We've had 2 days of quietness on this topic & of course that's to be expected as a scheduled discussion draws to a close. Part of it too, I suspect, is because we are sort of preaching to the choir. SCoPE is a very open community & none of us would be here if we were hyper-concerned about copyrighting every word we write. But we also know that not everybody feels the same way; progress towards openness seems glacial at times. What can we personally do to speed things up?
What, specifically, can *I* do? I can rant, of course, but I already do that & I have to be careful with that compulsion. I can be concientious about using CC licencing or copylefting what I produce. But for change to occur, to push us over the tipping point with OERs & openness in general, we'll need more & wider strategies. There's a range of strategies already out there, from the guerilla-like tactics of gpirate all the way to the friendly reminder from BCcampus to use at least a BC Commons licence on provincially-funded online development.
I suspect the next Big Step will take place at the institutional and regional/provincial levels. Institutions can declare their commitment to openness, as Capilano University did when it became the first institution in BC to join the OpenCourseWare initiative. In BC, we have the requirement for provincially-funded educational resources to be published semi-openly in our repository (SOL*R). In terms of providing incentive for publishing OERs, this cover the 'stick' approach. But maybe we would benefit from some additional 'carrot' approaches: some showy publicity for the institution which publishes the most OERs in the most open format, maybe a special funding envelope for curriculum developed with existing OERs, perhaps a targetted innovation award for the team that has done something really exciting with openness.
Somehow I think we have to increase the porosity of our institutions, of The Academy overall. Educational openness in general & OERs specifically have to be tied in with our strategic plans and vision statements & talked about as contributing to the positive future we're all hoping for.