Authors Adam Haigler Amarachi Achonu Aria F. Chernik Ben Owens Beth Anderson Bryan Behrenshausen Carolyn Butler Charlie Reisinger Christopher McHale Clara May Curtis A. Carver Dan McGuire David Goldschmidt David Preston Denise Ferebee Dipankar Dasgupta Gina Likins Heidi Ellis Ian McDermott Jim Hall Jim Whitehurst Justin Sherman Marcus Kelly Maxwell Bushong Mukkai Krishnamoorthy Race MoChridhe Rahul Razdan Ryan Williams Shobha Tyagi Steven Ovadia Susie Choi Tanner Johnson Wesley Turner
License CC-BY-SA-4.0
The Open Organization
Guide for Educators
The Open Organization
Guide for Educators
Transformative teaching and learning
for a rapidly changing world
Contributing authors
(in alphabetical order)
Amarachi Achonu Mukkai Krishnamoorthy
Beth Anderson Gina Likins
Bryan Behrenshausen Clara May
Maxwell Bushong Ian McDermott
Carolyn Butler Dan McGuire
Curtis A. Carver Christopher McHale
Aria F. Chernik Race MoChridhe
Susie Choi Steven Ovadia
Dipankar Dasgupta Ben Owens
Heidi Ellis David Preston
Denise Ferebee Rahul Razdan
David Goldschmidt Charlie Reisinger
Adam Haigler Justin Sherman
Jim Hall Wesley Turner
Tanner Johnson Shobha Tyagi
Marcus Kelly Jim Whitehurst
Ryan Williams
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Red Hat, Inc. All written content, as well
as the cover image, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu-
tion-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 1
Amarachi Achonu's "Making computer science curricula as
adaptable as our code" originally appeared at https://opensource.-
com/open-organization/19/4/adaptable-curricula-computer-science
Beth Anderson's "An open process for discovering our
school's core values" originally appeared at https://opensource.-
com/open-organization/16/6/opening-discover-education-centers-
core-values.
Curtis A. Carver's "Crowdsourcing our way to a campus IT
plan" originally appeared at https://opensource.com/open-organiza-
tion/17/10/uab-100-wins-through-crowdsourcing.
Brandon Dixon and Randall Joyce's "The most valuable cy-
bersecurity education is an open one" originally appeared at
https://opensource.com/open-organization/19/8/open-cybersecu-
rity-education.
Heidi Ellis' "What happened when I let my students fork the
syllabus" originally appeared at https://opensource.com/open-orga-
nization/18/11/making-course-syllabus-open.
Heidi Ellis' "Open organizations on Mars" originally ap-
peared at
https://opensource.com/open-organization/18/1/imagining-open-
communities.
Adam Haigler's "Truly open education will require sweeping
changes" originally appeared at https://opensource.com/open-orga-
nization/18/1/open-education-public-mission.
Jim Hall's "M-learning and beyond" originally appeared at
https://opensource.com/open-organization/19/7/m-learning-open-
education.
1 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Tanner Johnson's "How our organization works openly to
make education accessible" first appeared at https://opensource.-
com/open-organization/19/2/building-curriculahub.
Gina Likins' "Performing the collaborative dilemma" origi-
nally appeared in The Open Organization Workbook.
Race MoChridhe's "Confronting linguistic bias: The case for
an open human language" originally appeared at https://open-
source.com/open-organization/19/4/open-language-for-open-
education.
Ben Owens' "Can schools be agile?" originally appeared at
https://opensource.com/open-organization/19/4/education-culture-
agile.
Charlie Reisinger's "The open schoolhouse: Culture, praxis,
empowerment" originally appeared at https://opensource.com/
open-organization/19/7/open-schoolhouse-empowerment.
Justin Sherman's "The future of ethical tech education must
be open" originally appeared at https://opensource.com/open-orga-
nization/19/6/future-ethical-tech-edu-open.
Jim Whitehrust's "Open education is more than open con-
tent" originally appeared at https://opensource.com/open-
organization/16/8/harnessing-power-open-education.
Colophon
Typeset in DejaVu2 and Red Hat.3 Produced with
4
LibreOffice. Cover design by Clara May and Ryan Williams.
Version 1.01
September 2019
2 https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/
3 https://github.com/RedHatOfficial/RedHatFont
4 https://www.libreoffice.org/
Additional reading
From Jim Whitehurst
The Open Organization: Igniting passion and performance (Har-
vard Business Review Press)
Organize for Innovation: Rethinking how we work (Opensource.-
com)
From the open organization community
The Open Organization Field Guide: Practical tips for igniting pas-
sion and performance (Opensource.com)
The Open Organization Leaders Manual: A handbook for building
innovative and engaged teams (Opensource.com)
The Open Organization Workbook: How to build a culture of inno-
vation in your organization (Opensource.com)
The Open Organization Guide to IT Culture Change: Open princi-
ples and practices for a more innovative IT department
(Opensource.com)
Every week, Opensource.com publishes new stories about the ways
open principles help innovative leaders rethink organizational cul-
ture and design. Visit opensource.com/open-organization to read
more.
Contents
Preface 15
Bryan Behrenshausen
About the cover 18
Clara May & Ryan Williams
Foreword 20
Aria F. Chernik
Visions
Economics, openness, and the education system 25
Rahul Razdan
Truly open education will require sweeping changes 34
Adam Haigler
The future of ethical tech education must be open 41
Justin Sherman
A practical path to open education 50
Dan McGuire
Can schools be agile? 62
Ben Owens
M-learning and beyond 68
Jim Hall
The most valuable cybersecurity education is an open one 73
Brandon Dixon & Randall Joyce
Rethinking assessment in an open, peeragogical learning
environment 80
David Preston
Three ways university classrooms can be more open 88
Susie Choi
Open education is more than open content 93
Jim Whitehurst
Case Studies
A hybrid model of open source in academics: The
Rensselaer Center for Open Source 100
Wesley Turner, David Goldschmidt & Mukkai
Krishnamoorthy
Teaching students to critically evaluate textbooks 110
Christopher McHale, Ian McDermott
& Steven Ovadia
What happened when I let my students fork the syllabus 118
Heidi Ellis
An open process for discovering our school's core values 126
Beth Anderson
5PH1NX: 5tudent Peer Heuristic for 1Nformation
Xchange (a slightly transmedia use case in Open Source
Learning and peeragogical assessment) 133
David Preston
The open schoolhouse: Culture, praxis, empowerment 143
Charlie Reisinger
Flip the script: An open community of practice at the
student help desk 149
Maxwell Bushong
Open education has a POSSE 156
Shobha Tyagi
Confronting linguistic bias: The case for an open human
language 163
Race MoChridhe
Crowdsourcing our way to a campus IT plan 170
Curtis A. Carver
How our organization works openly to make education
accessible 176
Tanner Johnson
Making computer science curricula as adaptable as our
code 186
Amarachi Achonu
Activities
Making those (dreaded) faculty meetings transparent,
collaborative, and effective 192
Aria F. Chernik & Tanner Johnson
Digital forensics the open way: A tabletop approach to
common scenarios 198
Denise Ferebee, Carolyn Butler, Dipankar Dasgupta
& Marcus Kelly
How to collect feedback from your students (or, how to
assess the sting of teenage rejection) 212
Charlie Reisinger
Performing the collaborative dilemma 216
Gina Likins
Open organizations on Mars 228
Heidi Ellis
Afterword 233
Ben Owens
Appendix
The Open Organization Definition 238
The Open Organization Ambassadors
Learn More
Additional resources 246
Get involved 247
Preface
Bryan Behrenshausen
O ne of this book's proposed subtitles was "Revolutionizing
teaching and learning for a more collaborative future." It
certainly was compelling. Who doesn't love a good revolution?
But like "The Simpsons'" Nelson Muntz staring disappoint-
edly at the cinema marquee for "Naked Lunch," co-editors Aria
Chernik and Ben Owens mulled our work and said, "I can think of
at least two things wrong with that title."5
The Open Organization Guide for Educators features stories
from teachers, administrators, and students who certainly have
embraced a collaborative, iterative, transparent, inclusive—and, in
a word, more open—approach to building educational organiza-
tions. As they've all demonstrated, it's an approach to education
with the power to create classrooms that are more engaging and
learner-centered, faculty meetings that foreground meritocracy
and accountability, lessons that are open to anyone's feedback and
modification, assessments that empower rather than punish, and
teaching communities built first and foremost on trust and a
propensity for sharing.
And nothing about it should seem revolutionary.
In fact, referring to it that way risks giving the impression
that it's some kind of radical or eccentric set of ideas about teach-
ing and learning. But the possibility that someone might perceive it
as such should give anyone pause. After all, the authors in this vol-
ume don't sound like revolutionaries. They sound like dedicated
advocates for an education system that's in sync with its technical,
5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sL102pyaLg
15
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
social, economic, and ethical contexts; that's preparing people to
act not only effectively but also humanely in those contexts; and
that's capable of responding adequately when those contexts in-
evitably shift.
Education doesn't need revolution. It needs a thoughtful,
careful, and deliberate upgrade for the 21st century.
So that word had to go. And disappear it did—in favor of
something that emphasized open education's transformative
power.
One final matter, then, was "the future."
The reality is that educators aren't advocating greater open-
ness as a way of preparing students for the future. They're doing it
to help them participate in the world as it is today. Increasingly,
modern organizations are more dynamic and nonhierarchical.
They're filled with people intrinsically motivated by visions and val-
ues that transcend the profit motive. And they're more porous,
connecting more readily with external partners and communities.
Authors of the forthcoming pages want to align educational organi-
zational structures with the ones students can expect to someday
enter—and participate more thoughtfully, ethically, and influen-
tially when they do.
So a book promising tools and tactics useful "for the future"
isn't urgent enough. The one you're reading now is much more
timely, more immediate. Forget tomorrow; you'll need these essays
today.
Because tomorrow might be different—but then again, this
book might be too. Building it was its own kind of lesson, practical
instruction in the art and craft of collaborative writing-at-scale, in
engaging a globally distributed community of experts whose enthu-
siasm for open education turned it from idea to artifact in less than
a year.
The book that materialized from all this creative energy is di-
vided into three parts. The first, "Visions," features essays on the
power and promise of open educational organizations—incisive
analyses of the situation in which "open education" finds itself to-
day, discussions of the challenges it faces, and forward-reaching
16
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
insights into how we might nurture it. The second section, "Case
Studies," reads like notes from the field; it's a collection of project
reports and personal reflections from open-focused teachers, stu-
dents, and administrators working every day to hone their craft.
And in the final section, "Exercises," educators share their step-by-
step instructions for replicating some of their own successful tech-
niques for creating more open classrooms, schools, departments,
and campuses.
And the book remains open—to distribution and remix,
thanks to the Creative Common license we've affixed to it, but also
to new futures and new possibilities, since, like open source code,
it's less a static text than an ever-evolving codex, a snapshot of a
discussion-in-progress. You'll find its source code on GitHub.
We hope you'll join us there to continue the conversation
about an open approach to education so desperately necessary
right now—and then, more importantly, to help us keep building it.
Dr. Bryan Behrenshausen is a writer and editor in corporate com-
munications at Red Hat. He works with the Open Organization
Ambassadors community, manages the open organization section
of Opensource.com, and edits the Open Organization book series.
17
About the cover
Clara May & Ryan Williams
A s an intern and a former intern in an open organization—
both the children of educators—we were excited to explore
the concept of "open education" and interpret it broadly. And by ex-
ploring that concept in a collaborative way, we were able to
discover the importance of diversity and communication in both
education and design.
When we accepted the challenge of creating a cover for The
Open Organization Guide for Educators, we began with questions:
How could we successfully avoid the cliches people often use when
describing education? How do we create a design anyone can eas-
ily and immediately recognize as related to education?
Coming up with answers, it turns out, was easy when we
worked in the open.
Our first step was to jointly list tired tropes we wanted avoid
(the chalkboard, the apple, the pair of eyeglasses—you've seen
them all). This foundation allowed us to move into a process of
rapid ideation, mind mapping, and prototyping with each other and
our peers. To create the concepts, we worked with professionals
across the company, including project managers, 3D animators, de-
signers, writers, and other interns. This collaboration with a wide
variety of people ensured that our concept was well executed vis-
ually. It also helped us identify the biases that might prevent our
design from becoming broadly applicable to people from various
educational backgrounds.
In the end, we settled on wooden blocks as a metaphor for
education. Blocks are foundational—not only because they literally
support a structure, but also because they act as a basic tool in ele-
18
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
mentary education. The various shapes and sizes of blocks in our
design represent the various people and processes that make up
the field of education. Projecting the open organization commu-
nity's O-P-E-N logo onto the blocks allowed us to symbolize the fact
that education is far reaching, three dimensional, and can be ex-
plored from many angles.
This project helped us connect on a personal level, to get to
know each other's educational backgrounds, and to discover that
education is more than the sum of its parts. Our design aims to
draw attention to the educators and students—the people—who
form the foundation of every education system.
Clara May is a senior at North Carolina State University, where
she studies graphic design and has served as both director of
Art2Wear and the design editor of the Windhover. A 2019 graphic
design intern on the Creative Strategy and Design team at Red
Hat, Clara May has worked on various projects, including Open
Source Stories, Red Hat Open Studio, and The Open Organization.
She expects to graduate in the spring of 2020.
Ryan Williams is a brand designer at Red Hat, where he also as-
sists with technical diagram design. After pursuing his degree in
graphic design at North Carolina State University (which he
earned in 2018), he was a summer intern on Red Hat's brand
team. He's since worked as a designer on several open projects, in-
cluding Red Hat's Open Brand Project, Opensource.com, and OKD.
19
Foreword
Aria F. Chernik
T eaching is a political act. This statement is at the heart of a
teaching philosophy known as critical pedagogy. In this con-
text, "political" doesn't denote party politics or educators' decisions
to bring the day's headlines into their teaching. "Political" in this
context refers to the distribution of power in society and conclu-
sions about who can and should change the conditions under which
everyone is operating.
Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a founding doc-
ument of critical pedagogy. According to Freire, the Industrial Era
model of education (which, disturbingly, remains largely intact to
this day) dehumanizes students and discourages deviation from a
status quo. Freire describes that same industrial education model
as the "banking concept of education," wherein a teacher makes
"deposits" of static knowledge into passive student receptacles.
This system, he argues, doesn't allow students to "develop the criti-
cal consciousness which would result from their intervention in the
world as transformers of that world." Unless an educator seeks to
serve the side of liberation through humanizing, radically collabo-
rative teaching, that educator is necessarily on the side of
oppression. In Freire's paradigm, neutrality is not an option.
If government is one obvious embodiment of the status quo,
then we might view government-designed and implemented sys-
tems of education as seeking to uphold existing orders. I was
skeptical of the status quo when I began my career as an educator,
and I found critical pedagogy deeply aligned with my personal and
professional values. I saw a promising connection between creat-
ing humanizing contexts for learning and expanding the vision of a
20
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
more equitable, collaborative, and empathetic world. What I have
come to see in the intervening years is that Freire's perspective on,
as he calls it, "liberatory" education is also in line with open source
principles.
But an open source educational model is vastly different
from open education.
Freire's characterization of a humanizing, or liberatory, edu-
cation is one of non-hierarchical, transparent collaboration
between teachers and students—one where a community's authen-
tic wants and needs, not the impositions or priorities of the status
quo, drive teaching and learning.
Unfortunately, for many years the "open education move-
ment" has foregrounded cost as a principal benefit of an "open"
approach to education—signaling, for example, that open educa-
tion is first and foremost about the ways openly licensed "content"
can ameliorate the astronomical costs of educational resources.
Without a doubt, the cost of textbooks and other such resources is
a shameful blight on academic publishers and educational institu-
tions and often a direct impediment to students' achieving their full
potential. But these costs are just one critical issue education faces
today.
A discourse of open education myopically focused on freely
available open educational resources too frequently does what
Freire warned against—turns open education into a matter of
banking. Just as the "banking concept of education" does not enact
liberation, the "banking concept of open education" fails to cat-
alyze the power of open to truly transform—to liberate—education.
As Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst writes in his
contribution to this volume, "what makes openness such a com-
pelling path forward for education has less to do with specific
licensing decisions and more to do with the attitude we adopt to-
ward educational practices altogether." In other words, the
transformative power of "openness" is not just its consequences for
educational materials, but for our ability to rethink education it-
self.
21
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Open source pedagogy is a vision for learning that catalyzes
this power, a vision founded on the open principles of transparency,
collaboration, inclusivity, community, and adaptability. These val-
ues align not only with Freire's liberatory education, but also with
the skills, competencies, and mindsets necessary for all students to
thrive in the 21st century: collaboration, communication, critical
thinking, creativity, and computational thinking.
Note that these skills, competencies, and mindsets are con-
tent agnostic.
Is content irrelevant in 21st century learning, careers, and
lives? Of course not. But insisting that all students memorize mate-
rial standardized across every grade band and discipline nineteen
years into the new millennium is inexcusable. This is a deeply un-
comfortable position for some educators to adopt, however,
because for more than 200 years such "content mastery" defined
expertise, and expertise defined hierarchy. And hierarchy helped
maintain the status quo.
Open source principles and methodologies prioritize commu-
nity decision-making over hierarchy and co-creation over content
transmission. Catalyzing the power of open source to fundamen-
tally change who has authentic power in the classroom (i.e., who is
an "expert") humanizes the process of teaching and learning
through inclusivity and community; it also better prepares students
for a collaborative future.
Teaching is a political act. Open source critical pedagogy can
put us on the side of liberation.
Aria F. Chernik, JD, PhD, is Associate Professor of the Practice at
Duke University and Founder and Director of Open Source Peda-
gogy, Research + Innovation (ospri.ssri.duke.edu). Her work
focuses on creating transformative, equity-focused learning con-
texts inspired by open source values and design principles.
22
Visions
Economics, openness, and the education
system
Rahul Razdan
O penness has been a powerful driver in fields such as soft-
ware development. This book examines open principles'
potential to drive innovation in the area of education. However, be-
fore prescribing future remedies, we should understand some of
the fundamental historical, social, and economic forces driving the
current education system in the United States. Only with that un-
derstanding can we outline future pathways for reform.
Built deeply into the current education system is the idea of
two scarce resources, both of which must be optimized. These are
the instructor (the knowledge bearer) and the classroom (the place
where knowledge is transferred). Historically, if one wanted to
teach a subject such as chemistry, one had to both locate a chem-
istry instructor and move this instructor within physical proximity
of students. The cost of the teacher was such that the delivery of
instruction had to be one-to-many, so the construct of the class-
room was invented. In order to manage delivery costs, the class
needed to move in lock-step, therefore requiring the students to
begin at a similar skill level. These levels of similar skills forced
creation of the concept of grade levels. Over time, the scarcity of
these two resources led to the creation of all the institutional struc-
tures familiar to us today, and most educational institutions build
delivery structures to optimize for this scarcity.
As one proceeds further up the academic ladder (from high
school, to undergraduate education, to graduate studies), scarcity
increases because the number of instructors with knowledge of ad-
vanced topics decreases. This increase in scarcity creates a real
25
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
need for filtering—thus the invention of other familiar systems, like
grades and admissions. One could easily view this system in a neg-
ative light, but two points are important to emphasize:
1. Until recently, this scarcity was reality.
2. This model has been a massive success in raising the gen-
eral education level of millions (if not billions) of people.
The system works, but it has its challenges from the perspec-
tive of the individual student. These challenges include flexibility,
differentiation, and a fairly contrived use of grading. Let's examine
each of these and explore how we might combine open principles
and open technologies to address these challenges.
Flexibility
In the current system, because the student is the widget in a
series of grades and tracks, the student must consume information
at a rate and in a timeframe driven by the education machine. This
lack of flexibility causes enormous issues for students, including:
• BANKED LEARNING. Since students are banked into co-
horts in the construction of the classroom, students who
can move at a faster pace are underutilized and generally
bored, while students who need more time to absorb con-
cepts are penalized in a recurring fashion in a race to
catch up or fail.
