lot of questions.

While technology advances at a rapid pace, obviously the evolution of humanity moves at a  slower clip. All these ideas and concepts are great, but when taken in context, are pretty radical. Sure, we have the technology and the desire to see what's possible to achieve with it, but really, we are trying to change longstanding cultural norms. That will take time, and it will require fundamental changes to the culture and professional field of science.

Learning About Open Access, or, Finding Out That I Have Something in Common With College Students

I found the following video on the Open Access Week website, and when I did, I watched it, hoping it would help me understand what Open Access is and means, in the context of higher education. It did help, but it also made me think about a few other things. Spoiler Alert: It's not until the final seconds that a student answers the question "What is Open Access?" correctly. However, I think this entire video - not just the last few seconds - is useful for a couple of reasons. In our OER work group we talk a lot about all the things that will need to change before "openness" is really embraced in the field of higher education. I think it's important to note that as of right now, there are lots of misconceptions about openness, not just open access, and there is also a clear lack of familiarity with the terms. This video highlights that, and it evokes a sense of disconnection that I can relate to. I work with computers all day at my job, and I have one at home that I use a lot. And I work in the field of higher education. And yet I didn't know what Open Access was/is/means. But, I'm not ashamed, because this personal admission makes my point: There isn't a huge market out there for Openness right now. There could be, some might argue that there should be, but the primary consumers of the movement are folks in the fields of technology and education or some combination of both. And for the movement to really BE a movement, we'll need to reach audiences outside of that. So, now that I watched that video and read the Open Access resources, I know that Open Access is digital material that is free and available to anyone, for any use (unless otherwise specified in the licensing restrictions provided). And this, again, is a great idea, with great value and an even more admirable goal. I just think a lot more people will need to be asked "What is Open Access, and What Can it Do For You?" before its value can really be understood.

To Bee or Not to Bee: Open Educational Resources

David Wiley sure is convincing. He just has a way of making me agree with him, regardless of the consequences. And in this case, one consequence of agreeing with him is a rather unwanted revelation about the nature of education and what it means to me. Why unwanted, you ask? Well, because inherent in the revelation is the realization that I don't really walk the talk on "Openness." As a learner, I don't actively participate in the growing movement towards openness in education. I am still very much a product of a traditional education, having gone four years to a liberal arts school where I 'learned' much of what I 'know' from lecture attendance, vigorous note taking, and filling in the tiny circle next to one of four answers on an exam sheet, number 2 pencils only, please.

What Wiley works toward and believes in are the same thing. I envy him that. I believe in what he's saying, but I don't work towards it, necessarily. Sure, I'm taking the Open Course, and sure, I'm reading along and finding it interesting and admittedly, it does relate to my work as a professional, but it also calls to question much of what I know about being 'educated,' and experiencing 'education.' This is uncomfortable.  Maybe that discomfort is exactly what Wiley seeks to elicit. Maybe he thinks it will take us being uncomfortable with the way things are in order for us to change them.

The change I refer to is this idea that education, as we all know and love it, must evolve to meet the rapidly increasing and dynamic demand of learners worldwide. The internet has the influence to help education evolve, but in very specific ways. And lots of folks in higher ed are resistant to any kind of change - via the internet or any other channel. And without their willingness to shift some of their traditional - and yes, still valid - ideas and norms about education, the system is going nowhere fast.

"Education is inherently an enterprise of sharing" says Wiley, in his speech at TEDx, an independently organized event held in 2010. Furthermore, "without sharing, there is no education," he asserts. He is talking about the benefits of Open Educational Resources (OERs) - both in the context of technology and of sharing. New technology plus demand equals a new era of education. Just how well that era will go is still unclear.

"You can give something away without losing it," he says, to all those nonbelievers out there (there are none in his audience, by the way, but they do exist. And there are lots of them.) "You can't lose your knowledge by sharing it." (Wiley, 2010) He works in this amazing metaphor of the honeybee. He asks us to picture ourselves as honeybees - buzzing around. Our stinger is our knowledge. How realistic is it that metaphor? How is our knowledge anything like a honeybee's sting? Once delivered, gone forever? That might be how it works for the honeybee, but it's not how it works for the human mind and its capacity. You can't just lose your knowledge to someone else by sharing it with them.  In fact, according to Wiley and many other pioneers in the open movement, the more we share with each other, the better educated we become.

Wiley claims that the era of OERs is here, but more importantly, that signals the start of a more defining cultural era, a modern reformation of educational systems worldwide, where a collision between the status quo on how information gets offered, the affordances of new technologies, and an international, savvy learner will create a whole new world for education. Education will be provided to more people, more often, more generously, and faster than ever before.

Working in online education, I can see how technology has already alerted the delivery of education. But Wiley takes it even further. Currently, Learning Management Systems (LMS) like ours are only working against themselves, he says, because they restrict their own capabilities to share information by hiding said information behind passwords, firewalls and credentialing software. "How is that education?" he asks. Or think of the professor who sued his own institution in 2008, claiming his students were violating copyright and unlawfully using his intellectual property for their own gain by taking notes during his classroom lectures. "Why did you become an educator?" Wiley says. This professor was working against himself, as Wiley sees it, and working against his students and their rightful ability to access education and translate it into knowledge.

But this idea that information should be freely available to anyone, anywhere,  is controversial at best, in higher ed today. Faculty want credit for their work. They want to publish - they must publish - and to do that they follow the paths set out before them by administrators and publishers and peers. Their knowledge is their professional currency. Without it, they can't get anywhere or go further in their careers. But again, if they share their knowledge, do they lose it?

No matter how much we all appreciate the power of the internet, and no matter how much we all use it for the myriad of reasons that we do, and no matter how many times we benefit from the information we find there, the internet is still somehow considered a "less-than" medium in the field of higher education. Faculty don't want to publish their research online - they want to publish at Oxford press. They want (and need) the prestige, the honor, and that's how they are rewarded for their efforts.

I still remember working with a student through the CDL Connects program, a few years ago. This program paired up faculty or professionals working at CDL with one or more students who were either on academic probation or were interested in getting guidance from a CDL staff member on any number of issues - where to buy books, who to call about financial aid, etc. This particular student confided to me that she was applying to law school, but she was worried about how it would "look" to the schools she was applying to that she had a diploma from "an online school."

Although I reassured her that since CDL is part of Empire State College and as such part of the State's University system, she would be receiving a diploma from the New York State Department of Education, and nothing on the diploma would reference that she got her diploma "online," I felt weird about how this conversation went. I just wondered why she was going to school here, if she herself had such a low opinion of an online education that she thought she might be overlooked for graduate admission as a result of graduating from CDL. She had acknowledged on several other occasions how rigorous she felt the curriculum was at CDL, and she admitted to struggling through some of her coursework. So if her experience with an online degree had been as challenging and rewarding as she said it had been, why was she questioning the validity of the diploma she would receive at the end of it?

The only thing I can come up with is the same sort of conclusion I come to when I think openness, and open resources and why so few folks in higher ed today see and understand how powerful they are, how influential they are going to be. The world of higher ed isn't ready yet. It might never be ready to appreciate or embrace "openness" in education, just like this student - having experienced first-hand a quality education at an online institution - couldn't appreciate the diploma she would get as a result. In sum, the benefit isn't worth the risk.

Wiley has convinced me that OERs are worthy of our time and attention, and they - combined with a growing demand for less restrictive forms of information sharing and the technology to provide them - could be in a position to change the very nature of educational systems and delivery everywhere. He just hasn't convinced the rest of the world yet.