Multidisciplinary Study of Openness: Degree Program

Terms of Reference:

• Writing Your Degree Program Rationale

Goals:

My educational goal for pursuing a Masters of Liberal Arts is to better understand openness as both a philosophy and as a pragmatic methodology in the design, development, deployment and management of educational resources: from academic content and the modes of their delivery, to the underlying principles, practices and technologies that enable and support them. As a senior IT leader working within higher education, understanding the emergence, adoption and implementation of open initiatives, as well as the communities of practice that invest in such projects, is critical to the institutions where I am–or will be–employed, the education sector as a whole, the various open projects themselves I may work with, and of course, my own personal and professional development.

Critical for achieving this goal is to: complete a survey of fundamental, cross-discipline courses that can provide me with the foundational knowledge to identify openness and its requisite attributes; undertake a set of research activities to collect data on which attributes contribute to (or detract from) successful open initiatives and continued best practices in both the development of open initiatives and the community that supports them, and; contribute my findings back to the open ecosystem in order to foster greater understanding, adoption and practice while allowing continuous improvement through peer review, reflection and collaboration.

The culminating work will serve as a reference guide for assessing the feasibility of potential open projects and the viability of current initiatives, as well as a framework for both those interested in participating in an open community and those already invested in community-driven efforts. In addition, my work will extend, and provide ongoing value, beyond its original scope as a academic outcome from my time as a formal student at Empire State College, to an artifact for ongoing professional development, dialogue across the open community and a reference point for assessment and decision-making regarding the maturity of current and future open initiatives.

Empire State provides an excellent environment to purse my goal. The college recognizes and supports a cross-discipline approach and therefore will allow me to include the multiple lens through which openness is described, implemented and assessed. In addition, the ability afforded to me through the College to self-select and organize areas of interest, while guided though the advise and mentor-ship of my advisor and campus faculty, ensures my education is not only relevant to me and my personal and professional aspirations, but academically rigorous and comprehensive, deserving of the credential for which I aspire.

Rationale for my focus:

“Openness” enjoys significant recognition, attribution and increasing growth among a variety of initiatives throughout several sectors. Within Higher Education, academic initiatives such as: Open Access; Open Education; Open Courseware; Open Educational Resources; Open Journals, to name a few, are commonly referenced, and promise, as David Wiley suggests, “concrete benefits,” specifically, decreased costs for developing, distributing and accessing educational  resources, while improving learning outcomes¹. Openness is also prevalent within the technology sector, including: open architectures, open source software, open standards, and others. The Open Source Initiative, identifies several benefits in adopting open technologies: fewer errors (i.e. “bugs” or “glitches) resulting in greater reliability and stability; a quicker pace of development, delivery and innovation; transferability of the technology without constraints on either the producer or receiver; transparency into the underlying technology ensuring greater security against “hacking” or malevolent end-users; the freedom to customize a technology to meet local requirements; tighter alignment with, and involvement by, the end-user’s community, and; lower total cost for development and ownership². In addition, interest in and examples of, openness can be found within both the public and private sectors, e.g. The White House’s Open Government Initiative and the CIA’s Open Source Center; Farmavita.Net’s open-source pharmaceuticals, and; open source lenders such as Prosper and Kiva. Of particular note, for one interested in the role of openness and open initiatives within public higher education, consider SUNY’s strategic plan:

Building on SUNY’s current open and online initiatives…..OPEN SUNY will network students with faculty and peers from across the state and throughout the world through social and emerging technologies and link them to the best in open educational resources.

Imagine the competitive advantage for New York State if SUNY institutions joined forces as never before, pooling knowledge, pushing and building on each other’s ideas, and collaborating in ways that deploy our distinctive capabilities to the fullest extent possible. Imagine the impact if, from this day on, we work toward a common goal: to revitalize New York’s economy and enhance the quality of life for all its citizens.

…openness and inclusiveness…..will remain our standard.⁶

Despite this wide-spread interest and adoption, neither an accepted definition of, nor a standard implementation/assessment model for openness exists. Indeed, as openness is either formally adopted though actual law, such as New Hampshire’s HB418 (2012), requiring “state agencies to consider open source software when acquiring software and…..the use of open data formats by state agencies”⁷, or rewarded through grants such as the TAACCCT Federal Grant Program which includes openness as a condition for  funding ⁸, organizations are incentive-ized to highlight and promote their open practices and projects, leading some to warn of, what Michelle Thorne coined as, “open washing,” where “merchants of cool co-opt ‘openness’ for closed products” to increase promotion, funding and eventually market-share⁹.

