 How are you? Great. Because this is really a great fall into Terrence. I'm seeing that. It's the same. It is. It is. We've got a very short amount of time. So my goal is to tell a quick story. And to kind of see if we can identify some of what these barriers are. And then actually come up with possible solutions for how you do this. So here's a little bit of background. So for the last five years I've been actively involved in open source and education. To open source software. I've actually installed Linux, computer labs and schools all over the country. I've had a podcast series. I interviewed Richard Stahlman and Eric Raymond and Brian Bellendorf. And done all sorts of interviews about open source and open source software and education. I've run a conference for three years called the Open Minds Conference. Helped to run it. Bringing people together to talk about open source software. I've worked with the state of Indiana where they were implementing open source software across tens of thousands of student desktops. Great terrific desks that they built with Linux machines underneath them. I've interviewed and worked with individuals who replaced Microsoft Office with Open Office in their districts for huge dollar savings. I've made note of all kinds of reports and studies on the value and benefit of open source software and why we should be using it in schools. I was the open technologies director for an organization called COSIN. The Consortium for School Networking. And run the open source lab and speaker series at several conferences. Including the ones you see on the screen. And ISTI, which is the largest educational technology conference in the country, maybe even in the world. Okay, almost every computer lab that I installed has been removed and replaced with a Windows computer lab. The podcast series on open source software and education basically died for lack of interest. The K-12 Open Minds Conference is no longer, again, a lack of sign-ups and lack of money. Because this gentleman, who was the assistant for technology in Indiana, was actually fired from his job. Even though he was saving Indiana incredible amounts of money and providing ubiquitous computing. Randy Orwin, who was the guy who was probably one of the most prominent or vocal advocates of replacing Microsoft Office with Open Office, was also fired from Vainbridge Island School District. And they've gone back to Microsoft Office. The organization that this report came from, in England, exists no longer as well. And KOSIN basically stopped funding the Open Technologies Initiative through their organization. It still exists in very skeleton form. And increasingly, conference goers are actually less interested in open source software. Largely because of Web 2.0. And sort of intriguingly, a lot of the really strong advocates for open source software, for the core values of open source software, have sort of abandoned the ship. And in some ways, have given themselves over to Web 2.0 and recognized that the free aspect of low cost in the community has actually been more to them than the sort of moral issues around open source software and the ability to have the code be open. So this is a very interesting place. And this is the reason I'm thinking about this topic. So the famous quote that I love is the Thomas Jefferson quote about, you know, when I light your candle, it does not diminish mine. And in fact, the analogy kind of spreads that if I go around with my candle lighting yours, the whole room gets brighter. And this is a way that we think about education in its purest form, right? We think about openness and sort of sharing and that this in fact increases the light that everybody's operating under. But David Wiley points out that there is also a sense that we're like honeybees and that if we give someone our knowledge, if this thinger goes out, that we will then die, right? So we have sort of two competing views of knowledge. One is that it is shared and increases the light. The other is that if I give you my knowledge, somehow I've diminished myself or I've put myself in a vulnerable position. And what I'm really intrigued about is how much of this is built into us cognitively. Culturally, clearly, the free market economy, capitalism tell a narrative story about personal interest. It's very hard to kind of separate from what might be kind of our cognitive background. But I think that there is to some degree something we need to recognize here, which is that as much as we talk candle lighting, that oftentimes we act honeybee. And why? Why does that sometimes happen? You know, the prisoner's dilemma maybe is a little bit of an example of this. You know, at what level do we sort of intuitively allow for trust and then when we don't think it's being reciprocated, do we close off? And if this in fact is the case that there are sort of cognitive issues here that either complement or are, in addition to the cultural issues, can we learn some lessons about how we then might approach situations in which we are evangelizing or promoting openness? Because I feel like I failed with open source software. You know, at some level I didn't succeed. So I want to quickly kind of go through comparing the practical rational with the cognitive and emotional and trying to figure out what we can take from this in a short half hour that is of value to us. So does anybody know who this is? This is Chris Avenier. So you're going to know the story. In 2007, he's a freshman engineering student at Toronto's Ryerson University. He joins a Dungeons Master in Chemistry Solutions Facebook group. It's the online extension of a physical study group on campus. They're sharing lecture notes. After some time, Chris becomes the administrator of this group. He's processing membership requests. He's posting announcements. The instructor finds out about the group. He gives Chris a failing grade and brings him up on 147 disciplinary charges. One for helping the group, the rest for the other 146 students who were in the group. The assignments were intended and communicated as independent work. And it's felt that this violates that verbiage. Chris argues that if what he did was cheating, then so were the tutoring and mentoring programs that the university runs. The case is the news wires. There's a disciplinary committee. They decide he did not commit academic misconduct. He's not going to be expelled. That his passing grade should be reinstated. But he will be given a zero in any work that was discussed in the Facebook group. And a disciplinary letter is placed in his file. Last spring, Chris sued Ryerson for $10 million. Does