• IMPRISONED IN TIME/SPACE. Students who struggle to
function in early morning (medically documented for
teenagers) or mid-afternoon are forced to endure lessons
at times of low attentiveness.
• MULTIPLE SHALLOW DISTRIBUTED CLASSES. In order to
ease planning for workforce and educational facilities,
which currently expect influxes of students at predictable
intervals, schools ask students to carry five or six classes
over a semester or year. As a result, immersive learning is
minimized while scheduling and program management
skills are over-emphasized. In fact, schools (typically un-
knowingly) transfer the complexity of load management
to students.
26
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
• LIMITATIONS ON LEARNING TIME. Most schools still only
operate from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. in non-summer months.
Since the education system's primary objective is to promote
learning, the only good that comes from this lack of flexibility is an
economically viable delivery system. As we've seen, this is entirely
justifiable as long as the core tenets of scarcity do, in fact, hold
true—but this system is not without significant costs for the stu-
dents.
Differentiation and societal segregation
Read any luminary in the area of career development (such
as Reed Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn), and you'll notice a fo-
cus on the necessity of differentiation (e.g., developing a personal
brand) in an area that can be economically valuable to society.
Without explicitly intending to do so, the current K‒12 educational
system actively discourages building differentiation. Classes and
curricula are largely banked based on the realities of the delivery
system. Given the financial commitments to the teachers and phys-
ical limitations of bringing the teachers into the classroom, schools
can't consider classes outside the realm of the conventional.
All of this creates a comical situation in which students are
pushed through a largely uniform K‒12 education system only to
have colleges ultimately ask them "So how are you different?". It's
a good subject for a Far Side cartoon. Moreover, the current educa-
tion system physically isolates students from their communities
and segregates them from society, making career discovery a chal-
lenge.
As historians say, judging historical figures by today's norms
is not fair. We can only judge the current educational system on
how well it solves historically specific problems for which it was
designed. However, solving the problems of differentiation and ca-
reer discovery earlier would have enormous positive consequences
for students as well as for society.
27
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Grading systems
Assessment is a key part of learning, especially when it oc-
curs in close proximity to the learning process. Similarly,
certification of competence is also important. However, the current
grading and transcript paradigm was actually built for an entirely
different purpose: filtering. That is, scarcity and capacity con-
straints creates an economic need to use some method (even if
somewhat arbitrary) to reduce the population of people entering
the next level of education. This is why those systems often reward
speed of learning or measure irrelevant intermediate assessment
points—as opposed to competence at the end of a course.
This, too, leads to some nonsensical situations. For example,
parents pay taxes (or tuition) to schools claiming to teach their
children, and if students and teachers do not succeed in reaching
the required capabilities, students earn a "bad grade" designed to
filter them out of the system. One would have to think hard to find
other situations in which the buyer pays for a service that filters
them out of their own future options. Also, in some circumstances,
the judgement involved with grades have clinically recorded effects
such as "bad grade phobia." This is the situation where students
literally shut down psychologically over years of receiving bad
grades. One wonders, what's the point? Would a simpler, capabil-
ity-based model be better for all involved?
Openness, technology, and networking enabling the
teaching process
Developments in information technology have rendered
foundational elements of this old education model untrue. Physical
classrooms can be replaced with any variety of learning environ-
ments, ranging from the completely virtual to various forms of
blended structure. Similarly, automation and virtualization can add
enormous levels of productivity to the teaching function. Finally, all
of this can operate in an environment where the standalone
teacher-as-craftsperson can be augmented with a network of pro-
fessional helpers. The first wave of key enabling capabilities, which
are reality today, include self-paced and distance learning.
28
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
However, technology deployed in the spirit of openness sets
the basis for the next wave of capabilities. These include a revolu-
tion in instructional intellectual property (IP), standard
engagement models for students, and a viable model for early ca-
reer discovery.
Instructional IP capture, reuse, and improvement
Across the world today, teachers build and deliver lessons on
a massive scale. But at most points where those lessons get deliv-
ered, they are lost because they are not recorded. This means
students don't have access to the content other than at the exact
time it was uttered. It also means that this IP cannot be reused
and, most importantly, cannot be improved over time. The tradi-
tional "IP capture and reuse" mechanism is the textbook.
In terms of the actual product, the teacher is asked to au-
thor, build, produce, and deliver a performance which can clearly
communicate complex ideas. In the context of traditional media, a
large team of individuals with specialized skills (copywriting, edit-
ing, graphics, and more) would put together such a product.
However, today's economics prevent this level of investment for a
single class. However, with the advent of new methods of IP cap-
ture and reuse, much deeper and more effective investments are
viable.
Educators need marketplaces that both allow for the ex-
change of instructional IP outside the traditional textbook model
and facilitate contribution and collaboration in order to improve
this IP over time. All the technologies necessary for enabling this
process exist today (in fact, they've been used extensively in vari-
ous open source software projects and communities). A more
coherent IP strategy for instructional materials can rectify the cur-
rent system's enormous inefficiencies. And since the vast majority
of classes taught in high school and early college are "commodity"
(that is, they've become largely standardized through years of re-
finement), hundreds to thousands of variations on course materials
aren't typically necessary. Educators can instead modify and per-
sonalize their materials in response to student learning styles—not
29
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
teacher delivery styles. Further, true innovations in pedagogy now
have a place to be easily distributed for maximum impact.
Standardization of engagement model for the
students/parents
Today, because the predominant model for teaching is
teacher-as-craftsman, every teacher builds a unique and personal
engagement strategy. The net effect for students and parents is an
unmanageable diversity of teaching styles. Would we tolerate this
from any other large institution? Imagine that your basic banking
processes were different every time you engaged a different teller.
And yet we all know students who must manage 17 "unique ac-
counts" during a single semester's worth of work in a high school
environment. Technology has only made this situation worse.
Teachers use technology in varied ways and often use different ap-
plications for the same function. The result: Vast complexity for the
students attempting to remember and manage the wide variety of
applications.
We need to think deeply about a more standard technical en-
gagement model for students. Through education consortia, we
could construct an open and collaborative approach that reduces
the wasted motion of incoherency for standard simple items such
as identity management, structures for working through courses,
and feedback systems. This approach is similar to those we engage
when developing open standards for other technologies, where
common interactions are standardized to reduce the friction of en-
gagement. Much like the standardization of the internet enables
enormous innovation, standardization on student engagement can
enable broader innovation.
Early career discovery and alumni
After ten years in the K‒12 system, students are asked the
proverbial question, "What are you going to do in life?" or "What
will be your major in college?" Realistically, expecting students to
have any real data to make such an important decision is unreason-
able.
30
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
How are these decisions made today? At best, randomly. Per-
haps the student happens to know someone in a profession that
intrigues them. They could ask teachers or guidance counselors;
however, academics are ill-equipped to answer these questions.
The nature of the education system is that most people in it have
always been educators. Whatever insights into other vocations they
might have become stale very quickly because of the rapid rate of
industry change.
The current system's consequences for career discovery are
numerous. The first and most obvious is that a great deal of re-
sources are wasted on degrees that go unfinished. This leads to a
student debt situation that burdens students throughout their en-
tire lives. But perhaps most importantly, it forces students to make
major decisions with inadequate tools, creating a high stress situa-
tion for individuals at a time when they're least able to manage it.
The teenage suicide rate at colleges is worrying, and one must
imagine that the stress created by the inadequate career discovery
process must be a factor.
Before the current information revolution, solving this prob-
lem would have been difficult because of limitations driven by
physical connection. However, with the advent of the internet, it's
possible to build, maintain, and deliver engaging and structured
environments for students (of all ages) to explore careers in a
much more meaningful manner. Furthermore, in this world of
global social networks, it is certainly possible to build networked
resources which can humanize this process. An obvious resource
available to most educational institutions are their alumni net-
works. A combination of openness and networking can allow
schools to build a broader community to significantly improve the
career advice to students.
Conclusions
The education system in the United States is currently struc-
tured in a way that optimizes for economic realities that have been
prevalent for hundreds of years. The crux of these realities was
scarcity: scarcity of teachers, scarcity of classrooms, and the need
31
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
for a "craftsman model" of delivery. At industrial scale, this system
—predicated on the banked classroom model—has been a roaring
success. However, the system and model also have negative conse-
quences for students with regard to flexibility, differentiation, and
access.
With the advent of information technology, remote delivery
and teacher-student interaction is possible. And with the advent of
computing and intelligent agents, teachers can be much more pro-
ductive. These core technologies, combined with structures to
facilitate greater openness and networking, can enable fundamen-
tally new education delivery structures that not only improve the
current issues with education but also address vexing problems,
such as early career discovery.
Dr. Rahul Razdan is the CEO of NextGenEdu, which focuses on
unique products to transform education using openness and net-
works. He has more than 25 years experience in startups,
academia, and Fortune 500 companies. In academia, he has
worked in areas such as STEM education, Autonomous Vehicle
Technology, and SemiConductor Design. He has successfully led a
number of startups (WiPower, PwrLite, Ocoos) and held senior cor-
porate roles at Cadence and DEC (now HP).
32
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Rahul provides a compelling analysis of how the
current industrial model of education has evolved
based on the optimization of two scarce resources:
the instructor and the classroom. What are ways
that this model has either been beneficial or prob-
lematic to your own educational career? In what
ways could open organization principles make the
traditional model more equitable for all students?
• Think about the educational organization with
which you work most closely. In what ways does
that organization embrace developments in open-
ness, digital technology, and networking to shift the
fundamental paradigm of the industrial model, es-
pecially with regard to development and delivery of
instructional materials and early career discovery?
• Rahul articulates a problem many students face in
high school and college (and probably elsewhere)
when operating within a "teacher-as-craftman" sys-
tem. What specific changes would you recommend
organizations make to continue leveraging teach-
ers' unique skills and talents but also tap the
principles of openness to eliminate variability and
improve consistency?
33
Truly open education will require sweeping
changes
Adam Haigler
I t's no secret that American schools have struggled to prepare
students for the jobs of today and tomorrow. Critics have
blamed schools' shortcomings on a variety of factors: change-resis-
tant bureaucracy, low standards, inadequate teacher training, and
more. One potential root cause of this fundamental issue is that the
education system isn't built to be responsive to a rapidly changing
environment.
Public education's aims—providing every student with a free
and appropriate education regardless of race, sex, class, disability,
etc.—are undeniably admirable. An unfortunate outgrowth of these
aims is an emphasis on standardization that can be sluggish and
stagnant. This wouldn't be such a problem if the world wasn't
evolving so rapidly economically, technologically, politically, and so-
cially. Parents, students, and employers are sounding the alarm
about this issue. Clearly a structural shift will have to happen for
the education system to become more responsive to the needs of
its key stakeholders.
Ben Owens, a former colleague of mine at Tri-County Early
College, and I have recently embarked on a journey to see how
open source principles could be fruitfully applied to education sys-
tems to address this issue. 6 Our thoughts are featured in our book,
Open Up, Education! How Open Way Learning Can Transform
Schools, published in December 2018. 7 There we build on work
from both David Price and David Preston by developing a philoso-
6 https://opensource.com/resources/what-open-education
34
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
phy and a "source code" for a system that can be retrofitted to infi-
nite educational contexts.
The beauty of the open source way is that it can help organi-
zations keep pace with rapidly evolving markets and ecosystems.
As Jim Whitehurst outlines in The Open Organization, the ethos of
open source applied to management can lead to excellent out-
comes. The same could be true for our schools. For example:
• By tapping the power of the crowd and employing a meri-
tocratic decision-making framework, the best ideas about
education can emerge from anywhere. Currently, princi-
pals, consultants, policymakers, and superintendents are
the primary decision-makers in education. This gover-
nance structure is excellent at perpetuating the status
quo!
• By maintaining a "release early, release often" ethos, all
educators can test and refine new ideas quickly. Stake-
holders' aversion to failure too often disrupts this process
in schools.
• A distributed leadership model—like those practiced by
open source projects—can cultivate buy-in at all levels.
Lack of buy-in has doomed many well-intentioned, but
top-down education reform efforts.
Each of these factors could be a recipe for success in the ed-
ucation sector, where educators must stay in sync with the ever-
changing needs of employers, democracies, and communities. In
our book, Ben Owens and I propose a framework for Open Way
Learning (an extension of David Preston's "Open Source
8
Learning"), which rests on three foundational principles:
1. Relentless collaboration
2. Freely exchanging knowledge and resources
3. Culture of innovation
7 https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475841992/Open-Up-Education-How-
Open-Way-Learning-Can-Transform-Schools
8 See David Preston's contributions to this volume.
35
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
By instilling an expectation of constant collaboration, educa-
tional leaders can challenge the isolation epidemic that plagues
teachers, students, and schools. Apparently, teachers are rarely
collaborating or visiting each other's classrooms—at least in the
United States. According to data from a 2013 study by the Organi-
zation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 54% of
U.S. teachers say they never teach jointly as a team in the same
class, compared with 42% of teachers internationally. 9 Moreover,
according to a 2014 OECD study, a full 50% of U.S. teachers say
they never observe other teachers' classes and provide feedback.
This situation is of dire concern because collaboration can enhance
teaching and learning immensely. 10 Emphasis on protocols, pro-
cesses, and structures that encourage collaboration will make
working alone on anything that could possibly be improved by an-
other reviewer become taboo.
Once this collaborative emphasis is in place, teachers, ad-
ministrators, and students will have created enough trust to begin
freely exchanging their best work. Students can present their
projects to complete strangers; teachers will offer their best ideas
on Twitter; administrators will invite others to witness the magic
happening at their schools. Furthermore, teachers will start view-
ing their roles as curators of knowledge freely available on the
internet and through a robust network. They will no longer pretend
to be the exclusive purveyor of content to students, but will instead
become "Learning Guides" who help students navigate an unfath-
omably complex tome of human knowledge that can be accessed
by any smartphone.11
The two preceding principles will enable a third: a culture of
innovation that will lead every member of the school community to
become an active agent in its continual improvement. An innovat-
9 http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/TALIS%20Conceptual
%20Framework_FINAL.pdf
10 https://learningforward.org/docs/default-source/jsd-october-2015/high-
quality-collaboration-benefits-teachers-and-students.pdf
11 http://inservice.ascd.org/from-teacher-to-learning-guide/
36
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
ing school—one that has all the pieces of the open source educa-
tion model in place—is indeed a force to be reckoned with. It has
the organizational potency to reject the entrenched status quo and
say once and for all that there is a better way. Moreover, every
community member will be empowered to improve any process
that is sub-par. This can manifest as outside-the-box teaching meth-
ods, flexible scheduling, novel behavioral management techniques,
and alternative assessment methods.
Since we published Open Up Education! and launched our
website,12 a flood of interest and support for Open Way Learning
(OWL) has emerged.13 It appears that many of these ideas are be-
ing implemented around the globe in a sprawling network of
schools. Though the network is hard to pin down, brand, or track
(unsurprising given open source's decentralized nature), we've no-
ticed other "sister" networks that already emphasize components
of OWL. Teacher-Powered Schools,14 the Innovative Schools Net-
work,15 and schools affiliated with Education Reimagined 16 are just
a few that embody many of these principles.
Moreover, we strongly believe that the changes required to
bring more open, collaborative, and innovative environments in our
schools cannot be done alone. As such, we're establishing strategic
partnerships with forward-thinking organizations who are dedi-
cated to building a new paradigm for education and are eager to
elevate and synthesize OWL in their own networks— organizations
such as The NCSU Science House,17 Curio Learning,18 Innovation
12 http://www.openwaylearning.org/
13 http://www.openwaylearning.org/testimonials
14 https://www.teacherpowered.org/
15 https://www.innovativeschoolsnetwork.com/
16 https://education-reimagined.org/
17 https://sciencehouse.ncsu.edu/
18 http://curiolearning.com/
37
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Academy,19 Re-brand NC Education,20 The DRIVE Revolution,21
Hope Street Group,22 Share Your Learning,23 Odigia,24 as well as a
number of school systems in North Carolina and beyond.
Open Way Learning has invariably resonated with educators
with whom we've spoken around the country and globe. Most edu-
cators we encounter seem highly enthusiastic about the framework
and are simply looking for how they can inject it into their own
schools as soon as possible. Book clubs, Twitter chats, 25 and OWL
ambassadors are busy spreading the word and finding traction in
their spheres of influence. Perhaps we are reaching a tipping point.
The structural renovation of education towards OWL is es-
sential. If the noble aims of public education are to continue to
have a place in our times, they need to be packaged in a frame-
work that can enable them to remain relevant in an evolving
landscape, where 65% of students may be doing jobs that we can't
even imagine right now.26
Open Way Learning could be the game changer that makes
that happen.
19 http://devinnovators.com/wpdi/
20 https://www.rebrandnced.com/
21 http://www.thedriverevolution.com/
22 https://hopestreetgroup.org/
23 https://www.shareyourlearning.org/
24 http://www.odigia.com/
25 https://twitter.com/OpenWayLearning
26 http://reports.weforum.org/future-of-jobs-2016/chapter-1-the-future-of-
jobs-and-skills/?
doing_wp_cron=1558455728.4337279796600341796875#view/fn-1
38
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Adam Haigler is an educator and leader of diverse people in a wide
variety of alternative settings. His experience teaching and men-
toring spans ten countries and over nine years. Working as an
outdoor school instructor, environmental educator, overseas
leader, and community educator, Adam uses his experience in edu-
cation and leadership to inform his work as a consultant, helping
people and organizations develop unique programs and bring bold
visions to reality.
39
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Think about the educational organization with
which you work most closely. What is it doing to
adapt to the changes the author mentions? Is it en-
suring that it is helping students develop the skills
and dispositions they need in order to thrive in a
rapidly changing world?
• Adam mentions three pillars of the Open Way
Learning model. Describe the specific ways your ed-
ucational organization is growing a culture of
relentless collaboration, the free and open ex-
change of ideas and resources, and a systematic
approach to innovation.
• "Going open" can feel risky as you make your
work available for others to review, critique, and
adapt to their own contexts. What steps have you
or your organization taken to ensure people are
comfortable with the vulnerability this open ap-
proach requires?
40
The future of ethical tech education must be
open
Justin Sherman
A rtificial intelligence (AI) tools and other algorithmic systems
are increasingly impacting social, political, and economic
structures around us. Simultaneously, and as part of this impact,
these systems are increasingly used to inform—or directly make—
decisions for policymakers and other institutional leaders.
This trend could have profoundly positive impacts on human-
ity. Consider, for example, the ways in which AI applications have
already proven revolutionary in medical diagnosis. But with and
alongside the benefits these systems promise are also serious risks,
for the growing unchecked use of algorithms in this fashion risks
dangerously amplifying inequality and concentrating power in the
hands of the few. Other related problems may accompany this,
such as the increased commodification of personal information ab-
sent consumer protections, or the buildout of digital surveillance
infrastructures that are more often than not turned against already
marginalized or oppressed populations.
One of the most promising mechanisms for combating the
dangerous encroachment of individual agency and power through
algorithms is open education. Policymakers and advisors educated
on these ethical technology issues can make informed regulatory
decisions, technologists can increase their awareness of the im-
pacts of their designs, and citizens and consumers can adequately
understand how algorithmic systems are impacting their everyday
lives. Where knowledge is power, education can provide that
knowledge.
41
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Twenty-first century educators have both a responsibility
and an opportunity to empower this kind of learning about technol-
ogy ethics in an inclusive and interdisciplinary fashion. Crucially,
this education must be open: following principles like transparency,
inclusivity, adaptability, collaboration, and community. 27 Govern-
ment regulation, greater ethical pressure within big tech
organizations, and other solutions cannot act alone. Education—
particularly education that is open—is essential to addressing
these broader challenges brought on by increased interaction with
and reliance on algorithms.