Without an understanding of openness–i.e. its requisite attributes, examples of practice and outcomes–assessing its presence (i.e. authenticity) within organizations, and determining if any benefits for implementation exist, is impossible. My work will strive to identify and deliver just such a framework.

Thesis: The application of Agile Principles promotes openness and are required for authenticity. That is, the greater the adoption of Agile Principles within an organization, the more open that organization will be, and, openness can be validated within an organization through evidence of Agile Principles.

Curriculum (Under Development)

In order to identify relevant disciplines to study openness and assess what attributes enable its authenticity, the following list of practices/principles have been created, derived from concepts associated with “Agile” methods and commonly attributed to enabling open (self-organized and self-directed) development. Accompanying these attributes, identified through prior work/study (while not confirmed, nor complete), are a set of disciplines that should contribute specific understanding relevant to each attribute while also helping to understand Openness more generally.

• Courage: Communication, Psychology
• Participation: Economics (Game theory), Philosophy (Action Theory)
• Honesty: Ethics, Psychology
• Maturity: Ethics, Psychology
• Humility: Ethics, Psychology
• Communication: Communication, Linguistics (Discourse Studies)
• Transparency: Communication, Economics (Information Economics), Linguistics (Sociolinguistics)
• Self-organizing Groups: Economics (Complexity, Evolutionary and Institutional Economics, Game theory), Psychology, Sociology (Social Action Theory)
• Collaboration: Communication, Economics (Complexity and Evolutionary Economics, Game theory), Linguistics (Sociolinguistics, Psychology
• Emergence: Economics (Complexity and Evolutionary Economics, Game theory), Philosophy (Systems Philosophy)
• Rapid Feedback: Communication, Linguistics
• Story-telling: Communication, Linguistics, Psychology

The above maps academic disciplines to specific traits currently I believe relevant to enabling, even promoting and possibly directing, openness. However the above might be premature, and before such a claim that these attributes facilitate openness, a better understanding of openness would be required. In order to: 1) understand openness, and 2) identify those characteristics that actually contribute to it–indeed, might be vital for it–the following areas of study and focus could affirm the above framework. For example, the above reference to openness, as self direction and organization, provides only one of possibly many definitions–and thus attributes. Serious study should be undertaken to better understand what openness is across fields. For example,what, if any attributes are shared between “open” elections and “open” source? In addition, like open, which today is used ubiquitously across fields and throughout marketing and adversing, Agile too is enjoying greater adoption from it’s original conception out of the software development industry to new areas like Agile Publishing, “Agile Energy” and Agile Therapeutics.”

Understanding open and agile as not only terms but movements, will be important to ensure a clearly defined and specific perspective (i.e. disambiguation) can be applied to relevant concepts, as well as ensuring any connections between the two constructs are referential and thus can serve as a cohesive and comprehensive framework. To achieve this, the following concepts should be studied.

• The historical context of “open:” democracy, the commons, co-ops, meritocracies, bazaars, open societies, the four freedoms, the Enlightenment, etc.
• Related conceptual initiatives: hacker culture, SHARE, UNIX, Linux, GNU, freeware, Free/Libre, use and reuse, peer-to-peer, co-creation, etc.
• Other modern movements associated with openness, not only in software but other contexts: open elections, open government, open education, open tournaments, open courseware, open educational resources, open access, open research, etc.
• “Agile’s”  history and related concepts: agile software development (Scrum, XP, RUP, etc.), agile project management, lean manufacturing, Toyota Production System, abstraction, objected orientation, service oriented architecture, ontology,

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Degree Plan Structure

EXAMPLE: Discipline (Political Science, Economics, etc.)

• Why relevant and what I want to know
• readings.

Course Title: History of Openness and Open

Discipline: History
The discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events.

Course Description
While a variety of contemporary movements within higher education, specifically – and western society, generally – have attached the moniker “open” to their organizational identify, historical references for openness date back the Platonic Dialogues. In this course the student will research the historical concept of open and openness, study open movements through time, and look out across the current landscape of organizations and institutions promoting openness.

Readings

Course Title: Agile Management

Discipline: Management
Theory and knowledge relevant to decision-making and business operations.

Course Description
Agile Management provides a framework of values, principles, objectives and practices enabling managers at all levels to plan work, engage teams and respond quickly to changing market conditions and business environments. This course will delve into the Agile framework through case studies to explore and identify the intrinsic motivators of self-organization, collaboration and emergence and the impact of a values-based strategy on organizational performance.