anybody know the outcome of this? I tried to find it and couldn't. So I'm not quite sure what's happening. Do you know this man? I know you don't. I would never have known. This is Michael Molten. He sued Einstein Notes for publishing student notes of professors' lectures. He argued that the business is illegal since notes taken during college lectures violate the professor's copyright. He says the notes are illegal since they're derivative works of copyrighted lectures. The questions then become, does it matter if students can share notes with other students? Or with students in the same class or same class a year? Or is it just within the school? Does it matter if the students are selling their notes? Does it matter if the notes service competed with a similar product by the professor? Which in fact it did. And do we consider book summaries a violation of copyright? So these are really interesting questions. And for me they get at the heart of this dilemma. And that there exists a dilemma. And that in fact we may be predisposed as humans in a way that we need to be recognizing or we need to be cognizant of as we talk about openness. So I'm going to switch now to a wiki where I'm going to take notes as we do this. But what I want to talk about is what are those possible cognitive biases? What did you hear in those stories? Are there things that we could say we need to be aware of that impact how people respond to openness? And I made it kind of a short list here. My first was competition. So Darren fed right to that. And aside from the competition culture of a free market economy, are we just competitive by nature? Is that built into our genetics? Realistically we would say it probably is. Anybody want to comment on that? Yeah, obviously there's an element of that. But I'd say that the idea of individuals in a world competing for resources is primarily an ideological point. In a sense that more fundamentally cooperative social beings. And at least we start off that way in the sense that no individual can live without being socialized without coming to rely on others helping them and learning to help others and that being a sort of key part of how human beings survive. So to take that as a sort of a originary point, first of all you're an individual and secondly you're part of society and these people around you are your competition I think that's false and pernicious actually. Well I'll push back a little because there are a lot of anthropological studies that show when people go to cultures that have had very limited access with western culture that they actually have almost all of their stuff stolen. So the researchers go and their stuff gets taken. And while it may be that this is a fairly complex issue the question would be even if there's a portion of that competition that's kind of built in is it something you would want to address? Yes. I think that's also, these are huge questions you're asking. I'm really glad that you're asking them. But I think some of the things like addressing the anthropological issues is that there's a totally different understanding of what it means to be an individual in that society and that the concept of sharing is entirely different. And so we're kind of training in lots of different waters here. I guess the thing that I keep thinking is I hesitate to call them cognitive biases because that's actually a psychological term that I like to fill in with other things. But I tend to think it's far more cultural and that it's hard to separate the individual from the culture in which they live and survive. And this brings me back to thinking a lot about Lewis Hyde's Common as Air. I don't know if anybody has read that book. That was a comment. Common as Air. And it's essentially about the copyright laws and it's tracing kind of the history of the copyright laws through England and understanding how it was reached about things about land ownership and things like that and then how it's grown within the US. And when I hear competitiveness or when I hear people talking about, you know, the professor who didn't want his work released because he owned it, I hear that as like that's a cultural copyright law that's embedded in people's heads rather than something that comes from an individual. Because I really do believe that people are, they share by nature. They're cultural by nature. We are a society that, the fact that we have a society is indicative of the fact that we're sharing. So that's kind of where I'm coming from. I believe there's some complexity here. And there's some really fun studies like the Dan Ariely studies where depending on if you're, the person who's doing something in a group is wearing a sweatshirt of the same organization that we share within a group but we compete against groups. We'll get to the questions but I guess from my standpoint, I kind of want to also help us shift from whether or not we believe this is full, partial or non-existent. Does it have a place in our thinking about how we go about building an environment for open educational resources? Meaning at MIT, right, we know that they recognized early on professors were going to be very concerned and they actually offered to pay them. And through the transition process they allowed the understanding to grow but they started off very quickly doing a couple of things that I think sort of address these issues. Which is, you know, whether it's cultural or it's genetic, right, whether it's a cognitive bias or it's whatever it is, there seems to be value. So again, I just hope this is such a short session. But if you haven't thought about addressing that, let's go back to Gidry. I'm not addressing what you just said but I had three quick things I wanted to say about competition. The first two are research-related. Society is more competitive. The second is does relate to something you mentioned. I believe that research also shows that when groups compete with each other, people within the groups cooperate more with each other. Okay. So I'm going to let you do your third but before you go there, so the sort of a brilliant pearl that may come from that is the degree to which MIT saw themselves as doing something nobody else was doing. So allowing for that sense of competitiveness, but maybe as was addressed by this comment that came up in Darren's session, actually creating a culture where you were competing on being open. What was your next point? My third is actually something from my grandfather who was a physical education coach and professor. And he had a piece of paper carried around in his wallet. And one of the things the paper said was that when