Today's state of affairs
Algorithms and AI tools are already changing both the con-
centration and the homogeneity of decision-making power in our
institutions. For example, judges in the United States are using so-
called risk assessment algorithms (RAAs) to aid their decision-mak-
ing around prison sentencing. 28 These automated systems—which
vary in sophistication from basic input-function-output formulas to
neural networks that use deep learning—will take an individual's
profile and run some form of risk assessment on that person. This
could be that person's likelihood of recommitting a crime, or it
could be the degree to which they're inclined towards violent crim-
inal behavior. Essentially, the pitch is that the algorithms reduce
the workload for judges with many cases on the docket and limited
time to read individuals' criminal records. Such a pitch also plays,
explicitly or not, on the notion that mathematical formulas and al-
gorithms are somehow objective.
Yet when these systems take data from our world—such as a
person's number of prior arrests—at face value and use them as
proxies for outputs like "likelihood of re-offense," they introduce
unfairness into algorithmic decisions. As ProPublica unmasked in a
2016 story on COMPAS, an RAA used to aid prison sentencing in
27 See Appendix.
28 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33746041/2017-
07_responsivecommunities_2.pdf
42
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
American courts, this bias manifests in disparate impacts on al-
ready marginalized groups. 29 COMPAS was likely to falsely flag
black defendants as future criminals at nearly twice the rate it did
for white defendants, and white defendants "were mislabeled as
low risk more often than black defendants." Since the data used
(e.g., number of prior arrests) does not (and unfortunately will not,
for the near future) have equal values across different demograph-
ics, this introduces a risk of systematic bias in the decision
machine. Also worth noting is that the COMPAS system used in this
particular case is made by a for-profit company that likely has little
incentive to disclose or address this issue of its own volition.
Here, as with many other uses of algorithms in public and
private institutions—welfare distribution, 30 housing allocation for
the homeless,31 resume reviewing,32 news feed curation,33 and
much more—decision-making is, in some sense, further concen-
trated than is already the case more widely. Take the judges
example once again. The judicial institution already involves a se-
lect number of judges making decisions for collective groups many
multiples larger, depending on the jurisdiction of the court in
which they serve. Yet when many of these judges from different
courts depend on this single COMPAS system for decision assis-
tance in prison sentencing—usually buying into the myth of
algorithmic objectivity,34 because they haven't been educated oth-
29 https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-
criminal-sentencing
30 https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/02/19/586387119/
automating-inequality-algorithms-in-public-services-often-fail-the-most-
vulnerab
31 https://www.amazon.com/Automating-Inequality-High-Tech-Profile-
Police/dp/1250074312/
32 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-
insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-
against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G
33 https://slate.com/technology/2016/05/yes-facebook-is-biased-now-it-
should-admit-it.html
34 https://opensource.com/article/18/1/how-open-source-can-fight-
algorithmic-bias
43
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
erwise—there is a risk that decision-making influence, in some
senses, is concentrated even further into the hands of the few who
build the algorithm. (And what happens in the near future, when
judges are using this kind of system not just as a reference point
on risk or recidivism, but to more concretely get exact prison sen-
tence recommendations?)
This is exacerbated by the fact that those groups designing
these technologies are often culturally and racially homogenous,
identifying as white and male. Though getting consistent and accu-
rate estimates is difficult, 35 many reports indicate that diversity in
the "technology sector" (and in technology roles generally, particu-
larly in executive roles) is terrible. 36 And furthermore, as with any
institution, decisions here are going to be much better tailored to
populations that look more like decision makers. This can impact
everything from the construction and makeup of the technology it-
self to the terms and services that underpin its use.
Again, these issues are not unique to algorithms, and just
like in other situations, this concentrated and homogenous deci-
sion-making lends itself to biased and/or unfair decisions as well,
this time embedded in the code: sexist hiring algorithms, 37 mal-
functioning welfare distribution systems, 38 search engines that
reinforce racial and gender stereotypes, 39 and more. The algo-
rithms themselves malfunction—causing disparate impacts on
already marginalized groups—because nobody is influencing the al-
gorithmic design process otherwise.
35 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-
cybersecurity-202/2019/04/10/the-cybersecurity-202-there-are-even-
fewer-women-in-u-s-government-cybersecurity-than-there-are-globally/
5cad44531ad2e567949ec115/
36 https://www.wired.com/story/computer-science-graduates-diversity/
37 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-
insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-
against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G
38 https://www.amazon.com/Automating-Inequality-High-Tech-Profile-
Police/dp/1250074312/
39 https://nyupress.org/9781479837243/algorithms-of-oppression/
44
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Looking forward
Going forward, there is serious risk that institutional deci-
sion-making becomes further concentrated among developers
building algorithms—algorithms that increasingly impact institu-
tional decision-making (especially around public policy) for many
people. And even if decision-making structures in technology and
elsewhere become more diverse and inclusive—and that's also a
big when—the issue of concentrated decision-making through algo-
rithms and their developers persists. This won't impact every
institution, certainly, and the impacts on different institutions and
the resulting policy outcomes will look different in each case. But
this is a path we're headed down.
In a very immediate sense, Joy Buolamwini writes in The
New York Times, artificial intelligence is poised to worsen social in-
equality should its design and use go unchecked. 40 And on a
broader scale, as Yuval Noah Harari so eloquently highlights in
The Atlantic Monthly, contemporary digital technologies, without
the right checks and design principles, may very well erode human
agency and the structures of liberal democracy as we know it. 41 Yet
both authors and many others agree: it's not too late. We have not
crossed some threshold (if one even exists) at which algorithms are
so entrenched in the world that we can't change how they are de-
signed or used or regulated. On the contrary, actions that prevent
automated systems from worsening social inequality and denying
people agency are certainly possible today.
Solutions through open ethical tech education
Educating students about the power and pervasiveness of al-
gorithmic activity is both a responsibility and an opportunity for
open-minded teachers and technology ethicists. And that work
should both embrace open organizational values—transparency, in-
clusivity, adaptability, collaboration, and community—and embed
40 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/opinion/facial-analysis-
technology-bias.html
41 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-noah-
harari-technology-tyranny/568330/
45
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
them in educational initiatives and materials aimed at fostering an
ethics that addresses the potentially dangerous impacts of AI appli-
cations and other algorithmic systems on our world.
Secrecy around various algorithms has arguably led to many
of the problems we see today: disparate impacts on different
groups—such as with the risk assessment algorithms used in
prison sentencing—compounded by a lack of public and easily ac-
cessible information about how these algorithms were designed
and deployed. Because information concerning system design is of-
ten hidden or otherwise unavailable, identifying and understanding
these systems' negative effects is more difficult. Ethical tech edu-
cation, in the spirit of fighting these facts, should therefore
embrace transparency, where the content included in coursework
—and how that coursework is structured—is open to scrutiny by
others. Feedback on educational materials in such an emerging
area will only strengthen such initiatives.
Those developing ethical technology education programs
should also be transparent about everything following the design
stage. Sharing both failures and successes with others working on
these problems of ethical technology education is important: What
worked? What didn't? How well did the course bridge STEM-hu-
manities divides? How relatable were the problems to students of
different backgrounds? How "technical" was the material? What
kinds of technologies provoked the most discussion? What kind of
buy-in (administrators, students, etc.) was most important to get-
ting this coursework implemented? The answers to these questions
have the potential to help other educators working on these prob-
lems, not to mention those in government, industry, and other
sectors also striving to develop ethical tech education for their con-
stituents. Transparency is a powerful principle to embrace here.
Ethical technology education should also embrace inclusiv-
ity. Part of the problem with algorithm design and deployment
today (as previously referenced) is the small size and relative ho-
mogeneity of the groups making design and deployment decisions.
Few people from the general population have input or influence,
and those who do have input or influence usually aren't representa-
46
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
tive of the general population. As a result, there is almost inher-
ently an implicit and/or explicit desire to tailor these algorithms to
the needs of those who share experiences with the designers—
while not designing, or even designing against, the needs of those
outside that circle.
Education on technology ethics therefore shouldn't just re-
gurgitate mainstream narratives about technology—like the need
to innovate absent regulation, accepting that some things "break"
in the process—by tapping into small and homogenous groups. In-
stead, the design and maintenance of ethical technology education
should pursue and embrace inclusivity in design, content, and
structure. To understand the impact of risk assessment algorithms
on prisoners, for instance, including only the perspectives of white
system designers would not do justice; the perspectives of those
affected should also be a consideration (in this case, for example,
black individuals whose "risk" scores are so grossly miscalculated
by the algorithm). Similarly, adopting perspectives just from tech-
nologists excludes the views of those in professions from sociology
to journalism, and therefore misses important perspectives on
technology. More inclusive curricular design and maintenance may
therefore not just be fairer, but better—more comprehensively as-
sessing the impact of algorithms on different groups. This is
essential if we are to fight the concentrated and more homoge-
neous decision-making threatened by many algorithmic systems.
Adaptability, to use one final example of an open organiza-
tion principle, is essential for those seeking to educate about
ethical technology issues. Technology is evolving at breakneck
speeds. Artificial intelligence applications and other algorithms, in
particular, are often deployed with little testing and oversight be-
forehand. To ensure ethical tech education does not become
quickly outdated—to ensure it remains accessible and relatable to
those with varying degrees of knowledge—there must be collabora-
tive processes that quickly pivot ethical tech education to include
new technologies, new implementations of those technologies, and
new effects of those technologies. Robust feedback loops from ad-
ministrators, students, and others with stakes in ethical tech
47
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
education can help here. In a similar vein, continuous conversation
with those working on technology issues—and continued iterations
of the coursework in response—serve the growth mindset that is
needed to keep this kind of education current. As algorithmic fair-
ness, data privacy, and other issues evolve, education on ethical
technology should adapt in response.
Of course, open education alone is not enough. An inclusive
and diverse approach to managing the risks of artificial intelli-
gence's and other algorithms' growing role in society—one that
actively engages and leverages input from a breadth of stakehold-
ers, from citizens to regulators to tech developers—is one that
should include education as just one component.
Simultaneously, we should not forget the potential positive
effects that might result from increased use of and reliance on AI
and other algorithms. We should pursue and embrace the ways in
which systems can in fact be designed, technically speaking, with
fairness, privacy protections, security, transparency, and other hu-
man-centered design principles in mind. But as we head down
dangerous paths with unchecked use of algorithmic systems, open
ethical tech education is a crucial way for education to make its
mark on the world going forward.
Justin Sherman is the co-founder and president of Ethical Tech, a
nonpartisan initiative at Duke University focusing on research, ed-
ucation, and policy development on ethics and technology across
all industries and socioeconomic groups.
48
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Justin does not specifically address computer sci-
ence or other technology educators, but rather
argues that all "open-minded teachers" have a re-
sponsibility to educate students about "the power
and pervasiveness of algorithmic activity." Why do
you think Justin does not limit his call to technology
subject matter experts? How relevant are issues of
algorithmic justice to the subjects you teach?
• One of the most serious problems facing technol-
ogy education and design, according to Justin, is
lack of inclusivity. How might increasing inclusivity
improve artificial intelligence and algorithmic de-
sign? How can a focus on inclusivity help alter what
Justin calls "mainstream narratives about technol-
ogy"?
• According to Justin, why is the open value of
adaptability so essential in the context of ethical
technology education? What role might students
play in "feedback loops" pertaining to ethical tech-
nology education? What are some examples of
relevant organizations in your local community with
whom students might collaborate on feedback
loops?
49
A practical path to open education
Dan McGuire
"O pen," "openness," "open source," and "the open way"
have all been part of the various organizations with
which I've been involved over the past 45 years. The definition of
"open" and its various manifestations in educational institutions
has been fluid―evolving, expanding, refined. And that's likely to be
the case for the foreseeable future.
This chapter provides background on the thinking that has
informed one approach to making educational organizations more
open—the approach of the Stone Arch Bridge Initiative for Educa-
tion Resources (SABIER). This approach uses openly licensed
content and open pedagogy on open source learning management
systems all of which provides results that can then be written
about and further expanded upon in open access journals.
In the beginning: Schools without walls
More than 40 years ago, I worked for a company that in-
stalled communications equipment in the St. Paul Public Schools
Open Schools. The "Open Schools" of those days were buildings
with very few interior walls, which is what made them "open." This
"open system" of design was becoming more popular throughout
the 1970s (and it's still in use in many workplaces, though in new
variations). This is where my own journey open education journey
began.
One popular criticism of such open structures was their rela-
tive noisiness, and my employer had designed some of the first
noise masking systems. We installed them in a number of facilities,
including the Univac testing facility, where Robert Pirsig worked
50
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
when he was writing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
about the search for quality—and we might read that book as a
precursor to open pedagogy. Pirsig writes:
… to tear down a factory or to revolt against a govern-
ment or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a
system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as
long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is
possible. The true system, the real system, is our
present construction of systematic thought itself, ratio-
nality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the
rationality which produced it is left standing, then that
rationality will simply produce another factory.
Open pedagogy and open practices fundamentally restruc-
ture the system of education. For so long, education has been
dependent on the notion that content is sacrosanct. It was pub-
lished, so publishers held the keys to the knowledge, and teachers
and students couldn't copy, modify, rearrange, remix, or redis-
tribute the content on their own. Open licensing of content
changes all of that. Openly licensed content puts the teacher and
the student in charge of learning.
This was a definition of "open" that had to do with much
more than walls.
Gaining traction
In the summer of 1997, during a summer professional devel-
opment session for the Connected Mathematics Project (CMP)
curriculum in use at the Minneapolis Public Schools, I searched for
a communication and collaboration tool that would be free and
open source. The tool I found (on the advice of a friend) was
Nicenet's Internet Classroom Assistant, an open source platform
that was available for free to all the Minneapolis Public School
teachers of CMP. Staff directing the district's mathematics curricu-
lum weren't impressed—they, I later found out, hadn't even been
using email, so they thought anything I was introducing was "not
an appropriate use of time."
51
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
But some schools in the district were not as opposed to open
thinking.
Marcy Open School, a K‒8 magnet school of the Minneapolis
Public Schools, is an example of a building-level commitment to
open learning. I was a teacher there for 15 years. The open teach-
ing practice at Marcy was a fluid practice, and it varied depending
on individual teachers. But common among many of the classrooms
were:
• a focus on project-based learning (PBL)
• specific and significant effort to have students lead their
quarterly reviews by giving examples via a portfolio of
things they'd learned in lieu of standardized report cards
• a focus on involving as many elements of the community
as possible in learning activities
• a well articulated aversion to using district curriculum
The ability to create our own curriculum held particularly
high value. None of us had yet heard of open licensing; open
source software was just beginning to become available and not
something the school district encouraged.
Opening up professional development
I started using Moodle—an open source learning manage-
ment software system—in 2006 as an instructional tool for
Minneapolis Public School teachers' professional development in
addition to using it for instruction in writing, reading, science and
math in my 3rd and 4th grade multi-age classroom. 42 That experi-
ence led to my involvement with the Minnesota Moodle Users
Group, which eventually led to my getting involved with the Minne-
sota Partnership for Collaborative Curriculum (MPCC). Our
collective experience as users of an open source learning manage-
ment system was foundational to creating an organization that
used openly licensed curricula. Jon Fila and Jon Voss of Minne-
sota's District 287 were the visionary leaders who led the MPCC.
42 http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2010/09/writing-the-elephant-in-the-
living-room.html
52
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
The story of the MPCC illustrates how an open way of doing
things in schools can make a huge difference. The organization is
nearly finished completing 40 courses in English, mathematics, so-
cial studies, and science that will eventually be released as
complete, textbook-like courses available for anyone, anywhere, to
use. The MPCC even produced a video featuring several teachers
from the 206 Minnesota School districts that have contributed
money to pay teachers to create or curate the courses. 43 The poten-
tial savings to Minnesota taxpayers is approximately $650 million
per year. That's money currently being spent on textbooks that
could instead be spent on paying for teachers to acquire skills us-
ing openly licensed content and open source software for
instruction and learning assessment. Other states could replicate
those savings by simply revising the courses to align with their
state standards. Making those revisions would provide teachers
and teacher preparation institutions in those states valuable pro-
fessional development in addition to creating locally tailored
curriculum.
In 2011, I started SABIER in order to provide used computer
equipment to public schools. It quickly became apparent that what
was impacting schools was not necessarily a lack of equipment but
rather a lack of teacher training in how to use the computers and
software. Many teachers were unfamiliar with using computers for
instruction; many still don't understand the difference between the
different types of licenses for software and content and how that
difference impacts teaching and learning.
From 2011 through 2016, I then consulted with software
companies and educational institutions regarding the implementa-
tion of open source software (as well as non-open software). I
observed that this lack of understanding about types of licenses for
software and content wasn't the only thing impeding schools from
making changes. Accompanying that lack was confusion about the
distinctions between open pedagogy and open access journals—in
43 https://youtu.be/ARBtZYBljVU
53
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
addition to the confusion about licenses regarding software and
content.
Educating educators about the differences in licenses and
types of pedagogy became a key component of my work in estab-
lishing SABIER. My motivation for establishing SABIER as a non-
profit corporation in 2016 was to create more opportunities for stu-
dents and teachers to have ownership of the content they were
using to learn, to provide opportunities for greater collaboration
between teachers and students, and to provide support for teach-
ers within a building, within districts, and within a larger
community. The non-profit structure is an important aspect of the
work that SABIER does because it enables a larger community to
get involved more directly in the work—and ensures that the re-
sults of the work will remain in the community and not accrue
wealth for others.
Donors have told us they are eager to support implementa-
tion of a specific and defined initiative in a school or district.
Donors don't get excited about merely writing a check to a dis-
trict's general fund. It is difficult (if not impossible) for them to see
how that donation makes a difference. Supporting the implementa-
tion of elementary science curricula aligned to standards and can
also serve as a vehicle for STEM, PBL, or Maker Space work is an
example of the type of targeted initiative that donors feel more
comfortable supporting. Elementary science is an integral compo-
nent of each of these current popular trends (STEM, PBL, or
Maker Space) in K‒12 education, which makes it an attractive con-
tent area to support with implementation for open educational
resources (OER).44 SABIER is also developing professional develop-
ment materials for middle school math curricula as well as for high
school science, which are also areas very amenable to OER imple-
mentation.
SABIER's use of a cohort-style structure of professional de-
velopment encompassing a semester or academic year is a result of
44 https://www.curriki.org/5-facts-everyone-should-know-about-open-
educational-resources
54
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
many years of experience providing professional development in
both K‒12 and higher education organizations. It is the method
that has proven to be most effective for making enhancements in
teaching and learning. The problem is that it requires considerable
planning and organizational consensus building in order to be suc-
cessful.
The Augsburg Hybrid Initiative
(with thanks to Lori A. Peterson)
One example of a successful implementation of this "cohort-
style" professional development was the work I did implementing
the hybrid program at Augsburg University (then Augsburg Col-
lege). The reinvigoration of enthusiasm for teaching that resulted
when the Augsburg faculty and staff worked transparently and col-
laboratively over time to create a new model of teaching and
learning in graduate and weekend college courses was an example
of how an organic but intentional open approach to learning could
achieve innovation.
Augsburg College's strategic decision to move all its adult
learner program offerings (undergraduate and graduate) to a
blended/hybrid model of teaching and learning was the result of
many years of study and dialogue. Before this decision, the col-
lege's use of blended and online learning was highly inconsistent
and, thereby, difficult for curriculum committees and others to
manage. In 2011 the college engaged a higher education market
research firm to assist in clarifying where it stood in its use of
technology for teaching and learning, how best to move forward,
and how to claim a consistent identity in this arena. It became
clear that the best path to doing so was deploying hybrid/blended
(online and face-to-face) teaching and learning offerings. This
strategy could bring together the college's reputation for high-
quality, intensive, face-to-face connections with students with con-
sistently high-quality, interactive online teaching and learning
techniques. In 2012 faculty members approved a proposal to for-
mally establish hybrid teaching and learning as its approach to
adult education—and perhaps more important, to become consis-
55
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
tent in its approach to teaching and learning practices with adult
learners. By the beginning of 2014, Augsburg had successfully
transitioned more than four hundred graduate and undergraduate
courses involving more than three hundred faculty members to a
hybrid format.
