Open education folks are somewhat used to deal with "free" things: free education materials (OER) and free online courses (MOOC) are the two big movements we have today. While we see "free" concept spreading out, the premise of being "free" in open education seems to present some important implications we should explore more.
Last month I was looking for articles that could support my argument on my paper, and came across an interesting one on OER by Prof. Martin Weller at UK Open University.
His argument was insightful, especially when he discuss:
“A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the top musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.”It’s usually taken to demonstrate that we don’t stop and appreciate what is around us, and in our busy lives we can pass by things of beauty and value. But it has some lessons for our discussion of OERs also. The first may be that people don’t value free things, or are suspicious of free. We have become accustomed to roughly equating monetary price with value or quality. Free is therefore obviously low quality or suspicious at least. Online there is a general expectation that resources will be free, although the success of iTunes apps is beginning to challenge this. But in education there is still an expectation that high quality education costs. OERs are of course, only part of the educational offering – they are the content, and just as important is the associated support and assessment that forms a higher education degree.
Suppose that classical music concerts become freely available (and accessible not only in urban areas but also in local places). It may impose insightful implication for us.
Let me start by categorizing people who go to classical concerts into three groups:
1-1. People who really love classical music (young violinists or music lovers), afford concert ticket, and live near concert halls
People in this group love classical music and perform music. Classical music is part of their lives and thus they go to concerts regardless of the price of seats. They need to listen to great music in order to improve their own performance and enhance the quality of life of their own. So, even if concerts become free, they continue to go to concerts. They don't judge performers by the price of seats, but the quality of their performances. Money does not matter for them. They pay a lot for getting seats, and therefore there might be no chance for people in this group to change their behaviours even if the seats become free.
1-2. People who need to go concert, but can't afford to buy tickets due to the lack of access to concert halls or because they don't have money for tickets
People in this category are similar to those in 1-1 in that they really need to go to concerts. They are young performers or music lovers. But what makes them be separated from 1-1 type is that people in 1-2 don't have access to concert halls because they live in local places and they can't afford to buy expensive tickets, especially those for famous performers. Thus, they can't go to concerts.
They may benefit the most when those classical concerts become freely available in local places.
1-3. People interested in classical music, but not so much
People here are not music lovers nor those who want to become professional violinists or pianists. They do their own work every day, and classical music is not a necessary part of their daily lives. Of course, they know what classical music is like, they may have visited such concerts before, and they are interested in them a bit. They know seats for good concerts cost much: therefore, they don't buy tickets. I think most of people in the world belong to this category, and people of this type will be a great mass body when tickets for classical concerts become free. They will be sampling classical concerts if tickets are free.
These three categories above can be applied to users of open education (OER and MOOC):
2-1. People who really need education (e.g. teachers, employees who need to get new skills, and students at ivy league colleges), afford college tuitions, and have access to the Internet
People in this group need education to live their lives. Teachers need educational materials for their work. They do not see education as something that should be free. They pay for great educational materials since they need those materials for teaching their students. Elite university students try to pay tuition because they want to receive high-quality education. Money does not matter so much for them because they see education or educational materials worth paying money. Thus, even if education and educational materials become freely available, their behaviours don't change much. They may continue to access to education since they don't judge education by its price. Students go to ivy league colleges because they value what those colleges offer to them. Teachers value educational materials because those materials match teachers' interests, receive high reputation, and other factors.
2-2. People who need education, but can't attend universities due to the lack of access and high cost
People in this category are again similar to those in 2-1 in that they need education for their lives. But they cannot get high-quality education because they don't to have money for it, or they live in rural areas and developing countries. A few people of this type enjoy the free online courses offered by established universities or free educational materials, and they are the very people MIT OCW, Coursera, edX, and other initiatives try to reach.
2-3. People interested in MOOC and OER, but don't need education (compared to people in previous two categories)
People here are not students who need to get degrees nor people who need to try new skills for getting a job offer. They have their own jobs. They are not willing to pay for universities to study more even though they are interested in studying. However, when high-quality educational contents become freely available on the web, they may enroll MOOC or try to see OER. They may be sampling courses. This behavioral change made recent research projects find the fact that most learners of MOOC already have degrees and jobs.
Being "free" lets us realize not only its direct impact, but also its indirect impact. I know it isn't fully convincing to compare classical concerts and open education, but hopefully the comparison at least provide some implications we can further explore.
References:
Weller, M. (2010). Big and little OER. Proceedings from OpenED2010: Seventh Annual Open Education Conference, 2-4 November 2010 Proceedings. Barcelona, Spain. Retrieved from http://openaccess.uoc.edu/webapps/o2/bitstream/10609/4851/6/Weller.pdf