you're competing, you should always do your best to give your opponent the opportunity to do their best. And I think that speaks to a personal mindset that one can bring into competition that really goes beyond the limited concept. I like that. I'm actually going to jump down here, because I put down that one of the ways in which we work as people, whether it's a cognitive bias or it's our cultures, that we're narrative driven. So to a large degree, what happens in Mexico, what happens in the United States, what happens with your grandfather, probably reflects narratives, cultural narratives, that could be family narratives, institution narratives, societal narratives. And this is a piece where it feels like there's something we could really learn from this. I think the heart of our experience is the story we make out in our life. Yeah, I love that comment. So I think part of this too is some people's unwillingness to share it might be how they feel that will be valued by others, that they can lock themselves into their own territory. Y'all, thank you. Didn't recognize you, but nice to see you. Yeah, so whether you're in a company that's value sharing, so my brother is an assistant professor at UC Davis. He's written a book that was published by Harvard Business School. He runs their energy program. He runs their entrepreneurship program, but he is desperate for tenure and is really hard for him to get. And he will tell you, I don't get rewarded for being collaborative. It's a frustration for him that in that environment, specifically built into that particular environment, is a disincentive for openness. So I think a very valid point. I have a question that I think you may be well-suited to answer based on your description of your background. And that's whether these aren't issues of society in general, but of academic culture. And I ask that because I come from open-source software to be more specific. I work for Red Hat. And we solve these. These aren't questions. We have other problems, but these aren't the questions. 7,000 lines of code are contributed to the Linux kernel every day by some people who are paid, some people who are not. Thousands of open-source projects. Nobody asks why do you share or should you share. It's just accepting. Yes. So, and I have a friend. You know Toshio? I know him. Something about him. So Toshio worked for me and then he went to work for Red Hat. Okay. Chromatoma. That's his last name. But anyway, there may be a self-selection process there as well. If you're going to go to work for Red Hat, if you're coding an open-source software, you're already sort of a personality type that's interested in that. I'm not sure. Wait, so to me like the bigger question is like, my understanding of open-source software is, when I say like there's very little altruism that actually goes on. Just like, oh, I want to benefit humanity. There's other very dramatic self-serving reasons. Like, in what sense, I don't know, do you agree with that or what do you? I actually don't think I do agree with that. The question was, he's heard that open-source software is actually not that altruistic. So for some people, that is clearly a motivation. So there's a piece of software that you need to do something and you need a feature in that piece of software because it is open-source, you can make that feature happen. But then it also happens to be useful to a hundred other people. Right. So for some people, it is benefiting others by benefiting themselves. Right. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so let's sort of ask ourselves the question. Does it make sense to make a list of ways in which people might react, either based on cultural or cognitive background or bias, when we think about introducing an open solution? Okay, so I agree. So what would you add to this list? I put down compensation, getting recognized, that we value recognition and we are very much driven by how we are recognized in organizations. So it would be very important to build a recognition system. If you know anything about humanitarian work, recognition is a huge part of humanitarian projects for local villages. They work really hard to make sure people get recognized in order to kind of keep the thing going. So I put down cowboy culture. We're sort of a culture of you kind of do it yourself. Right. I mean we sort of revere the person who by their own powers pulls themselves up. I put down accumulated expertise, meaning as we go through life, we accumulate an ability to deal with our cope and situations. And the moment someone threatens that, we may not necessarily disagree with the change, but our accumulated expertise has much less value in some changes. So if you think about institutions, where there are a lot of people who've accumulated a lot of expertise in getting things done in a current way, how is it going to impact them? How are they going to respond emotionally, cognitively, culturally to a change that puts that at risk? And then in the narratives. So would you add to that? I'd like to sort of note two things. Firstly, I'm also uncomfortable with the language of cognitive bias. I think that you're downplaying the importance of rationality here. Because I take rationality to be about having reasons to do things, reason for thinking things. And ultimately, you're dealing with individuals, groups of people, researchers and teachers. They need a reason to share. Because they've got reasons not to share, without a doubt. So I think actually, it's about an argument and about giving people a good case. So this is what you should be doing. So the normative aspect of that, that rational part of it, I'd emphasize that more than you're currently doing. I actually like that quite a bit. You're going to make me think. This is a four-hour session, and it's still half an hour. So I wish we had the time for a fuller discussion there. So I don't think you said anything yet. Go ahead. Okay. I think, again, cognitive bias is kind of a pretty strong word. But along with competition and cowboy culture, we also have cultures and societies where cooperation and sharing allows for those cultures and those societies survival. So I think a lot of the work that you see in the open source, you'll see some of that sharing and that cooperation. So that speaks very well to the one from Red Hat, because the culture created there, Red Hat is very cooperative. But let's assume we're going into a culture that is not necessarily the Red Hat culture. And we could argue that, depending on the educational institution, it's likely not to be that culture. And if we're not in a position to change