Readings

Course Title: The Open Organization

Discipline: Organizational Studies
The study of individuals and their actions within the context of the organization in a workplace setting.

Course Description
How do open organizations operate: identify needs, govern development, set direction, manage resources, etc.? What roles and responsibilities are critical for success, and which are detrimental? In this course the student will study a variety of  organizations espousing openness to identify common attributes associated with both successful and failed deliverables to assess the influence and potential benefits (if any) of Agile methods. An organizational assessment measuring the authenticity of the studied organization’s claims of agility and openness will be undertaken.

Course Title: Understanding the Language, Vernacular and Nomenclature of Agile and Open

Discipline: Linguistics
The study of language meaning is concerned with how languages employ logical structures and real-world references to convey, process, and assign meaning, as well as to manage and resolve ambiguity.

Course Description
Survey the use of agile and open across communities; identify those words most frequently used, or associated with, open initiatives and agile practices; investigate root origins, and movements, historically attributed to agile and open; establish definitions for agile and open by describing terms commonly associated with, attributes, qualities, objects, activities and interactions.

Course Title: Research Methodology

Discipline: Research Project

Course Description
Introduces basic concepts and practices for conducting a personal research program: devising research questions; planning research strategies and tactics; statistical methods and experimental design, and; synthesizing and analyzing results.

Course Title: Creating An Open Organization

Discipline: Practicum

Course Description
The Research & Instruction Department of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, University of Pennsylvania, provides support for a variety of cross-unit projects across the campus. Various issues related to project and organizational management and cohesion have resulted in, at best, ambiguity around project success, or in some cases, actual failure with initiatives. Recognizing continued resource constraints will limit not only current operations but ongoing development as well, while expectations for services increase, the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library would like to explore and assess Agile methods as an alternative to their traditional practices. This provides an excellent opportunity, a petri dish, to assess current models and practices in agile methods and their influence toward the creation of an open organization.

Applicable Professional Experience

• 2-3-98
• Educasue Openness CG
• Employment activities (creating an agile/open environment)

Final Project

Use open resources to define, document and align Openness and Agile’s role in enabling it.

This, the use of freely accessible and editable resources, enables peer assessment, verification and validation through open development practices.

Wikipedia:

• Agility
• Agile (Project) Management
• Agile Enterprise (does not exist)
• Business Agility
• Openness

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1. Wiley, David. “Identifying Concrete Pedagogical Benefits of Open Educational Resources.” Lecture. Open Ed 2010. Barcelona. 22 Jan. 2011. 10 D2 David Wiley. YouTube.com, 22 Jan. 2011. Web. 14 Feb. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKsKVkie7Uk>.
2. The Editors. “Open Source Case for Business: Advocacy.” Open Source Initiative. Open Source Initiative. Web. 14 Feb. 2012. <http://www.opensource.org/advocacy/case_for_business.php>.
3. The Editors. “Open Government Initiative.” The White House. The United States Government, 2009. Web. 14 Feb. 2012. <http://www.whitehouse.gov/open>.
4. The Editors. “Homepage.” Open Source Center. The Central Intelligence Agency. Web. 14 Feb. 2012. <https://www.opensource.gov/>.
5. Mauko, Zdravko. “Open Source Pharmaceuticals – New Business Model.” Pharmaceutical Licensing Network. Farmavita.Net, 12 Jan. 2007. Web. 14 Feb. 2012. <http://www.farmavita.net/content/view/336/84/&gt;.
6. New York. State University of New York. Office of the Chancellor. The Power of SUNY: Strategic Plan, 2010 and Beyond. By Nancy L. Zimpher. Albany: State University of New York, 2010. Print.
7. New Hampshire House of Representatives, HB418, 2011, New Hampshire General Court – Bill Status System, http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/bill_status/bill_status.aspx?lsr=741&sy=2012&txtsessionyear=2012&txtbillnumber=HB418 (2012) (enacted). Web.
8. United States of America. Department of Labor. Employment and Training Administration. Washington D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 2011. Notice of Availability of Funds and Solicitation for Grant Applications for Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grants Program. U.S. Department of Labor, 24 Jan. 2011. Web. 21 Feb. 2012. <www.doleta.gov/grants/pdf/SGA-DFA-PY-10-03.pdf>.
9. Thorn, Michelle. “Openwashing.” Web log post. Thornet. 14 Mar. 2009. Web. 21 Feb. 2012. <http://michellethorne.cc/2009/03/openwashing/&gt;.