One of the factors that made the work at Augsburg possible
was the fact that Augsburg had been using an open source learn-
ing management system for many years. In order to make the open
source learning management successful, Augsburg had created
and nurtured a talented team of academic support professionals to
assist faculty in technology implementation and course building us-
ing a Moodle open source learning management system. Because
the Augsburg community had many years experience making their
own enhancements to the learning management system and adapt-
ing it to their needs, taking on the daunting task of revising more
than 400 courses involving 300 faculty was feasible. Without that
experience, it's doubtful the Augsburg Hybrid project could have
happened.
In conjunction with the Hybrid Initiative, we also used open
source books—like the well-established and respected book on
blended learning by Norm Vaughan, Marti Cleveland-Innes, and
Randy Garrison, Teaching in Blended Learning Environments: Cre-
ating and Sustaining Communities of Inquiry. Because the book
was published with an open license, digital copies of the book were
available to all Augsburg faculty at no cost. And because Augsburg
didn't need to spend any money on the digital books, Augsburg was
able to hire one of the book's authors, Norm Vaughan, to come to
Minneapolis and facilitate several days of hands-on professional
development with faculty.
Some lessons from the field
SABIER's focus on openly licensed courses that are equiva-
lent to a traditional textbook is the result of these many years of
experience with systemic open practices, as well as the experience
of implementing software in schools in both K‒12 and higher ed.
The same dynamics present in the Augsburg hybrid initiative have
56
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
informed the processes SABIER cohorts use to implement openly
licensed content in full courses via learning management systems
(LMS).
In order to be truly effective at tracking student achievement
at the level of standards or individual competencies, course con-
tent must be used in a learning management system. Moreover,
competency-based learning and project-based learning will need to
use something like a learning management system in order to doc-
ument student work. SABIER recommends using an LMS that will
work for all aspects of teaching and learning and not just one disci-
pline. It is also important that the LMS be fully functional and not
just a document management system (like, for example, Google
Classroom is).
Instead of taking money out of the public school system to
pay investors in a for-profit company, SABIER will be using philan-
thropy money to support school districts' efforts to own their own
curricula and provide their teachers with the skills to revise and
edit those curricula to meet their students' specific needs. Doing so
has significant potential to lead organically to a more systemic
open approach in other aspects of the organization.
The current (very successful) open educational resource
(OER) for middle school math curriculum, Illustrative Mathemat-
ics, has been adapted by a company that houses the curriculum in
a proprietary learning management system and provides access for
a fee. SABIER professional development is the "no cost to public
schools" version of that model. But in addition to cutting costs by
using OER, public schools will also be taking an important step in
creating more open organizational cultures. Another important ad-
vantage is that schools will have the ability to control their own
data and use it as they see fit, rather than rely on the goodwill of a
for-profit company. We know this is the future of content delivery in
K‒12—because it's the approach most big publishing companies
are now taking.
Likewise, in higher education publishing companies cur-
rently push proprietary "homework system" in conjunction with
openly licensed textbooks. The economic dynamics of higher edu-
57
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
cation are somewhat different than in K‒12: students currently pay
for the textbooks and also for the proprietary homework systems.
While openly licensed textbooks are now saving many higher edu-
cation students a good deal of money, institutions could realize
even higher potential savings if they were willing to take on the
task of managing the homework systems in their own learning
management systems instead of farming it out to third-party, pro-
prietary providers. Increased teacher-student interaction, the
ability to create authentic material tailored to specific objectives,
and the option to control all student data more locally are advan-
tages that openly licensed content on an open source learning
management system will provide for higher education, too—that,
and, of course, keeping the money spent in the system increasing
teacher and student skills and institutional capacity rather than
shipping it out to third parties.
The work of SABIER is to increase the amount of time teach-
ers spend with students and to enable them to better use authentic
sources that are specifically tailored to the needs of their students.
We believe that openly licensed digital content is not a passing fad.
We also believe that all students will benefit from more profes-
sional development regarding open content, but that professional
development is especially critical for those teachers who will be
teaching students who might not otherwise have access to quality
learning that includes a strong teacher presence.
Delivering OER via an LMS is consistent with Education
Reimagined's five interrelated elements characterizing student-
centered learning, and we could consider it best practice for edu-
cation in 2019 and beyond. 45 Access to content in a digital format
for those who choose something other than English on paper is
what will really drive the future of learning. The creation of an
electronic record or archive of student work and teacher com-
ments from which reports about how students actually understand
aligned material is also crucial. There's a lot of chatter these days
about the need for "aligned content," but very little talk about how
45 https://education-reimagined.org/
58
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
assessment of student learning of the aligned materials gets ac-
complished. Using standardized tests is neither adequate nor
desirable.
Using openly licensed curricula with an open source learn-
ing management system won't necessarily lead to the educational
institution becoming an open organization—but it's also not possi-
ble for an educational institution to claim to be open without using
openly licensed content and an open source learning management
system. The issue then becomes: Which is the most practical and
efficient way to bring openness to an educational institution?
The answer to that is likely to vary depending on the many
different types of educational institutions that exist globally. SA-
BIER believes that implementing openly licensed curricula with an
open source learning management system supported by profes-
sional development that is based on and uses both openly licensed
professional development content and open source collaboration
tools is the most practical way to foster greater openness in most
types of schools.
Most attractive to schools is the approach's cost-effective na-
ture; schools must spend very little money to reap the benefits.
Instead of spending new money, they can begin redirecting money
that is currently being spent on proprietary content and propri-
etary tools to openly licensed content and open source tools.
But an even more significant advantage of this approach is
that it helps the open organization philosophy take hold in schools
and impact the actual work of education. This approach provides
resources for creating places where collaboration and trans-
parency are common, and an adaptable, ever-evolving curriculum
maintains focus on what and how students are actually learning.
59
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Dan McGuire taught elementary grades at Marcy Open School in
the Minneapolis Public Schools for 15 years after spending 16
years in sales management for telecom and computer companies in
local, regional, and international markets. He is currently the
founder and executive director of the Stone Arch Bridge Initiative
for Education Resources, a non-profit that enables philanthropy
and foundation funding to go directly to supporting teachers and
students so they can use free, openly licensed content on open
source learning management systems.
60
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Consider how Dan's understanding of "openness"
evolved throughout his career and reflect on your
own open source journey. What major milestones
along the way have influenced your practices to-
day?
• Dan points to a relative lack of understanding of
open principles, concepts, and terminology in the
schools with which he works. What has your own
experience been in this regard? If it's been similar
to Dan's, what specific things might you do to raise
awareness?
• Without question, open education resources and
open platforms can improve students' and teachers'
access to high quality instructional materials and
resources, thus closing a chronic equity gap. How is
your educational organization taking advantage of
such resources? What can you do to encourage
them to do more?
61
Can schools be agile?
Ben Owens
W e've all had those deja vu moments that make us think
"I've seen this before." I experienced them often in the late
1980s, when I first began my career in industry. I was caught up in
a wave of organizational change, where the U.S. manufacturing
sector was experimenting with various models that asked leaders,
managers, and engineers like me to rethink how we approached
things like quality, cost, innovation, and shareholder value. It
seems as if every year, and sometimes more frequently, we'd study
yet another book to identify the "best practices" deemed necessary
for making us leaner, flatter, more nimble, and more responsive to
the needs of the customer.
Many of the approaches were so transformational that their
core principles still resonate with me today. Specific ideas and
methods from thought leaders such as John Kotter, Peter Drucker,
Edwards Demming, and Peter Senge were truly pivotal for our abil-
ity to rethink our work, as were the adoption of process
improvement methods such as Six Sigma and those embodied in
the "Toyota Way."46
But others seemed to simply repackage these same ideas
with a sexy new twist—hence my deja vu.
And yet when I began my career as a teacher, I encountered
a context that didn't give me that feeling: education. In fact, I was
surprised to find that "getting better all the time" was not the same
high priority in my new profession that it was in my old one (partic-
ularly at the level of my role as a classroom teacher).
46 http://steelefficiencyreview.com.au/blog/principles-of-the-toyota-way/
62
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Why aren't more educational organizations working to cre-
ate cultures of continuous improvement? I can think of several
reasons, but let me address two.
Widgets no more
The first barrier to a culture of continuous improvement is
education's general reticence to look at other professions for ideas
it can adapt and adopt—especially ideas from the business commu-
nity. The second is education's predominant leadership model,
which remains predominantly top-down and rooted in hierarchy.
Conversations about systemic, continuous improvement tend to be
the purview of a relatively small group of school or district leaders:
principals, assistant principals, superintendents, and the like. But
widespread organizational culture change can't occur if only one
small group is involved in it.
Before unpacking these points a bit further, I'd like to em-
phasize that there are certainly exceptions to the above
generalization (many of which I've seen firsthand) and that there
are two basic assumptions that I think any education stakeholder
should agree with:
1. Continuous improvement must be an essential mindset
for anyone involved in the work of providing high-quality
and equitable teaching and learning systems for stu-
dents, and
2. Decisions by leaders of our schools will more greatly
benefit students and the communities in which they live
when those decisions are informed and influenced by
those who work closest with students.
So why a tendency to ignore (or be outright hostile toward)
ideas that come from outside the education space?
I, for example, have certainly faced criticism in the past for
suggesting that we look to other professions for ideas and inspira-
tion that can help us better meet the needs of students. A common
refrain is something like: "You're trying to treat our students like
widgets!" But how could our students be treated any more like wid-
gets than they already are? They matriculate through school in
63
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
age-based cohorts, going from siloed class to class each day by the
sound of a shrill bell, and receive grades based on arbitrary tests
that emphasize sameness over individuality.
It may be news to many inside of education, but widgets—
abstract units of production that evoke the idea of assembly line
standardization—are not a significant part of the modern manufac-
turing sector. Thanks to the culture of continuous improvement
described above, modern, advanced manufacturing delivers just
what the individual customer wants, at a competitive price, exactly
when she wants it. If we adapted this model to our schools, teach-
ers would be more likely to collaborate and constantly refine their
unique paths of growth for all students based on just-in-time needs
and desires—regardless of the time, subject, or any other tradi-
tional norm.
What I'm advocating is a clear-eyed and objective look at any
idea from any sector with potential to help us better meet the
needs of individual students, not that we somehow run our schools
like businesses. In order for this to happen effectively, however, we
need to scrutinize a leadership structure that has frankly remained
stagnant for over 100 years.
Toward continuous improvement
While I certainly appreciate the argument that education is
an animal significantly different from other professions, I also be-
lieve that rethinking an organizational and leadership structure is
an applicable exercise for any entity wanting to remain responsible
(and responsive) to the needs of its stakeholders. Most other pro-
fessions have taken a hard look at their traditional, closed,
hierarchical structures and moved to ones that encourage collec-
tive autonomy per shared goals of excellence—organizational
elements essential for continuous improvement. It's time our
schools and districts do the same by expanding their horizon be-
yond sources that, while well intended, are developed from a lens
of the current paradigm.
Not surprisingly, a go-to resource I recommend to any school
wanting to begin or accelerate this process is The Open Organiza-
64
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
tion by Jim Whitehurst. Not only does the book provide a window
into how educators can create more open, inclusive leadership
structures—where mutual respect enables nimble decisions to be
made per real-time data—but it does so in language easily adapt-
able to the rather strange lexicon that's second nature to
educators. Open organization thinking provides pragmatic ways
any organization can empower members to be more open: sharing
ideas and resources, embracing a culture of collaborative partici-
pation as a top priority, developing an innovation mindset through
rapid prototyping, valuing ideas based on merit rather than the
rank of the person proposing them, and building a strong sense of
community that's baked into the organization's DNA. Such an open
organization crowd-sources ideas from both inside and outside its
formal structure and creates the type of environment that enables
localized, student-centered innovations to thrive.
Here's the bottom line: Essential to a culture of continuous
improvement is recognizing that what we've done in the past may
not be suitable in a rapidly changing future. For educators, that
means we simply can't rely on solutions and practices we devel-
oped in a factory-model paradigm. We must acknowledge countless
examples of best practices from other sectors—such as non-profits,
the military, the medical profession, and yes, even business—that
can at least inform how we rethink what we do in the best interest
of students. By moving beyond the traditionally sanctioned "edus-
peak" world, we create opportunities for considering perspectives.
We can better see the forest for the trees, taking a more objective
look at the problems we face, as well as acknowledging what we do
very well.
Intentionally considering ideas from all sources—from first
year classroom teachers to the latest New York Times Business &
Management Leadership bestseller—offers us a powerful way to
engage existing talent within our schools to help overcome the in-
stitutionalized inertia that has prevented more positive change
from taking hold in our schools and districts.
Relentlessly pursuing methods of continuous improvement
should not be a behavior confined to organizations fighting to re-
65
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
main competitive in a global, innovation economy, nor should it be
left to a select few charged with the operation of our schools.
When everyone in an organization is always thinking about what
they can do differently today to improve what they did yesterday,
then you have an organization living a culture of excellence. That's
the kind of radically collaborative and innovative culture we should
especially expect for organizations focused on changing the lives of
young people.
I'm eagerly awaiting the day when I enter a school, recog-
nize that spirit, and smile to myself as I say, "I've seen this before."
Ben Owens was an engineer for a multinational corporation for 18
years before becoming a STEM teacher in rural Appalachia, where
he received state and national recognition for his innovative ap-
proach to teaching and teacher leadership. He co-authored the
book, Open Up, Education! How Open Way Learning Can Trans-
form Schools, and now works as an education consultant to help
educators create similar cultural conditions for localized innova-
tion in their own schools.
66
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• "Why aren't more educational organizations work-
ing to create cultures of continuous improvement?"
Ben asks. He offers two possible reasons, but for
what other reasons would you suggest this is the
case? How might you eliminate those reasons (or at
least reduce their impact) by leveraging open prin-
ciples?
• In what specific ways can you encourage your ed-
ucational organization to look beyond the education
field for methods of fostering a culture of continu-
ous improvement?
• Ben asserts that—unlike many schools—most
other professions have moved away from closed, hi-
erarchical structures to ones that encourage
collective autonomy per a shared set of goals. What
steps can education stakeholders take to move be-
yond the current school governance paradigm?
67
M-learning and beyond
Jim Hall
"Access to computers and the Internet has become a
basic need for education in our society."‒U.S. Senator
Kent Conrad, 2004
I spent seventeen years working in higher education, both as a
campus technology leader and as an adjunct professor. Today, I
continue as an adjunct professor. I know firsthand that educational
technology is invaluable to the teaching and learning mission of
universities—and that it changes at a rapid pace.
Higher education is often an entrepreneurial space, seizing
on new opportunities to deliver the best value. Too often, however,
institutions devote a year or more to designing, bidding on, select-
ing, purchasing, building, or implementing new education
technologies in the service of the teaching and learning mission.
But in that yearlong interim, the technology landscape may change
so much that the solution delivered no longer addresses the needs
of the education community.
What's more, technological solutions often re-entrench tradi-
tional educational models that aren't as effective today as they
once were. The "closed" classroom featuring the model of teacher
as a "sage on a stage" can no longer be the norm.
Education needs to evolve and embrace new technologies
and new modes of learning if we are to meet our students' needs.
Shifts in teaching and learning
The next fundamental technological shift at universities will
impact how students interface with teaching and learning. To un-
68
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
derstand the new learning landscape, let me first provide the con-
text of previous methods.
Learning has always been about students sitting in a class-
room, pen and paper in hand, taking notes during a professor's
lecture. We've experienced variations on this mode over time (such
as small group breakout discussions and inverted classrooms) but
most classes involve some version of this teaching model.
In the 1980s, IBM introduced the IBM PC, which put individ-
ual computing power into the hands of everyone, including
students. Overnight, institutions needed to integrate the new tech-
nology into their pedagogies.
The PC changed the teaching and learning landscape. Cer-
tainly students needed to learn the new software. Students
previously wrote papers by hand—a methodology that directly mir-
rored work in the professional world. But with the introduction of
the PC, modern students now needed to learn new skills.
For example, writing-intensive courses could no longer ex-
pect students to use a standard typewriter to write papers. That
would be like expecting handwritten papers in the era of the type-
writer. "Keyboarding" became a new skill, replacing "typing"
classes in most institutions. Rather than simply learning to type on
a typewriter, students needed to learn the new "word processing"
software available on the new PC.
The thought process behind writing remains the same, only
the tools change. In this case, the PC introduced an additional
component to teaching and learning: Students learned the same
writing process, but now learned new skills in the mechanics of
writing via word processing software.
M-learning means mobile learning
Technology is changing, and will continue to evolve. How
will students access information next year? Five years from now?
Ten years from now? We cannot expect to rely on old models. And
campuses need to look toward the technology horizon and consider
how to prepare for that new landscape in the face of new technolo-
gies.
69
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
In response to today's ubiquitous computing trends across
higher education, many institutions have already adopted elec-
tronic learning system, or "e-learning." If you've stepped into a
college campus in the last few years, you'll already be familiar with
central systems that provide a single place for students to turn in
homework, respond to quizzes, interact with other students, ask
questions of the instructor, receive grades, and track other
progress in their courses. Universities that adopt e-learning are
evolving into the classrooms of the future.
But these universities cannot rest on the accomplishments of
e-learning. How students interface with e-learning continues to
evolve, and is already changing.
By my count, only two years ago students preferred laptops
for their personal computing devices. Since then, smaller mobile
devices have overtaken the classroom. Students still use laptops
for creating content, such as writing papers, but they increasingly
use mobile devices such as phones to consume content. This trend
is increasing. According to research by Nielsen conducted a few
years ago, 98% of surveyed Millennials aged 18 to 24 said they
owned a smartphone.47
During a listening session with my campus, I heard one ma-
jor concern from our students: How could they could access e-
learning systems from their phones? With loud voices, students
asked for e-learning interfaces that supported their smartphones.
Electronic learning had shifted from "e-learning" to mobile learn-
ing, or "m-learning."
In turn, this meant we needed better mobile carrier recep-
tion across campus. The focus changes again—this time, from
providing high-quality, high-speed WiFi networks to every corner of
campus to ensuring the mobile carriers could provide their own
coverage across campus. With smartphones, and with m-learning,
students now expect to "bring their network with them."
47 https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/article/2016/millennials-are-top-
smartphone-users/
70
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Finding the future landscape
This radically changes both the model of e-learning and the
method of accessing e-learning systems. M-learning is about re-
sponding to the mobility of the student, and recognizing that
students can continue to learn wherever they are. Students don't
want to be anchored to the four walls of a classroom.
How will the future unfold? The future is always changing,
so I cannot give a complete picture of the future of learning. But I
can describe the trends that we will see.
Mobile computing and m-learning will only expand. In the
next five years, campuses that have dedicated computer labs will
be in the minority. Instead of dedicated spaces, students will need
to access software and programs from these "labs" through a "vir-
tual lab." If this sounds similar to today's model of a laptop
connected to a virtual lab, that's to be expected. The model isn't
likely to change much; education will be via m-learning and mobile
devices for the foreseeable future.
Even after education fully adopts m-learning, change will
continue. Students won't stop discovering new ways of learning,
and they'll demand those new methods from their institutions. We
will move beyond m-learning to new modes we have yet to uncover.
That's the reality of educational technology.
Our responsibility as stewards of education is to discover the
next educational computing methods in partnership with the stu-
dents we serve. To meet the challenges this future technology
landscape presents us, we cannot expect an ivory tower to dictate
how students will adopt technology. That era is long past. Instead,
institutions need to work together with students—and examine
how to adapt technology to serve those students.
Jim Hall has more than twenty years' experience in IT leadership.
After serving more than eight years as Chief Information Officer in
government and higher education, he founded IT Mentor Group,
LLC (itmentorgroup.biz) to help CIOs and IT Directors with strate-
gic planning and organizational development.
71
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Jim warns that "technological solutions often re-
entrench traditional educational models that aren't
as effective today as they once were." Have your
organization's tools prescribed ways of working that
actually hinder your ability to achieve your goals?
How might different technological choices affect
how you and your teams operate?
• Jim maintains that "our responsibility as stewards
of education is to discover the next educational
computing methods in partnership with the stu-
dents we serve." In what ways is your educational
organization doing this? In what ways could it be
strengthening its partnership with the people it
serves?
