Running with Scissors

Last week I was honored to be able to attend the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) 2007 Annual Meeting in Atlanta. In addition to hearing some great presentations, and a visit to the innovative teaching and learning spaces on the campus of Emory University, I was able to present at the conference with the help of my esteemed colleague Jim Groom.

Our presentation, “Notes Towards an Open (Source) University” included our idea that higher education has lost its innovative teaching and learning edge with the rise of the enterprise Course Management Systems (CMS) like Blackboard or Web CT. Our idea here was that as the enterprise CMS has become more central to the teaching and learning mission, and we have become more dependent on their services, institutions of higher learning have allowed those same CMSs to drive the conversation on what features we want or need with regards to teaching and learning. And the areas a CMS company like Blackboard is innovating in are not necessarily the teaching and learning aspects of its product. They are reaching into other areas like Content Management and Student Portfolios, but are also developing transaction systems for the campus soda and washing machines.
If we think about this innovation purely in terms of cost, what do we get for our money? After all, an enterprise CMS like Blackboard is not an inexpensive line item on a budget, especially for a smaller institution.

As a way to measure this generally, I came up with a new acronym – UI$. This stands for “Unit of Innovation per Dollar.” While it is not exactly a formula to calculate what we get for what we spend, it is a way to think about products in terms of what is innovative, and what it costs us.

I know I would like to have more UI$ than less.

So another point of our presentation was that the open-source community was providing a much greater UI$ than we are seeing from the enterprise CMS. By using a series of WordPress blogs, a Media Wiki, and services like del.icio.us and Flickr, and making use of the RSS feeds from these items, we could build a learning community that is more flexible (you can choose the best of breed tool to use), more dynamic (social software tools), more open (information wants to be free!) and more authentic (students writing for the world audience, not just the instructor).

I know what you are saying – “of course UI$ is higher with open-source, after all it is free software.” Well, after you look deeper into open-source, you discover quickly that while the software might be “free,” hosting, administering and tweaking it for your needs is not. So let’s make this an even evaluation of UI$ assuming you spend the same amount on integration of these open source tools (by way of skilled personnel and training) that you might otherwise spend on a enterprise CMS tool like Blackboard. Now, where does the UI$ fall when comparing the enterprise CMS and open-source?

Since I like to think that my blog is a perfectly good place for new ideas (half-baked ones too), what is your take on this? Would you say your enterprise CMS is giving you a good UI$?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Technology.