More educational resources online
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 by level1librarian
OER Commons (Open Educational Resources) is a “global teaching and learning network of free-to-use resources – from K-12 lesson plans to college courseware.”
iBerry, the Academic Porthole, claims to offer “Free access to Higher Education (HE) resources and Open Courseware (OCW) from the Universities and Colleges of the world.”
I wish, however, that the iBerry team would identify themselves. I’m old-fashioned enough to be suspicious of sites that are run by facilitator1 or Dr Boss.
Via Internet Resources Newsletter (No. 159).
No need to be suspicious - iBerry is not associated with a “team” operating in some sort of “walled garden”. We stand or fall by what we offer rather than the authority of those that happen to contribute - look at iBerry as a small part of a very loosely-connected network of self-learners, educators, students etc. Most of what we offer is available to anonymous users and so is easily checked out. Anyone is free to post comments or create content and quite a few do (we would like more!) - its simply not practical or particularly useful to identify people.
Personally, I’ve never hidden my identity in private communication - FYI I’m a retired academic in the UK - I just think it’s irrelevant as far as iBerry is concerned. As for the “facilitators”, these are handy user names for those looking after the day-to-day admin of the site - at present I’m “facilitator1″ but someone else may be when I go on vacation!
I hope this throws some light on the matter - I’m happy to give any any further information.
Thank you for your comment, Dr Boss!
This actually reminds me a lot about the discussion over how acceptable Wikipedia is as a source for academic (undergraduate) papers. It’s a part of scholarly research to be able to trace information to its source. In the end you do have to judge the information on its own merits, but knowing the source, the context, is an essential part of it.
One thing I appreciate about the iBerry approach is being able to communicate with other registered users without revealing your contact information. I have run into enough of abusive and/or harassing behavior, even in academic circles, to value some distance. Another is that you look beyond the formal qualitifations (authority, as you put it) of contributors. There are surely talented individuals out there without academic credentials, or with credentials that are approved in their country but not in yours, as often is the case nowadays.
However, both the anonymity of users and of the team does create some problems. Tracking the source(s) of information, as I mentioned, is one. The transparency of your service is also affected.
I’m pretty sure some of my discomfort derives from the fact that it is so unusual (in my experience) to see a respectable academic source operate behind nicknames. Do you (any of the readers) think it’s a change we’re going to see take place as the web 2.0 applications make multiple web personalities more commonplace?
On operating behind nicknames, I am the one making space available for iberry. I have a M.Phil from Cambridge, UK ;-). I avoid to mention it online. You will find that info on my website only if you look hard. Oh, I am French speaking as well, another thing I don’t mention often.
Does it reassure you on the credentials of iberry? If yes, then that’s an error.
The reason you need to be able to trace the source in academia is not because any result from a researcher from Oxford is a priory credible and any result from a researcher in university of Cairo is a priori suspicious. You have fraudsters and excellent researchers in all places. I have had a chance to review a paper of a guy of high reputation in my field… only to discover that half of his paper was copied/pasted from another paper (yup, plagiarism) and that the analyses were full of errors. A big name will never a guarantee of quality or credibility.
The reason you need to be able to trace the source is because most of the time, papers only cite part of a published work. You want to be able to get back to the original work and check out that the interpretation that is being given faithfully reflects the views from the original paper. iBerry meets all criteria for academic merit on that account. A description is proposed accompanied by a link to the original resource.
On what is usual in academic circles. Well, what is traditional is not necessarily something that benefits progress and advancement in knowledge. There are better ways of doing. Ways were open collaboration replaces oversized ego.
Collaboration, like wikipedia, doesn’t mean decreased quality. Check this, in particular:
“Nature magazine recently conducted a head-to-head competition between Wikipedia and Britannica, having experts compare 42 science-related articles. The result was that Wikipedia had about 4 errors per article, while Britannica had about 3. However, a pair of endevouring Wikipedians dug a little deeper and discovered that the Wikipedia articles in the sample were, on average, 2.6 times longer than Britannica’s - meaning Wikipedia has an error rate far less than Britannica’s.” (Source, slashdots, Article by Zonk on Thu Dec 15, 2005 09:36 AM)
The reason persons like me or DrBoss use nicknames on the web is because it makes it easier for persons to come and collaborate. Try out “hi, I am a graduate from Cambridge, do you fancy collaborating with me” and see how many persons will do that. I have far better results with “I am a person like any other… there is this topic I am very much interested in… what about trying to create some quality resources together”.
Less ego = better collaboration.
iBerry welcomes contributions from persons of all backgrounds. The more persons we can get to take 5 minutes a week to add a link or help review an existing resource, the more useful the website to the community at large. It is very rare to see big names with high credentials engage in such activities. Usually, they prefer to focus on projects they initiated themselves (well, when you think about it, that’s how they came to get a big reputation in the first place — any big name reading this, feel free to prove me wrong
). It’s not just about big names, it seems to be quite difficult to get persons from an academic background engaged in collaborative projects such like this. It is therefore not a top priority to reassure academics who expect credentials. It is far more important to avoid to scare away the visitors who would be prepared to take a bit of their time to help out on a project that is community-owned.
By experience, what gets that type of person to contribute is not the big names listed on the website but the quality of the resource.