• Jim explains how addressing a seemingly simple
student need to make learning resource "more mo-
bile" required changes to multiple domains and
initiatives—from campus infrastructure to software
design to pedagogy itself. Think about a way you'd
like to make your educational organization more
open. What resources would it require? Who would
need to be involved? How long would it take? How
might your teams address these requirements?
Draw a map if useful.
72
The most valuable cybersecurity education
is an open one
Brandon Dixon & Randall Joyce
T oday's world—marked by an increase of Internet-connected
devices, digital assets, and information systems infrastruc-
ture—demands more cybersecurity professionals. Cybersecurity is
the practice of defending these devices, assets, and systems
against malicious cyberattacks from both internal and external en-
tities. Often these cyberattacks are linked to cybercrimes, or
crimes committed using a computer to generate profit or to affect
the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of the data or system.
In 2016, cybercrimes cost the global economy more than $450 bil-
lion.48
Developing a robust cybersecurity workforce is therefore es-
sential for mitigating the effects of cybercrime on the global
economy. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has pre-
dicted a shortage of 1.8 million cybersecurity professionals by the
year 2022.49 The United States has already developed a working
group, the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE),
to promote cybersecurity education. Educators play a critical role
helping promote cybersecurity as early as possible in academic or-
ganizations. And they should take an open approach to doing it.
It's critical for students to not only become acquainted with
the advantages of open source software but also to develop strong
skills working openly, since open source software is not only com-
48 http://www.hiscox.com/cyber-readiness-report.pdf
49 https://iamcybersafe.org/wpcontent/uploads/2017/06/Europe-GISWS-
Report.pdf
73
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
mon in the IT industry in general, but is specifically necessary in
the field of cybersecurity. With this approach, students can learn
within the safety and guidance of the classroom while also natu-
rally acquiring research and troubleshooting skills by facing
challenges that are presented or arise during exercises.
In this chapter, we'll explain how experiencing these chal-
lenges in the classroom environment is imperative for preparing
students for the industry and equipping them to face the unforgiv-
ing challenges that await them in the IT industry—especially in the
rapidly evolving cybersecurity field.
Developing an open approach to cybersecurity education
Open source software, open source communities, and open
source principles have been pivotal in the adoption of computer au-
tomation that is so common today. For instance, most smart
devices are running a version of the Linux kernel. In the cyberse-
curity field, it's common to find Linux at the heart of most
operating systems that are running on security appliances. But go-
ing beyond the operating system, Ansible has taken the
management scene by storm, allowing for simplified automation of
management tasks that even professionals without programming
or scripting experience can quickly grasp and begin to implement.
In addition to the benefits of automation, a variety of open source
applications provide seemingly limitless capabilities for computer
users—such as the ability to create video, music, games, or graphic
designs on par with proprietary software. Open source software
has often been the creative spark that has enabled countless indi-
viduals to pursue goals that would have otherwise been
unobtainable.
Open source has had the same democratizing effect for cy-
bersecurity professionals. Like other open source projects, open
source cybersecurity tools receive extensive community support,
so they're often some of the most-used security tools in existence
today. Such tools include Nmap, OpenVAS, OSSEC, Metasploit
Framework, Wireshark, and the Kali Linux distribution, to name a
few. These open source tools are an invaluable asset for educators,
74
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
as they provide an opportunity for students to use the same cyber-
security tools currently being used in industry—but within a safe
learning environment, a factor that is critical for student growth in
the field.
In Murray State University's Telecommunications Systems
Management (TSM) program, we're developing curricula and re-
sources aimed at getting students excited about cybersecurity and
motivated to pursue it. But students often enter the program with
little or no understanding of open source principles or software, so
bringing participants up to speed has been one of our biggest chal-
lenges. That's why we've partnered with Red Hat Academy to
supplement our materials and instill fundamental Linux skills and
knowledge into our students. 50 This foundation not only prepares
students to use the open source security tools that are based on
Linux operating systems but also equips them to experiment with a
wider variety of Linux-based open source cybersecurity tools, giv-
ing them valuable, hands-on experience. And since these tools are
freely available, they can continue practicing their skills outside
the classroom.
Equipping students for a collaborative industry
As we've said, open source software's ubiquity and ample
community support makes it critical to the field of cybersecurity. In
the TSM program, our courses incorporate open tools and open
practices to simulate the environments students should expect to
find if they choose to enter the cybersecurity industry. By creating
this type of learning experience in the classroom—a place where
instructors can offer immediate guidance and the stakes are low—
we're able to help students can gain the critical thinking skills
needed for the variety of challenges they'll encounter in the field.
Chief among these, for example, are the skills associated
with seeking, assessing, understanding resources from cybersecu-
rity communities. In our courses, we emphasize the process of
researching community forums and reading software documenta-
50 https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/red-hat-academy
75
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
tion. Because no one could ever hope to prepare students for every
situation they might encounter in the field, we help students train
themselves how to use the tools at their disposal to resolve differ-
ent situations that may arise. Because open source cybersecurity
tools often give rise to engaged and supportive communities, stu-
dents have the opportunity to develop troubleshooting skills when
they encounter challenges by discovering solutions in conversation
with people outside the classroom. Developing the ability to
quickly and efficiently research problems and solutions is critical
for a cybersecurity student, since technology (and the threat land-
scape) is always evolving.
A more authentic operating system experience
Most operating systems courses take a narrow approach fo-
cused on proprietary software, which is an injustice to students as
it denies them access to the diversity of the operating systems
found in the IT industry. For instance, as companies are moving
their services to the cloud, they are increasingly running on open
source, Linux-based operating systems. Additionally, since open
source software enables developers to repackage the software and
customize distributions, many are adopting these varying distribu-
tions of Linux simply because they are a better fit for a particular
application. Still others are moving their servers from proprietary
platforms to Linux due to the attraction of the accountability that
comes with open source software—especially in light of frustra-
tions that occur when proprietary vendors push updates that cause
major issues in their infrastructure.
In the TSM courses, our students gain a strong understand-
ing of foundational Linux concepts. In particular, the curricula from
Red Hat Academy gives students granular experience with many of
the foundational commands, and it allows them to gain an under-
standing of a popular open source system design. Linux has a well-
developed community of other users, developers, and tinkerers
that provide an excellent forum for students to engage other open
source users for help. Having students develop a strong founda-
tional knowledge in Linux is critical as they progress through the
76
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
TSM program. As students work through their courses, they natu-
rally develop their knowledge and skills, and by obtaining this
hand-on experience they also gain a foundation that prepares the
student for a variety of careers—becoming traditional security ana-
lysts, for example, or pursuing careers in penetration testing using
Kali Linux. No matter their path, having a strong Linux back-
ground is essential for students.
Embracing community-driven development
One of the major frustrations in the IT field is being forced to
use tools that simply do not work or quickly become unusable. Of-
ten, software purchased to accomplish some particular task will
quickly become obsolete as the vendor offers "upgrades" and "add-
ons" to accommodate the changing needs of their customer—at a
price. This experience isn't limited to IT experts; end users also ex-
perience this frustration. Driving this practice this is, naturally, a
desire to maintain long-term profits, as companies must continue
to sell software to survive or must lock their users into subscrip-
tion models.
The fact that much of the open source software in use today
is provided free of charge is enough to draw industry experts to
use it. However, open source software is more than just freeware.
Because the users of those tools have formed such large communi-
ties, they receive proportional support from their communities as
well. It's not unusual to see small projects grow into full software
suites as users submit feedback to community driven development.
This type of feedback often creates products that are superior to
their paid counterparts, which do not have such a direct line into
the community they seek to serve. This is absolutely true in the
case of cybersecurity tools, where the majority of the most popular
tools are all open source, community-driven projects. In the TSM
program, students are well-versed in tools such as these, thanks to
the availability and free distribution model that open source soft-
ware affords. The result is that through hands-on use, students
gain a firm understanding of how to utilize these types of tools.
77
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Future proofing
Staying relevant in the IT industry is a constant battle, espe-
cially when dealing with the many products and solutions that are
always seeking to gain market share. This battle extends as well to
the "soldiers on the ground," who may find keeping a diversified
toolset difficult when many of the solutions are kept out of their
hands due to a price ceiling.
Open source software provides students, who come from a
variety of socio-economic backgrounds, with the opportunity to ex-
pand their experience without needing to be employed in a
particular field, as the software is readily available to them
through open source distribution channels. Similarly, graduates
who find jobs in one particular segment of the market still have the
opportunity to train their skills in other areas in which they may be
interested, thanks to the breadth of open source software com-
monly used in the IT industry.
As we train these students how to train themselves, expose
them to the variety of tools at their disposal, and educate them on
how widely used these tools are, the students are not only
equipped to enter the workforce, but are also empowered to stay
ahead of the game as well.
Brandon Dixon is an instructor at Murray State University in the-
faculty group for Telecommunication Systems Management. He
holds a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science and Mathemat-
ics, as well as a Master's Degree in Telecommunication Systems
Management.
Randall Joyce is an instructor at Murray State University in the
Telecommunication Systems Management program, where he lec-
tures students in the areas of cybersecurity, virtualization, and
wireless. He has an M.S in Health Informatics from Northern Ken-
tucky, an M.S. in Telecommunications Systems Management from
Murray State University, and B.S. in Telecommunications Systems
Management from Murray State University.
78
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Connecting with communities outside the class-
room is a key facet of pursuing a cybersecurity
education with Brandon and Randall. What external
communities could your own organization tap to en-
hance knowledge and experiences for stakeholders?
How could you begin connecting with them?
• Brandon and Randall suggest that "developing the
ability to quickly and efficiently research problems
and solutions is critical for a cybersecurity student,
since technology … is always evolving." What is the
pace of change in your field? At your organization?
Would an open approach to education help you bet-
ter keep up with it?
• Brandon and Randall note that their open ap-
proach allows them to "train these students how to
train themselves." What does this mean? Would an
open approach help your educational organization
do the same?
79
Rethinking assessment in an open,
peeragogical learning environment
David Preston
O ver the past several decades, digital technologies have
driven massive shifts in the way we communicate and col-
laborate. Information technology, socioeconomic trends, an
increasingly complex and uncertain future, and school's failed
brand are all part of an emerging discourse that seeks to align con -
temporary learning practices with our rapidly changing culture.
But one dynamic remains largely unchanged. In the tradi-
tional classroom environment, teachers tell students: "Do your own
work. Keep your eyes on your own papers." And then, when stu-
dents graduate and join the workforce, managers ask them: "Why
can't you be better team players?"51
Assessment (and its purposeful use) is an important point of
connection between learning communities and other social struc-
tures. The processes of giving, receiving, and applying constructive
critique makes learners better thinkers, innovators, motivators,
collaborators, coworkers, friends, relatives, spouses, teammates,
and neighbors. More often than not, the feedback learners receive
in their everyday lives comes from peers, not simply authority fig-
ures. Helping students become better at both delivering and acting
on feedback from peers is essential to their success beyond the
classroom today.
But implementing peer-based assessment can be problem-
atic in educational institutions where evaluative authority is
traditionally conflated with hierarchical authority, and where eco-
51 See Rahul Razdan's contribution to this volume.
80
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
nomic and political influences have focused attention on summa-
tive, quantitative, standardized measurement of learning and
intelligence.
This chapter will explain how new approaches to assessment
are possible in light of two important and emerging theoretical
frameworks: Open Source Learning and peeragogy. Designed to
leverage end-to-end user principles of communication technology
to facilitate peers learning together and teaching each other, these
frameworks draw on open principles to decentralize and enrich the
assessment process.
Skinner's Box 2.0
A growing tide of popular and academic attention heralds
the promise of new education technologies. The problem is that
tools and strategies such as MOOCs, videos, virtual environments,
and games are only as good as the contexts in which they are used.
Even the most adept practitioners quickly discover that pressing
emerging technology and culture into the shape of yesterday's cur-
ricular and instructional models amounts to little more than
Skinner's Box 2.0. In our evolving economy, work looks different
than it did in the industrial era; it's more dynamic, entrepreneurial,
creative, and collaborative. Students preparing for this economy
need a learning environment in which they have the freedom to de-
velop requisite skills and the responsibility for curating and
sharing the results of their efforts.
As Benjamin Disraeli put it in Endymion, "In general the
most successful man in life is the man who has the best informa-
tion." It is a widely accepted truism in business and life that better
data leads to better decisions. We now have the ability to generate,
aggregate, analyze, and evaluate much richer data sets that can
help us learn more about helping each other learn. Sharing differ-
ent kinds of data in different ways will have the same game-
changing effect in learning that it has in professional baseball, 52
52 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball
81
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
basketball,53 and investment banking. 54 Education in the Informa-
tion Age should enable learners to find, analyze, evaluate, curate,
and act on the best available information.
Yet pursuing an interdisciplinary path of inquiry in an inter-
est-based community doesn't just facilitate the acquisition of
factual knowledge (which has a limited half-life). The process also
brings learners closer to understanding their own habits of mind
and gives them both practice and an identity in the culture they'll
be expected to join after they graduate. Doing this requires new lit-
eracies and a curriculum that emphasizes mental fitness, physical
fitness, spiritual fitness, civic fitness, and technological fitness.
An open approach to learning amplifies and accelerates our
ability to cultivate those areas of fitness. Learners working the
open source way get unfiltered experience in the communities
they'll join when they graduate. Students get to see and be seen;
they develop their capacities for collaboration, delegation, facilitat-
ing conversations, and other highly valued skills in plain view,
where peers, experts, and the public alike can join, critique, and
validate them. This enriches the learning experience in several
ways. A culture based on healthy, positive communication practices
—especially those that aren't necessarily determined or enforced
by the teacher—deepens student understanding. Positive experi-
ences encourage values such as honesty, trust, and vulnerability.
Students who feel safer and more secure are more likely to com-
municate authentically.
A pull-based education
Classroom practices that support these values are pull-based
—that is, instead of rewards and punishments, learners respond to
questions, invitations, opportunities in environments favorable to
expression and growth. Whatever interdisciplinary Big Questions
53 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html
54 http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/goldman-sachs-as-
google/
82
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
they decide to answer, learners respond to these invitations by par-
ticipating in the process, the mini-Democratic Dialogue.
To some, this may seem a bit chaotic: How can you assess a
community of learners this way? This question has two answers.
First, each learner will undoubtedly need a basic under-
standing of traditional academic concepts and skills. Together,
learner and teacher can create agreements about which traditional
disciplines are necessary, and at what level, so the learner can
demonstrate what she knows by demonstrating mastery at level-
appropriate content assessments.
Apart from the results of acquiring a specific skill or con-
cept, however, it's also important to help learners understand
metacognitive practices that shape self-expression and interaction.
This is a big domain in which different students have different
needs. On any given day, a student may need to change her time
management habits, or budget, or manage a conflict, or redesign
her exercise program. It's possible to have high standards without
standardization (i.e., without making every student do the same
thing in the same way at the same time). Students who share ideas
about improving their performance are providing models and re-
sources that help others.
And when they do this with modern digital communication
technologies, they generate tens of thousands of multi/transmedia
artifacts along the way.
Self-directed, collaborative assessment generates an un-
precedented quantity and variety of data that illuminates aspects
of learning, instruction, and overall systemic efficacy. Even a cur-
sory examination of readily available freeware metrics, blog/social
media content, and time stamps can provide valuable insight into
an individual's working process and differentiate learners in a net-
work. Viewed through the lens of Open Source Learning, their data
limn multi-dimensional portraits of learner development. Savvy
analysis yields insight not only into content mastery but also into
thought processes we've never considered in education. Does
Johnny write better in the morning or at night? Does Esme plan
her work in advance, or is the deadline her muse? Do certain UI/
83
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
UX trends positively correlate with increases or decreases in social
production, work quality, innovation, or other significant indica-
tors?
As each member of an open learning network progresses
from passive student to active learner, she works with the teacher
to set goals. Open Source Learning can then provide a variety of
benchmarks that are personally meaningful to the learner.
Perhaps most importantly, students themselves see every-
one's work and come to understand how others see theirs. They
begin to take pride in the quality of their efforts, and they decide
where to invest their time and energy.
The long-term benefit is exponential. Learners who can in-
tentionally direct their own concentration are empowered far
beyond knowledge acquisition or skill mastery. They become more
effective thinkers and—because they are vested—more caring peo-
ple. This learning experience is of their own making. It isn't
business; it's personal. Inspiration to recreate the process for
themselves and for others is the wellspring of the lifelong learner.
Exponential benefit
"Knowledge is acquired when we succeed in fitting a
new experience into the system of concepts based
upon our old experiences. Understanding comes when
we liberate ourselves from the old and so make possi-
ble a direct, unmediated contact with the new, the
mystery, moment by moment, of our existence."—Al-
dous Huxley, "Knowledge & Understanding"
How do we know when we're really good at something?
Standardized testing feedback doesn't help learners improve. Most
of us don't have a natural talent for offering or accepting criticism.
And yet, as Wole Soyinka put it, "The greatest threat to freedom is
the absence of criticism." Peeragogical interaction requires refin-
ing relational and topical critique, as well as skills in other "meta"
literacies, including but not limited to critical thinking, collabora-
84
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
tion, conflict resolution, decision-making, mindfulness, patience
and compassion.
Today's schooling paradigm undervalues interpersonal learn-
ing skills. Consequently, teachers and learners feel no real
operational incentive to devote time and energy to developing
them, particularly when it carries a perceived cost in achievement
on tests that determine financial allocations and job security.
Nevertheless, some educators are introducing peer-to-peer
network language and even introducing peer-based assessment.
But the contracts, syllabi, and letters to students stink of the old
ways. These one-to-many documents are presented by agents of
the institution endowed with the power to reward or punish. To
many students this does not represent a choice or a real opportu-
nity to hack the learning experience. They suspect manipulation
and they wait for the other shoe to drop. Learners also don't like to
be told they're free while being forced to operate within tight con-
straints.
To effectively adopt peeragogical assessment in the school-
ing context, the community must construct a new understanding of
how the members in the network relate to one another indepen-
dent of their roles in the surrounding social or hierarchical
systems. This requires trust, which in school requires significant
suspension of disbelief, which—and this is the hard part—requires
actual substantive, structural change in the learning transaction.
This is the defining characteristic of Open Source Learning: as the
network grows, changes composition, and changes purpose, it also
changes the direction and content of the learning experience. Ev-
ery network member can introduce new ideas, ask questions, and
contribute resources than refine and redirect the process.
This isn't easy. A member in this network must forget what
she knows about school in order to test the boundaries of learning
that shape her relationship to content, peers, and expert sources of
information and feedback. This is how the cogs in the machine be-
come the liminal heroes who redesign it. Having rejected the old
way, they must now create the rituals that will come to define the
new. They are following in the path of Oedipus, who took on the in -
85
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
scrutable and intimidating Sphinx, solved the riddle that had killed
others who tried, and ushered out the old belief systems to pave
the way for the Gods of Olympus.
Imagine if Oedipus had access to the Internet.
David R. Preston, Ph.D. (davidpreston.net) is an educator, speaker,
writer, and consultant who has taught university and K-12 courses
for 25 years. David has shared his model of Open Source Learning
with organizations including school districts, the Institute for the
Future, the O'Reilly Open Source Conference, TEDxUCLA, and the
Royal Geographical Society in London. He continues to mentor
teachers and teach high school courses on California's Central
Coast.
86
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• How is your educational organization bridging the
gap between the traditional, teacher-centred in-
struction and assessment model to one that is more
collaborative, open, and peer-based?
• What steps can you take to encourage your edu-
cational organization to move from an archaic
model suited for the industrial age to a "pull based"
model, where students have, as David describes,
"high standards without standardization" and are
thus better able to develop the skills needed in to-
day's innovation economy?
• David offers a compelling case for several ways
Open Source Learning can produce a paradigm shift
for teachers and students. How can you and your
colleagues leverage the principles of openness to
build the trust and transparency necessary for ef-
fecting these kinds of changes in more classrooms
and schools?
87
Three ways university classrooms can be
more open
Susie Choi
I nstitutions of higher education stress the importance of stu-
dent autonomy in academic exploration—yet the typical
configuration of university courses does not take full advantage of
students' potential to become actors in their education, rather than
just receivers of it. To realize this potential and make university
learning more inclusive of—and meaningful for—students, profes-
sors could learn a lesson from open organizations.