Building on SUNY’s current open and online
initiatives, OPEN SUNY has the potential to be
America’s most extensive distance learning
environment. It will provide students with
affordable, innovative, and flexible education in
a full range of instructional formats, both online
and on site. OPEN SUNY will network students
with faculty and peers from across the state and
throughout the world through social and emerging
technologies and link them to the best in open
educational resources. OPEN SUNY will provide
an online portal for thousands of people worldwide
seeking a foothold in post-secondary education–
from soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division in
Afghanistan to new immigrants with foreign
educational credentials to overseas students who
can’t afford in-person American study.

Open Source, Red Hat and Security

“Other components are built around projects designed to accomplish specific goals or solve specific problems. As someone has an innovative idea, a project is started and people join the team to develop the software. There are then various distribution projects where these individual projects coalesce into the different distributions” (p. 2)

– Ring, Rick. “Open Source, Red Hat and Security.” CIO.com. Red Hat Inc., Web. 27 Nov 2009. <http://www.cio.com/documents/whitepapers/RedHatOpenSourceSecurity.pdf&gt;.

Module 1: Graduate Program Reflections

“Forget CNN or any of the major American ‘news’ networks. If you want to get the latest on the opposition protests in Iran, you should be reading blogs, watching YouTube or following Twitter updates from Tehran, minute-by-minute” (Berman 1). Indeed, the realization of what Allen Kay envisioned as the “pervasive generation” in 1992, was evident in the streets of Tehran in 2009, with protesters “eminently portable, intimately personal and ultimately connected” (O’Leary 30). Cell phones, laptops, video cameras, as well as cell phones and laptops with video cameras, combined with social media and web2.0 tools, and connected to cellular, wireless and social networks, have eroded the publication constraints that once limited and filtered the general publics access to information. The masses living in the moment—this pervasive generation—with “new kinds of social media are challenging those traditional levers of state media control and allowing Iranians to find novel ways around the restrictions” (Stone, and Cohen 1) .

Iran’s recent “Twitter revolution” highlights how access to technology has increased our access to information, a bottom-up, peer-to-peer process where, as Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams would offer, mass collaboration and communication changes everything. Information, once the exclusive domain of centralized authorities whether that be the State or the Press, is now discovered, developed and dispersed by distributed individuals and groups, loosely coupled across not only technical, but social networks. New media, as Andrew L. Shapiro asserts, fosters “a potentially radical shift of who is in control of information, experience and resources” (Croteau, and Hoynes 321).

Literature Review

As my Literature Review has progressed and I have built out a framework of concepts, each of which lends to further review. I have created pages for each of these concepts:

• Courage
• Participation
• Honesty
• Maturity
• Humility
• Communication
• Transparency
• Self-organizing Groups
• Collaboration
• Openness
• Emergence
• Rapid Feedback
• Story-telling
• Use Cases

My current goal is to:

1. define each concept
2. provide a narrative that references the literature for each concept
3. show the causality between concepts (both the dependency or influence of previous concept and affect or result of the current concept)

Seminar in Liberal Studies, Essay 03, Final

Patrick Masson

Elaine Handley

Seminar in Liberal Studies (East)

December 15, 2008

She, Not We, Will Prevail: Feminism in Postmodern Technology

Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail! (1984)

Seminar in Liberal Studies Essay #2, Final

Ambiguity in Meaning for Understanding

Who are you? The simplicity of these three words belies the complexity in understanding the sentence’s meaning, that is, the potential within the question and the possibilities for a response. This simple example illustrates the unappreciated relationships between the requester, the respondent, their shared environment, and even their separate histories. Each of these must be identified, interpreted and agreed upon in order to assign meaning, transfer knowledge and gain understanding. Again, consider “Who are you?” What ideas, concerns, or knowledge, could promote such an inquiry? Once the question is put forth, it is subject to interpretation by the respondent, from the literal, “I am Patrick Masson,” to the conceptual, “I am with you.” Beyond this initial exchange lies the potential, or, how the inquisitor, in return, may interpret any of the possible responses. Jonathon Culler, states, “communication depends on the basic convention that participants are cooperating with one another and that, therefore, what one person says to the other is likely to be relevant” (25). A relevant response to “Who are you?” cannot be provided unless one considers the context in which this question is asked. Where am I? What is my relationship to the person requesting the information? What will my response illicit in return? For example, upon entering a room I would not at all be surprised to hear, “Who are you?” from a person standing in front of others, especially if this where the first day of school and I had just entered a classroom. But what if, rather than a classroom, I had entered a bank with a robbery underway? How might I respond differently to that same person standing in front of others if I were a mere citizen, a uniformed police officer, or a psychiatrist? And going further, consider an alternate perspective, how might my response change if the question came from the bank robber, an injured victim or, perhaps a police officer? My interpretation of the question, the response I might give, and my expectations for the future—the meaning I attribute to the words, the knowledge passed and understanding derived—would surely vary in each of these scenarios. As interpersonal and cultural norms are established meaning and even context are assigned, often despite the literal translation of the words or the specific situation those in discussion may find themselves. To my point, consider another common question, “How are you?” Are we always as “fine” as we attest in response, or do we (have we come to) understand this question and its response as simply salutations?