that culture overnight, how do we take that into account? And then do we step our expectations and our strategies to address the fact that we're not in that cooperative culture necessarily that we wish for? Right. Ironically though, the competition thing, so you get a group of faculty who feel threatened by what you're doing. So what they do is they get together as a group and, you know, or as a union or something like this, and then they'll say, okay, let's knock a way down. Back there. Where do you think the idea of self-promotion fits into those biases? Interesting. If you build on the idea of such thing as a purely selfless act, one of the motivations of incentive I'm from MIT, one of the incentives for any faculty to participate was to enhance the brand of MIT. And it was sort of a positive competition of what you're given, published a course on it. So it's a manifold. Yes. So I would say there are selfless acts. I mean, gene theory would tell us that they're within families and within tribes. There are acts that are purely selfless that would have promoted gene selection and you'd be okay with that. However, I think, you know, at a broader level, I think what you say is accurate. And then the question is sort of recognition. I'm not sure how much self-promotion comes into play, but the ability to recognize and feel promoted for activities. I think it depends on where you are if you're a cohort, if you're a rockstar physicist, it's about self-promotion. If you're a brand new adjunct professor, it's about recognition. But it's the same. The end is the same. Right, and that would argue for what? So what practices could we draw out of this where you'd say, okay, that helps us to understand if we're implementing an open project, what things, what would we want to recognize specifically or how would we want to address that? I think MIT did a good job. Are you at MIT? Yes. I don't know how to answer that. I'm not sure MIT knew they were doing a good job when they were doing it, because I don't know how messy that process was during the initial stages. It was really messy. Yes, but my guess is that there was pushback from faculty, but there was also a willingness to say, okay, we're taking that and we're going to go back and we're not going to claim that pure altruism here is going to be the motive. We're going to start, we're going to compensate you, we're going to make sure you feel protected, and then as that grows and as the culture grows and changes, okay, now we're going, now we have a little bit better recognition than the student either. I think a lot of people value the reasons to selectively endorse individual projects or people, and they view their IP as a way to do that right now. When you introduce openness, people don't have the ability to endorse a certain project or to say, no, you can't use this in this project. I mean, that's how big is physics in high school, and if I put the lesson plans on how to make explosives online and it's open to everyone, one of the things that I'm going to be afraid of is who's going to find this, who's going to use this, because they don't have control over it. And I think that's a definite moral bias or a moral opposition to creating openness. I mean, I don't agree with every single person in the world, and I don't. How am I going to control the new technology or the new ideas to ensure that they're used for the right things and an openness you can't? So if I were going to start over with open source software, I would actually kind of take a list like this and I would start kind of brainstorming how I would pitch the message differently than we did, because what we really pitched was this is going to save you money, it's like recycling. It's the right thing to do. The code is open, it's going to be good for your students. And really, that message stayed that got very little adoption or attraction. So I would say you want to look at that list, including control and say, okay, so what's the narrative that we're going to use to build this project? I think the other thing I feel like is the outfit in the room is not being mentioned. Here is the concept of economics, right? And that you have all of these outside sources are invested in keeping the system not open. And I think that's a really strong point there. I also think that when you talk about things like digital literacies you also have to have an address that you're talking about sociocultural issues too that not necessarily gets access to them or the access is impeded in some ways. So there are lots of economic issues that are kind of wrapped within that. To the patient man in the sport coats. I would like to warn ourselves according to this, you are based, you are biased, right? Let's be clear about that. There are many more countries around the world and I think that we are as a global community. So I like starting up this discussion, I think it's very important but it's important to realize that this competition element is very strong for the rest of the world. Because many countries are competitions, not that important. Even as societies, they are very open. So it's extremely relevant that you're bringing this up and you realize that this is a US-based thing. Yes, very good point. And in fact for that competition on open source software we often brought people from countries from all over the world who had very different experiences at the same time we were almost all struggling with some things that were the same. Like there was general agreement that it took about three to five years from the actual use of open source software to understanding why the licensing was valid. That there was a period of time and that that may be actually somehow be sort of humanly inherent that our difficulty of transitioning from one narrative to the other and it takes time and that we have to build that time in and our expectations for how we're going to help make implement. We're also, I think we can use the fact that it's a global movement and that US people are in contact with Chinese people and Indonesian people and South African people recognizing that there's different cultures I think the cultural component is more important. Like what Jim Sheldon said today and I'm not going to be critical but candidly every time I hear President Obama say we need to prove our schools so our kids can get better jobs so we can be number one I just cringe. I just did, you know I know there's politics there but it just doesn't sit well with me. Okay, we have one minute so it has to be really important What's that? I got a minute on my phone. Okay, we're out of time. Thank you so much.