In this chapter, I'll highlight how the vision of an open orga-
nization could translate into concrete classroom change. I identify
three problems that are part of status quo course structures and
professor-student relationships, and propose potential solutions
grounded in the principles of open organizations. 55
Problem 1: Assuming that professors always know best
College students generally consider "syllabus week" as the
easiest week of the year. For one week, they can sit in their classes
and think about which friend to catch up with over dinner as their
professors deliver monologues about expectations and projects for
the semester; students need only stay awake and offer the occa-
sional nod. Needless to say, the existing design of syllabus week
does not set the tone for a semester of academic immersion.
To academically engage students from the first day of class,
instructors could make students collaborators in sculpting course
55 See Appendix.
88
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
expectations.56 Rather than asserting their expectations as law,
professors could initially present them as suggestions and act
transparently by providing reasoning for those proposed expecta-
tions. Before finalizing expectations for the semester, professors
could host a student commenting period, so as to be more inclusive
of students' concerns and ideas, and potentially better accommo-
date students' learning styles.
Professor Mary-Ellen Kelm of Simon Fraser University is one
professor who embraces the collaborative syllabus model; while
she acknowledges the risk and uncertainty of co-created course
guidelines, Dr. Kelm has found the resulting manifestation of stu-
dent engagement and understanding unparalleled. 57
In The Open Organization, Jim Whitehurst writes that, in an
open organization, "a leader's effectiveness is no longer measured
by his or her ability to simply issue orders." Similarly, in an open
classroom, the thoughtfulness of a professor's planning would no
longer be measured by his or her ability to issue expectations and
announce grading schemes.
Problem 2: Fixed class structure
Though some colleges require end-of-course surveys from all
students, periodic evaluations are rare. Even when professors do
implement periodic evaluations, they offer no guarantee that they'll
review them (or adjust the structure of their classes based on
them). This is an issue because, as any student can attest, classes
have their ups and downs. A professor's flipped classroom ap-
proach may be perfect for the beginning of the semester but
become overly stressful as concepts become more advanced. Un-
moderated class discussions may go smoothly for a few weeks but
begin to exclude some voices as the semester progresses.
Periodic, student-accessible evaluations would help create
an academic environment in which students feel safe and sup-
56 See Heidi Ellis' contributions to this volume.
57 http://www.sfu.ca/tlc/blog/a-history-professor-invited-her-students-to-
co-create-the-syllabus.html
89
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
ported while learning. To accommodate evolving student concerns
throughout the semester, professors could request anonymous stu-
dent feedback through online surveys every two to four weeks.
Professors could make this student feedback, as well as their direct
and actionable responses to common concerns, viewable for all stu-
dents.58 This transparency measure would demonstrate to students
that their input is valued, and hold professors accountable to evolv-
ing student needs, thus increasing student engagement and
support.
Problem 3: Professors as authoritarians, and grades as
retribution
Miss a class? Lose points—end of story. Miss a homework
problem? Lose points—end of story. In classrooms operating ac-
cording to the status quo, grading schemes tend to penalize
student mistakes rather than reward learning. And professors are
the strict penalty-enforcers.
To move toward a growth- and learning-oriented classroom,
professors should prioritize the value of adaptability over a reputa-
tion for tough grading. One way of achieving this would be to allow
students to re-do assignments or exams for an improved grade.
Such a policy would encourage students to view projects and ex-
ams as the means to a greater end (a deeper understanding of the
material) rather than ends in and of themselves.
Let me illustrate one possible implementation: My high
school Calculus teacher allowed her students to re-attempt incor-
rect exam answers with step-by-step justification to earn back half
of their missed points. The half-credit provision ensured that the
test correction policy would not detract from students' incentive to
prepare for assessments, yet the policy still served as a source of
relief, an opportunity for reflection, and an encouraging reminder
that my instructor's priority was to teach, rather than to assign
grades. Implemented at a university level, a re-do policy could sim-
58 https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/using-
multiple-course-evaluations-to-engage-and-empower-your-students-and-
yourself/
90
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
ilarly help in connecting students to both the course material and
to their professors.
To further the positive redefinition of the instructor role, pro-
fessors could prioritize establishing trust over establishing
authority. One way this could manifest is through a more under-
standing approach to student absences. Rather than immediately
penalize absences, professors could allow students to provide
thoughtful verbal or written reasoning for missing class. This rea-
soning would not be considered an excuse, but rather an
explanation intended to build a more transparent relationship be-
tween professor and student. A reasonable explanation could be, "I
have an interview for my dream job that conflicts with class time
and that I cannot reschedule," or "I feel so mentally exhausted that
I do not foresee myself being a productive member of discussion
today. I will work on my time management, and arrive next class
ready to fully immerse myself."
In the spirit of organizational openness, this policy would im-
bue greater trust and transparency in professor-student
interactions, and facilitate the proactive diagnosis of student prob-
lems with course structure and material.
By integrating a few measures to respond to student input
and allow room for students' trial-and-error, universities can inno-
vate in a faster and more informed way, and in doing so, foster
greater student engagement. All that's needed to start? A few in-
sights from open organizations, a desire to connect with students,
and a little creativity.
Susie Choi is a full-stack software engineer who learned about the
open source movement during her time as a computer science stu-
dent at Duke University. She is interested in what open principles
like transparency and inclusivity look like in professional and aca-
demic contexts, and likes to challenge "whether" and "why" a
technology should be built before exploring "how" it should be
built. When Susie isn't coding or learning about cybersecurity, she
can be found entranced in a fiction novel or running.
91
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Susie argues that "the typical configuration of uni-
versity courses does not take full advantage of
students' potential to become actors in their educa-
tion, rather than just receivers of it." Do you agree?
What would it mean for students "to be actors in
their education"?
• Susie suggests that "professors could host a stu-
dent commenting period, so as to be more inclusive
of students' concerns and ideas, and potentially
better accommodate students' learning styles"
when constructing a course syllabus. Do you agree
with this suggestion? What are the benefits and
drawbacks of making syllabus construction more
collaborative?
• In conventional classrooms, Susie writes, "grading
schemes tend to penalize student mistakes, rather
than reward learning." Is this true of most class-
rooms in your experience? What might a shift from
"penalizing mistakes" to "rewarding learning" look
like? What would it accomplish?
92
Open education is more than open content
Jim Whitehurst
T he famous playwright George Bernard Shaw once said: "If
you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange ap-
ples, then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have
an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each
of us will have two ideas."
I love that quote, and in May 2016 I shared it with a room
full of educators, administrators, and open source advocates at
New York University during the Open Summit, an open conversa-
tion about education.59 I believe it reveals something critical about
the future of education and the positive role openness can play in
the future, if we embrace it.
As I shared in The Open Organization, the nature of organi-
zations is changing, because the nature of how we organize to
create value is changing. Educational organizations are realizing
this more than most, because their stock-in-trade isn't something
primarily physical (like apples). It's ideas. And ideas are becoming
more plentiful, not less.
How we prepare people for life in these new organizations—
where an ability to innovate and produce the new is much more im-
portant than an ability to work efficiently and reproduce the same
—has to change just as significantly. We need to use the power of
open to rethink education.
Unfortunately, much of what I read about "open" in educa-
tion applies to the sharing of educational content: the materials
educators use to teach students, from lesson plans to activities to
59 https://opensource.org/node/832
93
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
syllabi to entire curricula. While sharing content is certainly valu-
able, I think we can do more to make education more open.
To me, what makes openness such a compelling path for-
ward for education has less to do with specific licensing decisions
and more to do with the attitude we adopt toward educational
practices altogether. It's the way we both imagine and work to
build value around educational experiences (the "downstream"
benefit of being open, as open source developers might say). More
specifically, thinking openly changes how we create, interact in,
and sustain educational organizations.
Creation beyond control
By default, most traditional educational organizations aren't
inclined toward sharing. Just look at the ways many activities cen-
tral to them—like tenure, publication, and advancement—tend to
emphasize solo authors, thinkers, and inventors. In the context of
higher education, we like to imagine scholars and scientists toiling
away in isolation, dreaming up big ideas and releasing them to the
world in brilliant form.
But we tend to forget a critical piece of the scene: The ever-
present "Works Cited" or "References" pages that list every idea
and innovation a scholar builds on when creating something new.
Instead, educational organizations' cultural norms push against
open exchange and collaboration and reward individual careers
built on singular efforts—even though this isn't how innovation oc-
curs.
And that's more evident today than it ever has been. Take
big data, for example. In this exciting new field, every major inno-
vation has been open sourced and shared, and what's been
possible has been because of developers' desire for transparency
and collaboration.
Thinking of ideas as possessions individual people create
and control is a relatively new historical development, of course. In
the context of the industrial era, people wanted informational
goods to function more like physical goods, so they invented things
like copyright and patent law to make ideas work more like apples.
94
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
And those inventions influence not only how we think about our
creations and their value, but also how we build them.
When open education advocates focus too narrowly on con-
tent distribution, they can miss the act of content creation—and
then risk missing ways we might change the pace and quality of
the work we're doing together. Quite simply, co-creation allows bet-
ter, richer, more diverse solutions and insights. It also allows us to
succeed or fail faster, so we can accelerate the pace of innovation
necessary today. Reforming our criteria for valuable educational
contributions might help us begin rewarding an open approach to
creation rather than discouraging it.
Interaction beyond prescription
When openness does become a default attitude, people's in-
teractions change dramatically. Today we're enjoying the fruits of
some of the largest distributed groups we've ever seen: organiza-
tions of creators and innovators spread across the entire globe.
Each of them has something to teach us about the way we relate to
and communicate with one another.
This is no less true for educators. But educational organiza-
tions (like public schools, to name just one kind) are still rooted
strongly in certain values that emerged during an era of industrial-
ization—where the purpose of education was preparing people to
perform rote tasks repeatedly in closed organizations with little
contextual perspective.
And yet, as we're seeing, the organizations that graduates
join when they leave school (especially in the global West) are less
and less industrial—and even the ones that are industrial are rein-
venting themselves for largely post-industrial activities. These
organizations demand new models of both cooperation and leader-
ship: new ways of working together, new standards for effective
interaction, and new rules for distributing authority.
In the meritocracies that so frequently form inside open or-
ganizations, formal titles mean less than reputation with regard to
power relationships. Leading an increasingly educated and savvy
workforce involves creating context for great work rather than pre-
95
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
scribing and specifying every detail in order to mitigate deviation.
Directing is less important than catalyzing. What might happen to
classrooms if we began teaching this way?
We need to think seriously about how we're educating to-
morrow's organizational participants and leaders, because—for
now, at least—we're emphasizing modes of interaction that are just
outdated.
Sustainability beyond transmission
Thinking about educational organizations as catalysts raises
one other interesting point: What happens to these organizations
in an age of abundance?
This is a particularly hot topic among folks in higher educa-
tion, who are beginning to realize that imagining universities as
machines for the transmission of information is no longer working.
Under traditional models, schools market themselves as places
with the best educational "content" for students. But today—a time
when we're celebrating much easier access to information—these
organizations no longer have a monopoly on ideas. Many are even
putting their courses online and making them available at little or
no monetary cost to students. The "content" is losing its place as a
key value generator.
That's prompting educational organizations to face a kind of
existential crisis—one that raises difficult questions. When abun-
dance is the default, what happens to an organization that depends
on scarcity? How does its purpose change? And what happens to
the revenue-generating mechanisms that allow it to persist, thrive,
and grow?
These aren't easy questions, by any stretch. But they're ex-
actly the ones that challenge us in the open source software
business, where our ongoing task is to create business models
around abundance.
Red Hat's product, for example, isn't software. The software
is open source, easily accessible to others, and licensed to promote
sharing. Development is community-oriented. The "content," in
other words, is free and abundant.
96
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Red Hat adds value to the open source ecosystem by lever-
aging abundance to create more and better abundance. We
support people using the software. We contribute to communities
creating new, more advanced versions of the software. We patch
and secure the software. We sift through the abundance, make
sense of it, and help other people leverage it effectively. That's our
product (and we're very good at making it!).
As they ponder their place, role, and function in an age of
relative abundance, educational organizations must find new ways
to generate value from that abundance. The longer we conceive of
education as an enterprise focused solely on "content," the longer
we're going to miss opportunities to help those integral organiza-
tions survive.
Reimagining education today might begin with a few simple
questions:
• What value do educational organizations provide?
• What is their product?
• What role can they play today?
Answers to these simple but difficult questions will differ for
everyone involved. But in an age of abundance, the educational or-
ganizations that survive will be those most focused on what they
can add, what they can catalyze—and how they can best harness
the power of openness to change the ways they create, interact,
and sustain themselves.
Jim Whitehurst is president and chief executive officer of Red Hat,
the world's leading provider of open source enterprise IT products
and services.
97
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Jim explains that the purpose of education during
the Industrial Age was to prepare students "to per-
form rote tasks repeatedly in closed organizations
with little contextual perspective," and that this pur-
pose is outmoded in today's world. In what ways is
the industrial model of education outmoded? What
is the purpose of education today? Do you think
your organization is successfully meeting this pur-
pose?
• Jim asks the reader to consider what a classroom
might look like if educators were focused on cat-
alyzing rather than directing. How do you
understand the difference between a catalyst and a
director? Which teaching style is more typical in
your organization? What are some benefits and
challenges of each style?
• Jim observes that "most traditional educational or-
ganizations aren't inclined toward sharing." What
examples does he give to support this statement?
Does your educational organization value collabora-
tive academic work between educators? Between
students?
98
Case Studies
99
A hybrid model of open source in academics:
The Rensselaer Center for Open Source
Wesley Turner, David Goldschmidt & Mukkai Krishnamoorthy
T he Rensselaer Center for Open Source (RCOS) is a project-
based, experiential learning center where students work on
open source software for course credit.60 RCOS was founded in
2007 by a gift from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute alumnus Sean
O'Sullivan, who stated at the time of the gift: 61
We have a duty to our fellow man to improve life on
this planet. While technology has always been a huge
enabler in improving quality of life, we now are at a
point where, through open software and open content,
these improvements can come at close to zero cost,
opening up opportunities to all, particularly in Third
World situations, but also in government and con-
sumer applications, open source solutions can cut
through economic, political, and social divides, and en-
able people to simply get the job done. This center at
Rensselaer may very well become a model for accom-
plishing this. With the global perspective and global
reputation of Rensselaer research, I hope this hands-
60 https://rcos.io
61 Along with the gift from Sean O'Sullivan, RCOS has also had financial
support from Red Hat. Other donations of money, material, and time
have come from Google, Datto, IBM, Microsoft, Mozilla, the
Humanitarian Open Source Foundation, and the Open Source Initiative.
We sincerely thank all of our donors.
100
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
on development center will both engage students and
engage the world.62
Included in this statement are several important concepts.
First is a belief in the overall benefits of technology and in the abil-
ity of open software and open content to improve outcomes
worldwide. Second is the belief that open models can succeed
where other forms of development and distribution cannot. And
third is the importance of exposing students to this open source
world in a way that engages them and opens their eyes to the po-
tential of this new paradigm. RCOS has distilled this down to an
even simpler mission statement, "To cultivate an inclusive, cre-
ative, and entrepreneurial community that seeks to empower
students to develop open-source solutions to real-world problems."
While the demands of a university environment require that
RCOS operate on the academic calendar, the nature of open source
allows us to go beyond the normal bounds of semester based
projects. RCOS projects typically run multiple semesters and along
with the more than 200 students getting course credit, there are
also 10‒15 receiving a stipend, and 20‒40 just working on
projects. A companion course, CSCI-4961: Open Source Software,
supports this Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) work by pro-
viding the cultural, historical, and technological underpinnings of
the open source movement.63
In this chapter, we explain how RCOS is organized to meet
its dual roles as both a student-led club and an academic organiza -
tion. We then explore the calendar of activities that comprise a
semester, and continue with a brief discussion of some notable
projects. We conclude with goals for the future.
The RCOS model
RCOS combines aspects of a student-led club with indepen-
dent study. Students take on multiple roles as coordinators and
62 http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~moorthy/rcos/donors.html
63 This course is hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/rcos/CSCI-49XX-
OpenSource and can be freely accessed and used.
101
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
mentors to lead club activities and work with faculty instructors on
the curriculum. Instructors are responsible for ensuring academic
rigor and for providing guidance and expertise to students.
To meet class requirements, RCOS meets for two hours,
twice a week. During the first three meetings of the semester (and
then about once a month), RCOS holds "large group" meetings.
These mandatory meetings occur in a large lecture room. They not
only allow us to efficiently reach all students, but also help us ex-
plore open source topics through lightning talks, quick
announcements, student-led technical talks, and guest speakers.
These talks help teach students how to effectively work in open
source communities and expose them to humanitarian and com-
mercial open source projects.
When a large group is not scheduled, RCOS holds small
group meetings. Small groups are working meetings in a lab room
overseen by two or three mentors or coordinators. Each room
hosts roughly two to eight projects (20‒25 students). Rooms are
"themed" based on application area (e.g., music, cryptocurrency)
or on technology area (e.g., machine learning, full stack, game de-
velopment). Together, the large and small groups form the
backbone of the RCOS curriculum.
Finally, mentors must each host one workshop. These work-
shops are held outside of class hours and are tutorial explorations
of specific technologies. Mentors have freedom on workshop top-
ics, but specific topics such as git and project management are
presented every semester. Students must attend at least one of the
mentor workshops.
Instructors, coordinators and mentors
RCOS is led by a team of two instructors, four to six student
coordinators, and an additional 15‒20 student mentors. All are im-
portant to maintain RCOS at its current scale. Students take
leadership roles in multiple aspects of RCOS. Coordinators perform
an administrative role (helping to develop instructional material,
documentation, and community standards) while the coordinators
and mentors guide other students (peer mentoring, running
102
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
events, and helping to evaluate the semester's accomplishments).
Coordinators and mentors also serve as small group leaders and
provide peer mentorship to the projects within their groups. The
faculty support all of this—manage the overhead of more than 200
independent study students, assign all grades, and ensure aca-
demic standards. Coordinators are the primary link to the faculty
and have weekly contact to discuss plans for the week and other
activities (such as workshops, outreach, speaker invitations, and
other events). Generally, this ends with action items assigned to
the coordinators and instructors. Additional meetings with the co-
ordinators, and the entire team ensure that all ideas are
considered.
Classwork aspects
Grading more than 200 independent studies is non-trivial,
and the visible progress students make is dependent on both the
type of project and the experience of the student. The progress we
expect for students working on new projects differs from the
progress we expect on established projects, or from external
projects, or from combined hardware/software projects. This
makes a single, standard grading rubric difficult. At the same time,
we do not want to constrain our students to a project just to make
grading easier. Our approach is to try to embrace differences by
measuring effort and progress instead of outcome. In some sense,
RCOS is the course at RPI where students are allowed to "fail" and
still succeed.
That said, we do have a basic grading rubric defined for the
class:
• 50%: Open Source Contributions (contributions are mea-
surable artifacts typically in the project repository)
• 25%: Status Updates and Project Documentation (non-
project repository based updates)
• 15%: Presentations and Outreach (class presentations or
extra-curricular outreach)
• 10%: Attendance (large and small group meetings and at
least one mentor workshop)
103
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
All course material is available online in the RCOS Handbook
repository.64
Anatomy of a semester
Unlike working on open source "in the wild," where people
join and leave projects at irregular times and may have erratic and
unpredictable schedules, RCOS needs to work according to the
normal cadence of a college semester. During the course of a se-
mester, students must join or initiate an open source project, make
significant contributions to that project, and present their results
to the RCOS community.
Phase 1: Getting started
During the first phase of the semester (about four meetings),
the goal is to get all students to pick a project and to initiate an in-
dependent study by submitting an Undergraduate Research
Proposal (URP) referencing it. Meeting this two week goal is criti-
cal to a successful semester.
