Mid­term review FOSS IN EDUCATION
by ​
Amund Stramrud​
,​
Anastasia Parramore​
and ​
Mehdi Noroozi
Advantages and disadvantages FOSS (free and open­source software) computer programs are those that have licenses that allow users to run the program, study, modify it and distribute copies of the original version as well as their own modified version without having to pay. FOSS can be classified as both free software and open source software1. Why should we use FOSS in education? It is a well­known fact that computers are very beneficial in schools; for a long time now they have been used to teach English, Math and many other subjects. It’s extremely difficult to collect all the data on how students succeeded in the process of learning without using a computer. FOSS is great in education first of all because it has lower costs than proprietary software and therefore it can reduce the obstacles to the access of Information and Communication Technologies. It’s very important because educational Institutions often have financial restrictions. Other than cost advantages there are a lot of other benefits in using FOSS in education, for instance pedagogical benefits. There are many ongoing projects through which courses taught in universities become available online and teachers, students and self­learners anywhere in the world can have access to this material. The availability of this data can encourage collaborative efforts and innovations in teaching. Students can use it as an additional material to their program and teachers can built a more advanced curriculum. Other advantage is that large number of stakeholders are involved in FOSS development, so bugs are being very early discover and rapidly fixed therefore software is more reliable. In addition FOSS is considered to have better security and performance2 . FOSS is also good for education because of the availability of source code, it’s open not just for reading but for modification as well what might be very useful in computer education. Students who learn programming can use FOSS projects as a virtual “laboratory”. This way instead of being taught specific tools students are taught how to learn ​
any​
tool3 . 1
Richard Stallman “Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software”, URL https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open­source­misses­the­point.html 2
Martin Terbuc “Free/Open source software in e­education”, URL http://www.ro.feri.uni­mb.si/izobrazevanje/PUBLIKACIJE/Terbuc/terbuc_eng.pdf 3
Why FOSS in education makes sense, URL http://tech.bluesmoon.info/2005/11/why­foss­in­education­makes­sense.html 1 Unfortunately in many school systems the software in use on computers is closed, students are by implication forced to use illegal copies of the software. Of course it hinders process of learning and decreases level of motivation. Social norms. Open source and prestige Individuals are constrained by four forces, one of them being social norms, which is often enforced by the community4 . Social norms revolving copyright is referred to as “copynorms”, and are interrelated to copyright, but still distinctively different. To exemplify: plagiarism of someone’s work in the public domain is not prohibited by copyright law, but it violates the copynorms and may lead you to be exposed to informal social sanctions. These sanctions range from expressions of disapproval to more severe sanctions like vandalism. The other side of the coin is something that ​
is prohibited by copyright law, but is to some degree considered to be socially acceptable. Actions which fall under this category can be downloading or sharing music, or a movie. While it certainly is illegal, for most people it is not important if their friends or family do this5 . So how does this relate to education? The younger generations in today's society is very familiar with the sharing and downloading of information, and this has led open­source learning to be popular practice. Student can either join or form networks online which can either enhance their learning outcome or experience, or they can join network which teaches them about subjects not taught in school. Maybe you wish to brush up on your math skills, or maybe you regret not taking chemistry in high school. With online communities you can gain this knowledge, and you gain it for free. Having an interactive, open­source learning environment could also lead to increased engagement. If the students can explore concepts, source material and information together with a teacher or mentor, within fields they are interested in, it would lead to an increased student involvement and more personally meaningful learning. Having arenas for learning in an online setting can also contribute to breaking down cultural barriers, and learn from other cultures. It would also mean that the results from these studies are more comparable than results from two different schools. Outdated learning material would be a non­existent problem, and the list goes on. In some extreme cases of course, or within certain social groups, getting something for free might be considered a bad thing. A lack of quality, or just not portraying the image that this group want to be identified with. A prestigious university for instance, might be worried about a bad reputation if they were to use free software for their students. Compatibility is another problem we’re facing. In Open Office’s early days, the compatibility with Microsoft Word was terrible, but it has gotten better, and it 4
