As teachers and students we are socialised into what could be seen as restricted, uncreative, unfamiliar, out-dated and closed mode of being online, the VLE or institutional repository is built to conform to ‘old and closed’ conventional academic structures and processes. There is a huge leap to be made from the formal closed VLE into the ‘new’ open online ‘edusocial’ (educational social networked) open space, a leap into the unknown. There are currently no rules in this new open educational space and it’s something we are not being socialised into, we need to learn it ourselves and learn by doing.

As creative practitioners we are attracted to the unknown and the challenges of the new, as with other significant and historical technological movements such as TV and cinema the language of the media/practice can be defined for us by others. The open educational movement presents a challenge to the sector as a whole; we have the opportunity to define our own new modes of educational practice.

We at UAL have been exploring this for the past couple of years: http://process.arts.ac.uk/ emerged from grassroots activity, since 2006 its maintained a sustainable and independent system of development, through agile web development. The project fully relays on individual and group participation and is managed and developed through a combination of voluntary participation, research secondments and fellowships. The overall concept is to support ‘open practice’ cross college and sector communication and knowledge sharing.

process.arts is not a repository or a VLE and courses are not represented in this space. process.arts provides an alternative environment for informal open content experimentation, mostly small pieces of content that do not have to represent a courses, be designed for learning, accreditation or represent an institution. process.arts provides a new ‘open learning’ space that straddles the institution (formal learning) and the social (informal learning) therefore allowing a space for open educational practitioners to develop a new open academic social practices/language without conforming or being influenced by pre-existing academic structures and processes.

It’s taken me a long time (and some bitter experience) to realise that I’d much rather pay for something that I know is going to be around and doesn’t offer up my personal data as part of its IPO than a so-called ‘free’ alternative.

I realise that people (especially in educational institutions where budgets can be an issue) don’t always have the luxury of paying for stuff. But that’s where a principled approach, as you’ve documented above, comes in!

Keep up the good work. :-)