Draft of Eassy #2: Sula

Introduction to ambiguity in language, and communication. Who are you? The simplicity of this question belies its complexity, the ambiguity inherent in all of communication and language, and by extension, literature. This simple example illustrates the interwoven relationships between the requester, the respondent, their shared environment and even their separate histories. Again, consider “Who are you,” the question itself can only come forth if sufficient motivation is achieved within the person who asks. What ideas, concerns, or knowledge, could promote such an inquiry? Once the question has been put forth, it is subject to interpretation by the respondent, from the literal to the conceptual, and as a result the answer can vary from, “I am Patrick Masson,” to “I am with you.” Beyond this introduction, both the motivation for the question and its interpretation, lies the potential, or, how any of the possible responses may be interpreted by the inquisitor. A relevant response to “Who are you?” can not be provided unless one considers the context in which this question is asked. Where am I? What is my relationship to the person requesting the information? What will my response illicit in return? These are just some of the considerations one must ponder in order to collaboration through language. For example, upon entering a room I would not at all be surprised to hear “Who are you?” from a person standing in front of others, especially if this where a classroom. But what if, rather than a class, I had entered a bank with a robbery underway? How might I respond if I were a mere citizen, a uniformed police officer or a psychiatrist. And from the opposite perspective, how would the response I provide change if the question came from the bank robber, a an injured victim or perhaps a police officer? My assessment of the questioner, my interpretation of the question, the response I might give and my expectations for the future would surely be different. As Rita Bergenholtz points out, referencing Belsey and McLaughlin, “The members of a society implicitly agree “to attach a specific signified to a specific signifier’ (Belsey 41)” (89). As cultural and interpersonal norms are established, a community assigns meanings and even context, often despite the literal translation of the words or the specific situation those in discussion may find themselves. To my point, consider another common question, “How are you?” Are we always as “fine” as we say we are in response, or do we (have we come to) understand this question and its response as salutations?

Curious and Courageous: The Intellectual as an Activist

Edward Said provides compelling Representations of the Intellectual in his work of the same name. Within the text Said begins by presenting a goal, perhaps a criteria, for the intellectual: “The attempt to hold to a universal and single standard as a theme plays an important role in my account of the intellectual” (xiii). Said continues with his “characterizations of the intellectual” (xvi), providing a second criteria, “the intellectual tries to speak truth to power” (xvi). With this Said challenges the would-be intellectual with an underlying principle—universality—to ensure honesty and consistency in order to appeal to “as wide a public as possible” (xiii), and a simple, yet frightening, obligation—to confront authority—“to question patriotic nationalism, corporate thinking, and a sense of class, racial or gender privilege” (xiii). It is this duel responsibility, as both a thinker and as an activist, that defines the role of the intellectual, alone neither serves the individual or the community. Knowledge without action—to know but not act—and it’s opposite, action without knowledge—to act without understanding—not only hinders progress, but jeopardizes what has been achieved. The Intellectual must be both the curious investigator and the courageous instigator.

Essay Notes/Outline/Draft

Are intellectuals exiles, or are exiles intellectuals?

That is, if an intellectual questions the norms are they exiled by the mainstream authorities? Or is it, if you live in exile, do you become an intellectual as you question based on the duel perspectives of where you are and where you were?

Subject for Essay: Exile or Truth?

I’ve been thinking a lot about my first writing assignment for Seminar, and was initially thinking about Edward Said’s role of the exile. I was wondering if the exile can still exist considering todays open communities. One of Said’s observations was that the exiled individual is removed from both the physical and metaphysical world. Most obvious is the physical exile, in that they can be physically removed, for example, from an organization and no longer able to attend functions, or from a country, unable to participate in government/society.