This phase has two distinct activities: elevator pitches and
speed dating. Beginning with the first meeting of the semester, ev-
ery project presents one or two slides and gives an "elevator
pitch." Elevator pitches are short—no more than two minutes—and
provide a brief overview of the project: significance, technologies,
and type of help needed. An eye-catching graphic is recommended.
Students, external mentors (in person or via web), or faculty can
give these pitches. Pitches can cover new projects, existing RCOS
projects, or existing external projects. Pitches continue into the
second meeting and (possibly) the start of the third meeting, all of
which are in the large group room.
Following the pitches (but still within the third meeting) we
proceed to the "speed dating" phase. All project leads line up at the
front of the room, and students without projects circulate among
them looking for interesting ones to join. Instructors, coordinators,
and mentors circulate as well, guiding students who are lost and
brokering matches. After a project has fully formed, everyone
64 https://github.com/rcos/rcos-handbook
104
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
sends elevator pitch slides and completed rosters to coordinators,
who use this information to assign small group rooms.
For the fourth meeting, projects meet in their designated
small group rooms to compose formal project proposals, which in-
clude a series of milestones, and to fill out their individual URP
forms.
Phase 2: Project development
After the proposals have been submitted, we enter the
project development phase, in which students work on advancing
their projects according to their proposed milestones. Note that
these milestones are nominal. We do not penalize projects for miss-
ing milestones, but we do expect the students to address why they
may have missed milestones and to formulate revised plans as they
learn new information.
Throughout this phase, students attend small and large
groups on a published schedule.
Phase 3: Wrapping it up
Near the end of the semester, we transition to the final
phase: reports and wrap-up.
We've used several approaches to reports, beginning with
having each project present during large groups. Our most recent
implementation recognizes that having more than 30 projects re-
port to the entire group is not optimal. So beginning with the
spring 2019 term, we began scheduling presentations by small
group room. Each room is given a specific presentation date, and
on that date all of the projects in that room meet in the large group
room prepared to present. Rooms not scheduled for that day can
continue to work on their projects. Note that final evaluation of
projects does not occur until the end of the semester, so those
projects that present early can continue to progress. This new or-
ganization allows us to have more small group meetings while also
increasing presentation time for each project.
Our final RCOS event is a class pizza party held during the
final (large group) meeting of the semester.
105
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
RCOS authored projects
Projects at RCOS span a wide variety of topics and have life
spans from one semester to several years (and ongoing). Sample
projects include:
• YACS (Yet Another Course Scheduler)65
• Observatory66
• Submitty67
• Automatic Door Control68
• Shuttle Tracker69
These projects are making a tremendous impact on—and in
some cases off—campus, improving the community and demon-
strating the incredible capabilities of RPI students. For example,
computer science instructors heavily leverage Submitty to grade
programming assignments, making large project courses such as
CSCI-1100 Introduction to Computer Science (Academic year
2017-2018 enrollment of 925 students) possible. By the time they
graduate, every CS student has turned in at least one homework
assignment via Submitty. Other projects, such as YACS and Shuttle
Tracker, provide improved services to students such as a user
friendly course scheduler (YACS) and a real-time, graphic depiction
of the campus shuttle location (Shuttle Tracker). Students create
these and other projects to meet their needs and improve campus
life.
Lessons learned: Continued refinement
Building on these initial and ongoing successes, RCOS is
ready to grow—in size, visibility, and collaborations beyond RPI,
and in the quality of both students and projects produced. In addi -
tion, RCOS is a key partner in the RPI Computer Science
65 http://yacs.cs.rpi.edu
66 https://github.com/rcos/observatory-server
67 https://github.com/submitty/submitty
68 https://github.com/AutomaticDoorControl
69 https://github.com/wtg/shuttletracker
106
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Department plan to further increase the diversity of RPI CS gradu-
ates. RCOS is also actively reaching out to non-CS majors by
making sure that the academic aspect of the RCOS curriculum is
approachable to them and by stressing the importance of non-code
contributions and project leadership in open source development.
Externally, RCOS is working with groups at other universi-
ties (like New York University and Northeastern) and other open
source organizations (like the Open Source Initiative, 70 the Mozilla
Open Source Student Network, 71 and Teaching Open Source 72 to
enrich the student experience. In fact, RCOS was the first student
led organization to be an affiliate of the Open Source Initiative.
Further, Submitty, an RCOS project described above, has been in-
stalled at three other colleges: King's College, Sapienza Universita
di Roma, and Walla Walla University. Subsequently, students at
Walla Walla were able to submit a successful pull request to Sub-
mitty. This outreach opens the door for a new kind of FOSS project
that may be well-suited for student participation.
Dr. Wesley Turner is a senior lecturer and the current Director of
the Rensselaer Center for Open Source (RCOS) at Rensselaer Poly-
technic Institute. Prior to joining RPI in 2016, he worked for
multiple commercial companies including for General Electric
Global Research Center, Kitware Inc. and SiimQuest where he
used and developed open source software. At one time, he was also
the Director of Open Source Operations at OSEHRA.
70 https://opensource.org/
71 https://ossn.club/
72 http://teachingopensource.org/
107
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
David Goldschmidt is is the Associate Director of the Rensselaer
Center for Open Source (RCOS) at RPI. He received his B.S., M.S.,
and Ph.D. degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in
1994, 1998, and 2005, respectively. Since 2012, he has served as
Executive Officer of the Department of Computer Science at RPI,
focused on curriculum development, open source software, and
courses in systems programming, operating systems, and large-
scale software development.
M. S. Krishnamoorthy was the co-director of the Rensselaer Center
for Open Source (RCOS) from 2007 to 2017. He received the B. E.
degree (with honors) from Madras University , the M. Tech degree
in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology,
Kanpur and the Ph. D. degree in Computer Science, also from the
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.
108
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• RCOS provides several opportunities for students
to participate in shaping the learning experience
the institution offers every semester. Does your ed-
ucational organization empower students in the
same way? Are more senior members offered infor-
mal leadership opportunities? Why or why not?
• Many RCOS students complete work that directly
benefits Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or the area
surrounding it. Could your educational organization
engage its own stakeholders to address a local is-
sue or assist a local community? What would be the
benefits in doing so? For your organization? For the
community?
• The authors explain how their program has
evolved from semester to semester. In what ways
does your own educational organization equip peo-
ple to make iterative improvements to their
programs and their work? Are you doing a sufficient
job of reflecting on, assessing, and learning from
past performance?
109
Teaching students to critically evaluate
textbooks
Christopher McHale, Ian McDermott & Steven Ovadia
I n Spring 2018, the LaGuardia Community College Library de-
partment was awarded a New York State grant to train
students to evaluate textbooks. LaGuardia is an urban community
college in Queens, New York, and is part of the City University of
New York (CUNY). Textbooks—and their high cost—have become
an important issue in American higher education. Many schools,
systems (including CUNY), and (as in this case study) states pro-
vide financial support for the creation of open education resources
(OER), with the goal of decreasing the financial burden on stu-
dents.
The term "OER" is commonly associated with cost-free, digi-
tal textbooks; however, it encompasses all of the material related
to running a class, from the syllabus to assignments to slide decks.
Faculty around the world are creating and modifying OER to use in
their own classes; some schools are creating entire programs
around them.
Driving these efforts is a powerful ideal: students can re-
ceive a degree without ever having to pay for a textbook. As a
result of this push, more and more students are encountering OER
materials in their college classes. Unfortunately, in too many places
where such adoption takes place, students and their views are an
afterthought.
That's what led to the project we'll describe in this chapter.
We designed it to bring students' voices into the OER movement
and leverage their perspectives, improving the quality of their edu-
cation.
110
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Project overview
Students shouldn't just receive or "ingest" OER; they should
be partners in building and evaluating the materials their profes-
sors ask them to adopt. This project involved creating a map to
guide students into the complicated textbook evaluation and selec-
tion process.
Led by Professor Christopher McHale, with Professors Ian
McDermott and Steven Ovadia serving on the project team, the
group sought to combine service learning and information literacy.
The underlying idea was to give students not only a scholarly
grounding that would help them as they move through their aca-
demic careers but also a practical vocational orientation to help
them succeed in the workforce and, hopefully, become future con-
tributors to the free culture movement.
The information literacy component of the project involved
teaching students the basic tenets of information evaluation. What
makes a source authoritative? How does one know if information
can be trusted? Using the Association of College and Research Li-
braries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher
Education, the current professional standard for information liter-
acy, the project also encouraged students to evaluate resources in
terms of their own needs and their personal concepts of value. 73
What features made a textbook effective? For instance, many stu-
dents commented on font size. While it seems like a small thing
(often, literally, too small), it matters to students and makes a dif-
ference to how they interact with textbooks. One of the ACRL
frames is "Information Has Value." The seminar encouraged stu-
dents to think about features they want in a textbook, like
appropriately readable font sizes, and consider the value (both in-
tellectual and financial) those features would offer.
The service learning component, on the other hand, involved
training and paying students—giving them a marketable skill. Stu-
dents received a tuition credit of $1,100 for participating in the
seminar, as well as a digital badge. Digital badges are increasingly
73 http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework
111
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
popular tools for students to demonstrate specific job skills to em-
ployers.74 The generous tuition credit created a strong response
rate to the call for participation. Ultimately, we selected 18 stu-
dents using a two-step interview process (email and in-person).
Fifteen students successfully completed the seminar.
An additional goal of the project was to give faculty a toolkit
to help students critically evaluate the textbooks being used in
their classes. We didn't expect faculty to use all of the tools we pre-
sented in a 16-week seminar; we simply wanted to provide college
instructors and administrators with options for determining how
textbooks are working (and not working) for their students in a
way that makes sense for individual faculty members. Using the
survey tools and evaluation procedures in the toolkit encourages
educators to continuously engage students in the selection, cre-
ation, and adaptation of textbooks and other learning aids.
The seminar was hosted in the CUNY Academic Commons, 75
a combination social network and learning management system
providing a variety of free and open source tools to anyone associ-
ated with CUNY76 (the project is available for other institutions to
implement).77 The seminar used a combination private group/public
blog built upon WordPress.
We're still combing through project data but, anecdotally, we
can say that students reported the seminar was helpful. They felt it
taught them about the economics of textbooks and helped them un-
derstand which features of textbooks they find most useful. A
common theme that emerged from student feedback was that text-
books are not something students typically think about. Textbooks
are simply something students are assigned and for which they
must pay. But having completed the seminar, students said they are
more aware of what goes into making a good textbook. This in-
74 https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/09/digital-badging-
spreads-more-colleges-use-vendors-create-alternative-credentials
75 https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/
76 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUNY_Academic_Commons
77 https://commonsinabox.org/
112
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
cludes an awareness of textbook economics; while the price of OER
textbooks is favorable, commercial textbooks, for some students,
offered features worth paying for.
Why go open?
An important component of OER is that material is freely
available, "free" in this case meaning both "freely accessible" and
"free of charge." With that ethos in mind from the beginning of the
project, we always intended to release all of the course-related ma-
terial as a toolkit. In essence, the idea was to create OER material
to aid in the adoption and evaluation of OER material. Our intent
was to make the content open.
But at its core the seminar was about opening up not just in -
tellectual material but also processes—in this case, the process of
guiding students through a critical examination of their textbooks.
In order to increase discovery, we uploaded the course mate-
rials to CUNY's Institutional Repository. 78 We uploaded the files
both in their original format (a mix of word-processed documents
and PowerPoint files) and in Markdown, a flexible, transformable
markup language that facilitates easy alteration of text into differ-
ent formats. Markdown's flexibility facilitates easy cut-and-paste
into different applications; the end-user isn't locked into one for-
mat. For instance, the seminar's final reflection was posted on the
class blog, which was formatted in HTML. Sharing the text as
Markdown means users can easily convert text into various for-
mats—perhaps a word-processed document, a PDF, or even a
presentation slide. Sharing in this way ensures end-users can focus
on the content of materials, not their formatting. 79 However, not all
users are familiar with Markdown, which is why we included more
familiar word-processed files as well.
We also shared course materials on GitHub (again, as Mark-
down-formatted files). While GitHub is primarily a platform for
sharing code, its collaborative model could work well for OER con-
78 https://academicworks.cuny.edu/lg_oers/72/
79 https://preprint.press.jhu.edu/portal/sites/ajm/files/19.1ovadia.pdf
113
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
tent too. GitHub makes working with OER easier—both accessing
it and adapting it for new uses and contexts. Critically, it also al-
lows users to share their remixed work back to the original
creators. For this reason, GitHub has a strong following among li-
brarians.80
At the end of the class, the project team assembled its mate-
rial into the following parts:
• a class syllabus81
• final reflection82
• pre-83 and post-evaluation surveys84
• a qualitative survey85
• a quantitative survey86
• a document outlining participant responsibilities 87
• some Amazon-esque review prompts88
• slides associated with the class (in PowerPoint) 89
• a handout on the parts of a textbook 90
80 https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1133&context=kb_pubs
81 https://github.com/stevenov/textbook-evaluation-toolkit/blob/master/
syllabus.md
82 https://github.com/stevenov/textbook-evaluation-toolkit/blob/master/
final.reflection.md
83 https://github.com/stevenov/textbook-evaluation-toolkit/blob/master/
pre.survey.md
84 https://github.com/stevenov/textbook-evaluation-toolkit/blob/master/
post.survey.md
85 https://github.com/stevenov/textbook-evaluation-toolkit/blob/master/
qualitative.survey.md
86 https://github.com/stevenov/textbook-evaluation-toolkit/blob/master/
quantitative.survey.md
87 https://github.com/stevenov/textbook-evaluation-toolkit/blob/master/
participant.responsibilities.md
88 https://github.com/stevenov/textbook-evaluation-toolkit/blob/master/
amazonesque.md
89 https://github.com/stevenov/textbook-evaluation-toolkit/blob/master/
lessons
90 https://github.com/stevenov/textbook-evaluation-toolkit/blob/master/
handouts
114
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
The challenges of openness
The team was aware of the importance of sharing the final
products we developed throughout the seminar; nevertheless,
keeping track of everything still proved challenging. Part of the
challenge was that content existed in multiple places. We handled
much of the planning via email, Slack, and Google Docs. Class ma-
terials, like the syllabus and participant responsibilities document,
lived in Google Docs. Slide decks sometimes began as local files
before eventually being moved to Google Slides. However, discus-
sion prompts and the final reflection wound up in the course shell.
And the survey questions were in Qualtrics.
This meant that assembling the toolkit required a bit of
work, exporting content out of each unique "container" and clean-
ing up the formatting. It also entailed manually converting each
piece of the toolkit into Markdown. Because the slides relied heav-
ily on formatting and images, we kept those in their original format
(PowerPoint), as we did with a graphic-intensive handout on the
parts of a book (a Microsoft Word .docx file).
Finally, the team constructed a brief narrative around the
toolkit, in order to frame the work, so it made sense to end-users.
This required more time and attention than the team initially antic-
ipated.
One could argue that a solution to this challenge is to work
solely in flexible formats like Markdown, but given the timing of
the seminar (and the relentless, unforgiving nature of an academic
term), the team had to revert to familiar collaborative tools. Yet we
note this challenge here to underscore just how difficult creating
open materials can be. If projects like this one—which aimed to be
open, shared, and collaborative from the start—encounter difficul-
ties sharing material in the most flexible way possible, then
imagine the greater potential problems for academics who want to
share their class content but haven't made these provisions from
the start.
Making class content accessible is more than just deciding
to make it open. It requires planning and massaging. It's not al-
ways a matter of simply clicking a paperclip icon to upload files or
115
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
sharing the URL to a folder of documents when a semester has
concluded. Just getting to the "upload" and "sharing" stages takes
a good deal of time.
Conclusion
The work of this seminar was incredibly rewarding. But ulti-
mately, after one semester, it proved unsustainable. Its grant-
funded nature (which introduces limitations on how funds can be
spent) made the project non-viable beyond its pilot. The team spent
too much time navigating procurement systems and brainstorming
workarounds while still maintaining the day-to-day duties of faculty
librarians. We simply no longer had time to squeeze in the seminar.
But the beauty of OER is that while the project does not
work for our current institution, the team is able to share with oth-
ers both the materials and the lessons we learned. They might
adapt the project as a whole or adapt pieces that make the most
sense for their needs. But the project can live on—in one form or
another.
Christopher J. McHale is Associate Professor and Access Services
Librarian at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New
York. He served as principal investigator of the grant project de-
scribed in this case study.
Ian McDermott is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Instruc-
tion at LaGuardia Community College, where he serves as the
Library's OER lead. He is particularly interested in exploring the
intersection of OER and critical pedagogy.
Steven Ovadia is Professor and Deputy Chief Librarian at La-
Guardia Community College. His research centers around how
people use technology.
116
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• The authors wanted to bring students into the
process of evaluating how textbooks are working
(and not working) for them. Do you think members
of your educational organization would object to the
idea of opening textbook selection and evaluation
to students? Why or why not? What strategies could
could use to help faculty appreciate the need for a
more collaborative approach to selecting texts?
• The authors raise the issue of "textbook econom-
ics," noting that even though OER have a favorable
price, some students would opt to pay for commer-
cial textbooks because of the features these texts
offer. In your opinion, what kinds of textbook fea-
tures are worth paying for? What do these features
add to the learning process? How might you repli-
cate or improve upon these features in OER?
• While the idea of opening the processes and prod-
ucts of the authors' seminar project was a powerful
one, the authors explain that ultimately continuing
the project proved unsustainable. Why? Do these
problems related to sustainability resonate with
your own efforts to "go open"? What strategies
might help you solve these problems?
117
What happened when I let my students fork
the syllabus
Heidi Ellis
I teach a traditional "get to know college" course for freshmen.
It's designed to help new students work on the skills they'll
need to be successful in college, such as time management, per-
sonal management, and communication.
It's also become a prime opportunity for me to introduce
freshman students to the guiding principles of open culture.
I've developed a method for treating my class as an open or-
ganization. To create a more collaborative and inclusive
environment, I let the students co-construct the official course syl-
labus.
Here's how I do it—and what students have taught me about
the value of making our classrooms more open.
The open syllabus
I taught two sections of the course in fall 2017 with a total of
27 students. We met twice each week, for 50 minutes each time.
My goal was to afford the students as much control over the course
as possible within the constraints set by the course description and
requirements. In the spirit of open and transparent problem-solv-
ing, I facilitating a few activities that involved:
• identifying an aspect of the course yet to be specified (for
example, a"disruption policy"),
• discussing (as a group) the constraints of the problem,
and
• helping students generate a solution.
118
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Early in the semester, we used these techniques to construct
some course policies. Later on in the term, we employed the same
methods to construct some homework assignments too.
Building the policies
First I challenged the students to collaboratively compose a
"disruption policy" for the course. I offered the following instruc-
tions:
The Code of Conduct currently has no policy for attention
and handling classroom distractions, such as cell phones. We
will create one during this activity. This policy will apply
to all of Heidi Ellis' sections of LA-100. We are attempting
to solve the following problem: "Computer noises, cell
phones, messenger apps, IM, whispering, music, talking,
etc., can all potentially draw learner attention away from
learning. How do we ensure that class can proceed without
interruptions or distractions? How do we ensure that class
meetings are a time and place where we can focus on
learning? How do we ensure that everyone in the class has an
equal opportunity to learn?"
This exercise was a learning experience for both my students
and me, as we clearly had different visions of what constituted a
"disruption." While we all agreed that students should pay atten-
tion to the instructor and engage in all classroom activities,
students thought they should be able to take "important" calls dur-
ing class time and that texting during class was acceptable. I
thought that cell phones should be turned off entirely during class.
Students also thought that leaving the classroom to get a drink
without asking permission was acceptable, while I thought that
they should handle thirst needs before or after class.
This resulted in a discussion about professionalism and the
expectations associated with college-level work. We discussed what
constituted a distraction and agreed that making sounds, whisper-
ing, and talking in class all counted as distractions. This in turn led
to a discussion of the impacts distractions can have on a learning
environment and the importance of paying attention in class. We
also explored the impact various learning technologies can have on
a classroom—for example, the tools students with disabilities re-
119
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
quire to fully participate in class, such as a screen reader—and
agreed that noise generated by these was acceptable under the
policy we intended to construct.