5
Christophersen, Nils. "Open Source, Open Collaboration and Innovation." Schultz, Mark F. "Copynorms: copyright and social norms." ​
Available at SSRN 933656 ​
(2006). 2 continues to do so. But looking at open­source in bigger scale, like changing the administrative system of a university to an open­source alternative, brings with it another set of problems. Of course there will be the potential attempts from previous system to create a lock­in effect, making the files you have in your databases difficult to access through a new system. And even though the software is free, the installation process and maintenance is not. This is something that might affect a university’s decision when it comes to requiring new software. Open Access The research which is done at the universities around the world are mainly funded by means of public resources that is the public, state supported universities or research funds sponsored by the governments through public resources provided by taxpayers. At the same the most prominent result and fruit of all these efforts are mirrored in research papers, thesis and alike documents which are published by the researchers at the universities. The odd thing in this process is that although everything is funded through public money and even the efforts related to peer reviewing the articles is done through other scientists for free but the end result in most cases is not free and publishing institutions are asking for billions of dollars yearly to grant access to these resources6. We are living in the age of digital technologies and unlike some decades ago in which we were very dependent on physically printed material, nowadays every document could be accessed via Internet and the cost of storage is so low that could be ignored. So the need for having third party institutions in between for distributing the results of efforts made by scientists for publishing their results is almost zero. This is where the open access movement comes forward and tries to eliminate the unnecessary costs of publishing scientific papers and even more importantly grant access to knowledge universally for free7. The end of every scientist is to make her work available to as many other scientists as possible and get his paper cited as much as possible8 . Several research and articles confirm that making the publications available through open access helps to gain more citation and that must be quite natural because many individuals who don’t have access to paid databases like Elsevier or scientists who are living in poor countries who again don’t afford paying a fortune for getting access to some articles, now by means of open access will have the opportunity to access the articles and journals for free and then they will cite the articles in their own work9 . Apart from the fact that open access eliminates the charges made for something which is produced by means of public funding, it also encourages collaboration and 6
Litman, Jessica. "The Economics of Open­Access Law Publishing." 10 (2006): 779. Suber, Peter. "Timeline of the open access movement." ​
Online: http://www. earlham. edu/~ peters/fos/timeline. htm (9.6. 2006)​
(2006). 8
Antelman, Kristin. "Do open­access articles have a greater research impact?." ​
College & research libraries​
65.5 (2004): 372­382. 9
Hajjem, Chawki, Stevan Harnad, and Yves Gingras. "Ten­year cross­disciplinary comparison of the growth of open access and how it increases research citation impact." ​
arXiv preprint cs/0606079​
(2006). 7
3 sharing of knowledge which is the ideal of all the universities and governments which are spending huge amounts of money to fund research which is supposed to solve a problem that is also relevant to the whole world in a way. The philosophy behind open access is also providing the necessary tools for people in order to be able to contribute a bit to this process of improving the global knowledge which is for the benefit of everyone and not just a few number of people. 4 References: 1) Martin Terbuc “Free/Open source software in e­education”, URL http://www.ro.feri.uni­mb.si/izobrazevanje/PUBLIKACIJE/Terbuc/terbuc_eng.pdf 2) Why FOSS in education makes sense, URL http://tech.bluesmoon.info/2005/11/why­foss­in­education­makes­sense.html 3) ​
Richard Stallman “​
Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software”, URL https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open­source­misses­the­point.html 4) David Preston “Open Source Learning Combines Academic Standards with 21st Century Workplace Skills”, URL http://ampersand.gseis.ucla.edu/david­preston­open­source­learning­combines­acad
emic­standards­with­21st­century­workplace­skills/ 5) ​
Mark F. Schultz “Copynorms: Copyright and Social Norms”, URL http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=933656 6) The compendium for the course: Open source, open collaboration and innovation. 7) Litman, Jessica. "The Economics of Open­Access Law Publishing." 10 (2006): 779. 8) Suber, Peter. "Timeline of the open access movement." Online: http://www. earlham. edu/~ peters/fos/timeline. htm (9.6. 2006) (2006). 9) Hajjem, Chawki, Stevan Harnad, and Yves Gingras. "Ten­year cross­disciplinary comparison of the growth of open access and how it increases research citation impact." arXiv preprint cs/0606079 (2006). 5