Towards a Global Platform for Knowledge Exchange: Forward Links and Microcredits in Learning Environments

A Proposal by Bruce McHenry (bmchenry@alum.mit.edu) May 15, 2002

 

What’s Missing in OpenCourseWare?

MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative will broadcast the equivalent of a good students’ course binders containing the syllabus, course notes, quizzes with answers and exams.  This material will be static and principally be of use to other teachers designing their courses.  OCW does not address the fundamental inefficiency of having thousands of instructors design separate courses about essentially the same topics.  It would be far better to have signature courses which have well defined learning objectives and requirements for credit.  The Internet, which makes it possible to bridge time and space, creates the theoretical possibility of delivering courses globally.  But realizing this will require the transformation of education, from what is essentially still a cottage industry into a much more organized and integrated system.

A Platform for Knowledge Centers

Franchises, which require a buy-in from partners and pool certain resouces, provide one model for organizing education.  Each franchise may be built around a body of knowledge, and leading teacher-authors will have an opportunity to create and operate the knowledge centers; it is to these individuals that benefits will accrue.  The MIT Media Lab, by virtue of its name, mission, and a preponderance of research on interactive experiences, could also participate by taking a role in defining the next generation platform for the operation of such knowledge centers.

MIT could also lead a buyer’s coalition by teaming up with procurers at other leading universities, and probably also the Department of Defense.  As the single most largest client, the DoD has been able to galvanize the industry by requiring compliance with the SCORM standard (packaging and certification within learning modules). 

A Middle Approach Between Open and Closed Source

The degree of proprietary control is a key variable for both the suppliers and buyers of the platform. A knowledge exchange exchange system will have strong network effects - its value increases strongly with the number of users, and so does the potential for locking in customers, as with MS Windows.  The alternate approach, typified by other layers of Internet protocols such as TCP/IP and HTML, is to make the standards non-proprietary. 

MIT could develop a middle road with vendors, in which the following are carefully negotiated: 1) the length of time that the source code remains completely closed and proprietary, 2) the availabilty of source code to certain trusted groups.  The model would be inspired by the open Linux development process: a) there would be many separate components, b) each component will have its own development leader and internal contribution system.   Extending the Linux approach, each component could have a licensing agreement with timetables for opening the source code, and an ownership stucture based on negotiations between the development leader and the contributors. 

This seemingly complicated structure would help the software industry to mature and develop a less closed form, with programming teams being able to work independently and add value where they are best able to do so.  Revenues would be realilzed during the closed period, and decline to near zero as the deadline approaches for opening the software.   But so long as project leaders continue to respond to the almost certain demands to maintain and improve their code, they will control the releases of new versions having later opening dates, and continue to benefit from multiple sales of their new work.  However, the opening dates guarantee that clients will not be indefinitely locked in if a component developer becomes incompetent or unresponsive.

The Next Layer

The next layer must build upon standards, such as for OKI/OCW, SCORM etc.  It will be concerned with how the learning environment is managed: who interacts with whom and how, whether the interactions are recorded, reused and refined, and crucially: how people are motivated to contribute to and improve the quality of the centers of knowledge.

This layer should instantiate the recurring vision of a knowledge network that works more like the brain itself, where new ideas integrate with and modify pre-existing thought.  The original representations on the network must be open to change - not by anybody at any time, but through a carefully managed process.  Allowing changes and negotiating their value will be intrinsic, and depend on enabling technologies, such as “forward linking” and “microcrediting”.

WWW links must be valid when the page is written, and so necessarily point backward in time.  Forward links, on the other hand, would be allowed on a page after it is posted.  They are a kind of annotation, but would be much more if also integrated with microcredits.  The credits will serve to motivate, and negotiation over their value would inform the selection process.  In a learning environment, credits could contribute towards raising the final grade.  But microcredits could also represent ownership with present and future payments.  Credits could apply to revisions distributed widely and with substantial aggregated value.  Although the price of the OpenCourseWare materials will be zero, learning environments built upon such materials already contribute to student satisfaction, will have increasing real value, and eventually be funded out of tuition.

The Next Initiative

The process of opening up the learning environments will likely proceed in a series of small steps, following opportunites as they arise.  It is difficult to predict these in advance, but it is timely to support the development of a well documented, major proposal to develop and deploy a next-generation platform.  The platform would include features such as (the actual specification will be set by a relatively small working group of experts and checked off by participating teacher-authors):

Ø      forward linking

Ø      credits, and reputation building on the same

Ø      real-time interactions with matching of the participants

Ø      recording, refinement and re-use of the interactions

Ø      progressive revelation of questions and answers

Ø      ability to raise and resolve disagreements 

The courses would ideally be taught at several places – including cross-registration at a couple of other leading schools to start – and include learners off-campus who are neither enrolled in a degree program, nor even expected to complete the whole course.  

The proposal’s budget would provide for:

Ø      Faculty time to develop the courses

Ø      Compensation set aside for significant emergent contributors

Ø      Procurement of the platform

Ø      Staff to negotiate terms with the vendor(s) and write the proposal in coordination with faculty principal investigators

MIT could establish an appointment to begin the work for this project.  The appointee should have approval from the Provost and President, and be allowed access to relevent meetings, such as those held by CEP, OCW, OKI, AMPS and Sloan.