In much the same way, I also involved the students in co-con -
structing the course's policy regarding work submitted late. This
was the challenge:
The Code of Conduct currently has no "late policy" that
determines when assignments are considered "late." The
problem we are trying to solve is this: "This policy applies
to all out-of-class work. How do we ensure that everyone in
the class has the same opportunity to complete assignments?
What is a 'timely' submission of a deliverable? End of
class? Beginning of class? End of day? What should be done
when a submission is not timely? How do we handle legitimate
lateness due to extreme illness or death in the family? What
is a legitimate lateness? We need a policy that ensures
fairness to all class members, including the instructor."
As with the disruption policy, the students and I had very
different views of what constituted "late" work, which led to fruit-
ful discussions. Students thought that submitting homework a day
or two after the deadline should not be considered late, while I
thought that anything submitted after a deadline should be consid-
ered late. We then discussed what happens in a professional
environment when work is submitted late and when someone ar-
rives late to a meeting. In this case, students still wanted some
leniency when handing in assignments, so we agreed that all deliv-
erables would have a one-day "grace period" after which students'
scores on those assignments would decrease by one letter grade
per day late. Collaboratively, the class produced the following
statement:
A deliverable is late when it is submitted after the due
date and time. Legitimate lateness reasons include approved
illness, family emergencies and death, and athletic events.
All deliverables have one grace day after the due date.
Submissions that come in after the grace day will be docked
one grade per day. Deliverables that will be discussed in
class have no late days allowed.
120
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
I hosted both the disruption and late policies on GitHub, and
in order to make changes students were required to fork the Code
of Conduct, make changes, and submit a pull request for group re-
view. A small number of students jumped right in, forking the
document and making changes; however, this number was small
(perhaps two or three students at most). The majority of students
either did not try to make any changes—or tried at the very last
minute.
In retrospect, I think the joint construction of portions of the
course policy was a real learning opportunity. In the future, I would
provide students with a clear understanding of professional behav-
ior before attempting the policy construction and preface this with
activities to convey an understanding of professional behavior. I
would then use the construction of policy as a real-world example
of professional behavior.
Building the assignments
Later in the semester, I again tried an open approach to cre-
ating assignments, which I found to be more successful.
The most successful of these was the assignment to fulfill the
Oral Communication requirement for the class. The requirement
includes creating a presentation and being able to deliver that pre-
sentation clearly.
We began with a brainstorming session, during which we
identified possible ways of fulfilling the objective. Students came
up with the traditional presentation, but also came up with a num-
ber of interesting ideas, including:
• Lecture: 2‒3 people create and deliver a presentation fol-
lowed by quiz. Quiz results displayed on the board
interactively.
• Individual, related presentations: Multiple speakers with
connected topics where one talk leads into the next.
• Jeopardy game: 3‒4 people, one person per category.
Clues would be facts about the open source topic. The
person responsible for the topic would introduce the
121
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
topic, expand on each clue, and conclude the topic at the
end.
• Classroom debate: Six debates on six topics, with 2‒3
people per team. Audience takes notes, asks questions,
and assesses performance.
• Movie: 3‒4 people, 1 or 2 topics per movie. Choose a
story that explains the point. Could use still images with
narration.
In addition to the ideas listed above, students also suggested
Socratic Seminar and Fishbowl. However I eliminated these ideas
as I could find no way to assess these approaches based on the
necessary rubrics.
We then discussed which was the most popular idea and
jointly decided that a mock Jeopardy game was an ideal way to ful-
fill the requirement. Students selected a topic related to open
source and created questions and answers for the game. Students
were then organized into teams of five.We used a modified answer/
question approach: Rather than asking questions across cate-
gories, each student provided an introduction to their topic and
presented five "answers," and the rest of the class were encour-
aged to provide the "questions." Once all "questions" had been
asked, the student provided a summary of the topic.
Students were engaged throughout the process of construct-
ing the assignment and were enthusiastic about the game itself.
Open organizations and university classrooms
Overall, the "open syllabus" exercise taught me a lot about
both open organizations and student preparation for learning in
them.
In the future, to better support an open classroom, I would
make the following changes:
• Begin the class by providing students with information
about how open organizations work and examples of open
organizations.
122
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
• Create one or two in-class activities (early in the term)
that allow students to experience open principles and ob-
serve how they work in an organization.
• Create activities to instill a foundation of professionalism
(in order to employ open organization principles, students
need to have an understanding of the boundaries of pro-
fessional behavior).
• Progress to using an open organization approach to de-
veloping assignments by starting small (perhaps by
having students develop a small assignment first, rather
than attempting to create self-governance as their first
effort).
Keeping student work open and accessible has value for sub-
sequent groups as well. I could foresee, for example, teaching
successive sections of the same course in which current students
reviewed the actions and decisions of previous classes to better un-
derstand open organization principles.
I do see a good deal of potential for running classrooms us-
ing principles derived from open organizations. The Jeopardy
assignment was the most popular and most successful at engaging
student interest. Clearly, provoking interest is an important factor
to employing open principles in the classroom.
I found that students were more creative when I gave them
more space to create. They came up with very interesting ideas in
response to fulfilling a broadly defined assignment. This type of
creativity is key for supporting learning.
Moreover, students clearly felt empowered to exert some
agency over their learning. They felt more like they were part of
the education process rather than just a consumer of knowledge. I
expect that further use of an open approach would allow students
to be more invested in their learning, thereby producing students
who are better prepared for real-world complexity.
123
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Heidi Ellis is Professor and Chair of the Computer Science and In-
formation Technology department at Western New England
University. She has a long-time interest in computing education
and has been supporting student participation in open source soft-
ware since 2006.
124
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Heidi found a direct connection between student
engagement and what she calls an "open approach"
to learning. What examples does she offer to
demonstrate this connection? To successfully in-
crease engagement in your educational
organization, what strategies have you tried? Do
any of these strategies integrate open principles?
• Community is one essential principle of an open
organization. Heidi talks about how an emphasis on
community not only engaged her students in the
learning process, but also taught her valuable
lessons as well. What did Heidi learn about the com-
munity norms of her students? How did Heidi and
her students resolve differences in these norms?
• When Heidi invited her students to collaborate in
co-constructing important course documents (like
the disruption policy and the policy regarding work
submitted late) on GitHub, only a very small num-
ber of students forked the documents and made
changes. Why do you think more students did not
engage in this collaborative process? Do you think
the complexity of the technology (in this case
GitHub) got in their way? What other (perhaps
lower-tech) solutions might you use to catalyze ro-
bust collaboration in your own classroom or
educational organization?
125
An open process for discovering our school's
core values
Beth Anderson
W hen I joined Hill Learning Center in Durham, North Car-
olina, as Executive Director nearly two years ago, I
realized immediately that I had joined a wonderful, successful,
highly conventional education organization. Hill has been trans-
forming students with learning differences into confident,
independent learners for nearly 40 years, and many of the faculty
and staff (including the outgoing Executive Director) had been at
Hill for most of that time. Hill has a strong culture, and its faculty
and staff all consistently deliver high-quality programs for students
and teachers alike—all despite evident tensions, misunderstand-
ings, and mistrust between senior administration, faculty, and staff
as well as across different programs and teams in this rigidly
siloed, hierarchical organization.
From the start, I publicly stated I wanted to address issues
of culture, trust, and transparency, in part by establishing organi-
zational core values. But I didn't know how or when to do so. And,
candidly, I was scared. I knew I couldn't come into Hill and impose
my own core values, yet I was petrified of what might emerge if I
opened the value-creation process to everyone—and I didn't how I
would respond if I simply didn't believe in, like, or want to adhere
to what did.
Hill did have core values posted on its website and included
in its strategic plan, but they just didn't resonate with me, and
hardly anyone within the organization could articulate them. I saw
both an opportunity and a challenge. Despite my public proclama-
tion, however, I decided to wait.
126
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
The time comes
Fast forward 18 months.
I'd read The Open Organization (and many other articles
along the way) as I tried to navigate the path forward, discover my
authentic leadership and management style within this (still very
foreign) context, and lead change in a non-threatening manner. I'd
adopted and promoted "All Hill" language and events to help break
down siloes. We'd engaged in an All Hill "strategic visioning"
process that was faculty/staff-centric, rather than being led by the
board, and that resulted in some new relationships, dialogue, and
common language. We had hired, retired, or exited many faculty
and staff, resulting in an organization that was suddenly fairly
evenly split—almost exactly one third newer personnel, one third
in the three-to-ten-year range, and one third employees who had
been at the school more than a decade (half for more than 20
years). And we were still very, very far from being an "open organi-
zation."
So I decided it was time to embark on a core values process,
and I decided to do it as collaboratively, openly, and organically as I
felt was possible. I had no idea where it would lead or what would
result. And I was still scared.
Why did I decide suddenly it was time? First, we were losing
veterans to retirement each year, and I didn't want to lose their
perspectives on what made Hill successful and unique—and what
had made them dedicate decades of their lives to Hill. Moreover, as
we welcomed the next generation of faculty and staff, we needed to
be able to recruit and retain great people, and clearly communi-
cate and deliver on "Why Hill?"
By soliciting ideas and feedback from staff, I could honor
what we'd done well in the past while preparing for future trans-
formations. Second, I knew teachers at Hill Learning Center often
spoke positively about feeling autonomous and enabled in their
classrooms, and I wanted to recreate that feeling of empowerment
and involvement at an organizational level. Finally, I recognized
that a sense of ownership of shared values could foster parity
127
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
across staff members with varying levels of experience and author-
ity.
When it comes to adhering to and executing on our core val-
ues, nobody is held to a higher or lower standard; consistency of
values prevents favoritism or bias in decision making. Anyone
should be able to ground a conversation with anyone else—regard-
less of position, team, or program—in shared core values without
making that conversation personal. In short, by asking All Hill to
collaborate on "discovering our core values," and then making the
final product explicit and alive, I hoped to reinforce the greatest
strengths in the pre-existing culture of Hill Learning Center while
continuing the move towards a more open, transparent, and trust-
ful organization.
We just needed to think about how we'd actually do it.
Discovering our core values
Along with Michelle Orvis, Hill's Chief of Staff, I began read-
ing articles and watching videos related to open sourcing core
values, and we informally interviewed personnel from other organi-
zations to solicit their advice. In the end, we wanted a hybrid
approach: something open and inclusive but not completely demo-
cratic or consensus-driven. We also did not want the process to be
too time-consuming for our already busy faculty and staff. We
wanted to conduct it over several months, but not forever, and we
wanted to accept input in a variety of forums.
After announcing the process and sharing multimedia exam-
ples from other organizations over email, we had an optional
"lunch 'n learn" kick-off (I had learned early on that the only possi -
ble window for bringing All Hill together was lunchtime, between
morning and afternoon classes!). I provided some context, laid out
two guiding principles for our core values—"clear and simple" and
"truly authentic"—and folks worked individually, in pairs, and in
small groups to describe the "essence" of Hill in words and
phrases. We captured the words and phrases, then shared and dis-
cussed them via email communications, smaller informal lunches,
and preliminary synthesis and discussion at a half-day leadership
128
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
team retreat. During this process, we also added two more guiding
principles: "Bias towards action" and "All Hill—knit together entire
organization."
Following one of the informal lunch discussions, I received
an email from Kate Behrenshausen, one of Hill Learning Center's
newest teachers. The note surprised me, given that Kate had opted
out of the kick-off meeting at the beginning of the process. Sud-
denly, she was ready not only to participate in the values-writing
process, but also to engage further by collaborating on additional
writing (like this book chapter!).
How had Kate made the jump from disinterested to engaged,
and what could I learn from this?
Initially, Kate admitted, she did not believe the core values
process would apply to her role at Hill; in fact, she also admitted,
she wasn't even totally sure what "core values" meant. To her, they
sounded like sterile, superficial management buzzwords.
But later, when I asked Kate and her coworkers to submit
five words or phrases that described the "essence" of Hill, she was
intrigued. She'd received a concrete method for providing feed-
back, and she appreciated the implication that her opinions
mattered. In fact, she said, that feeling of appreciation had guided
her decision to join Hill in the first place. During an early interview,
Head of School Bryan Brander had reassured her that Hill gives its
teachers the freedom to do what is best for student learning.
Bryan's words inspired her—especially after several years in the
public school system, where decisions seemed to come from far-off
offices of people who did not know her students and would never
see her classroom. In her estimation, the follow-up core values ac-
tivity had reinforced those feelings of reassurance,
encouragement, and inclusivity.
All (Hill) in
I eventually shared draft core values with All Hill at one of
our bi-monthly, post-board meeting lunches. The draft was an up-
dated version of what our leadership team synthesized from the
"words" activity at the kick-off lunch, then modified to reflect the
129
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
other feedback I had been collecting in formal and informal ways.
We've posted them on the wall in the mailroom with markers, post-
its, and dots in hopes that folks will share their reactions, ideas,
questions, concerns. We'll go from there, working towards unveil-
ing "new" core values at our August Back-to-School kick off.
What currently hangs on the wall are not the core values I'd
have written myself (though many of my original themes do come
through). Some of them raise questions (even concerns). And yet,
on the whole, I feel better about them at this point than I might
have expected, and I think they will spur more needed dialogue as
we progress. I've learned three valuable lessons so far:
• Letting go can be both scary and liberating. While I cer-
tainly haven't let go completely, I haven't "backwards
planned" or tried to over-engineer it, and I genuinely
have listened and sought out the input of everyone. And
it's been fun, engaging, stimulating, and affirming of the
many great people, ideas and things happening every day
at Hill—much less work for me than it could have other-
wise been, too!
• "Authenticity" is a simple but challenging guiding princi-
ple, for both individuals and organizations. But to me it
seems central to being an open leader and organization.
What seems authentic to some may not to all; what is au-
thentic in certain relationships or circumstances may not
manifest itself in others. And what if there are things
about "who we are" as an organization that we need to
change in order to thrive and survive, or about who we
think we are supposed to be that we need to actually em-
brace more fully rather than let go? I think we may need
to have some hard conversations about authenticity as a
part of this process.
• Nothing is better than actually sitting down and engaging
in dialogue with different people, taking the time to talk
less and listen more, and then having the discipline to
capture and translate that dialogue into something that is
made explicit and shared. It takes time. It takes planning.
130
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
It takes effort. But it is so much better than just thinking
about things or wishing them to be different or true.
I still have a long way to go and grow as a leader at Hill. And
we still have a long way to go and grow as an organization. But the
journey is one worth taking. And I am determined to enjoy and
learn from the ride. Hopefully, many others feel the same—and will
join Kate and me along the way.
Beth Anderson is the executive director of Hill Learning Center in
Durham, North Carolina. Hill Learning Center is a private-public,
K‒12 model that serves students who are struggling academically
—especially those with learning differences and attention chal-
lenges—and their teachers.
131
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Faculty retirements motivated Beth to articulate a
new set of "core values" for Hill Learning Center.
She says she "didn't want to lose their perspectives
on what made Hill successful and unique—and what
had made them dedicate decades of their lives to
Hill." What forms of institutional knowledge would
your educational organization lose if its longest-
serving members left tomorrow? How might you be-
gin archiving and preserving this knowledge? How
would future members of the organizational com-
munity benefit from it?
• Beth notes that her decision to "open up" the
process of crafting Hill Learning Center's core val-
ues engaged faculty who had otherwise not paid
much attention to the effort. Would taking an open
approach to one of your organization's initiatives
activate passionate participation from stakeholders?
And would that participation influence the results of
your work?
• "What currently hangs on the wall are not the core
values I'd have written myself (though many of my
original themes do come through)," Beth writes. Do
you think fear of unintended consequences or unan-
ticipated results deters leaders of educational
organizations from taking the kind of open approach
Beth did? How might you help assuage those fears?
132
5PH1NX: 5tudent Peer Heuristic for
1Nformation Xchange (a slightly transmedia
use case in Open Source Learning and
peeragogical assessment)
David Preston
O n Monday, April 2, 2011, students in three English classes at
a California public high school discovered anomalies in the
day's entry on their course blog. The date was wrong and the jour -
nal topic was this:
In The Principles of Psychology (1890), William James wrote,
"The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering
attention, over and over again, is the very root of
judgment, character and will. No one is compos sui if he
have it not. An education which should improve this faculty
would be the education par excellence."
How have your experiences in this course helped you focus
your attention? What do you still need to work on? What
elements of the following text (from Haruki Murakami's 1Q84)
draw your attention and help you construct meaning?
The driver nodded and took the money. "Would you like a
receipt?"
"No need. And keep the change."
"Thanks very much," he said. "Be careful, it looks windy out
there. Don't slip."
"I'll be careful," Aomame said.
"And also," the driver said, facing the mirror, "please
remember: things are not what they seem."
133
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Things are not what they seem, Aomame repeated mentally.
"What do you mean by that?" she asked with knitted brows.
The driver chose his words carefully: "It's just that you're
about to do something out of the ordinary. Am I right?
People do not ordinarily climb down the emergency stairs of
the Metropolitan Expressway in the middle of the day—
especially women."
"I suppose you're right."
"Right. And after you do something like that, the everyday
look of things might seem to change a little. Things may
look different to you than they did before. I've had that
experience myself. But don't let appearances fool you.
There's always only one reality."
The letters in italics appeared on the blog in blue font, in
contrast to the rest of the black text. Together they form a
message:
Find the jokers.
The jokers were real—drawn from standard decks of playing
cards and hidden (without much intent to conceal) around the
classroom and in students' journals. Students found them and
asked questions about the hidden message; the questions went
unanswered. Some thought it was just another of their teacher's
wild ideas. Although they didn't know it yet, they were playing the
liminal role that Oedipus originated in mythology. Solving the rid-
dle would enable them to usher out an old way of thinking and
introduce the new.
• THE OLD WAY. An authority figure sets the rules, pack-
ages the information for a passive audience, and
unilaterally evaluates each learner's performance. In that
context, peeragogical assessment might be introduced
with a theoretical framework, a rubric, and a lesson plan
with input, checks for understanding, and guided practice
as a foundation for independent work.
• THE NEW WAY. In Open Source Learning, the learner pur-
sues a path of inquiry within communities that function as
end-to-end user networks. Each individual begins her
learning with a question and pursues answers through an
134
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
interdisciplinary course of study that emphasizes multiple
modalities and the five Fs: mental fitness, physical fit-
ness, spiritual fitness, civic fitness, and technological
fitness. Learners collaborate with mentors and receive
feedback from experts, community-based peers, and the
public. They are the heroes of learning journeys.
Heroes don't respond to syllabi. They respond to calls to ad-
venture.
This is the story of one such adventure.
Find the jokers
Open Source Learning prepares students for the unforeseen.
By the time they met the 5PH1NX, students had learned about
habits of mind, operating schema, digital culture and community,
self-expression, collaboration, free play, autonomy, confidence/
trust/risk, and resilience. These ideas had been reinforced through
nonfiction articles91 and literary selections such as Montaigne's Es-
says, Plato's Allegory of the Cave, Bukowski's Laughing Heart,
Shakespeare's Hamlet, Sartre's No Exit and others.
The first poem assigned in the course was Bukowski's
"Laughing Heart": The Gods will give you chances. Know them.
Take them. So it is with knowledge and understanding. Today we
are presented with an overwhelming, unprecedented quantity and
variety of data in our physical and virtual lives. To cope, we must
improve the ways we seek, select, curate, analyze, evaluate, and
act on information.
On the back of each joker card was a QR code that linked to
a blog page with riddles and clues to a search. 92 At this point stu-
dents realized they were playing a game. A tab on the blog page
labeled "The Law" laid out the rules of engagement: 93
91 http://drprestonsrhsenglitcomp.blogspot.com/2011/08/decision-fatigue-
fact-or-perception.html
92 http://www.blogger.com/5ph1nx.blogspot.com
93 http://docs.google.com/%205ph1nx.blogspot.com/p/law.html
135
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
This is The Law.
1. You cannot "obey" or "break" The Law. You can only make
good decisions or bad decisions.
2. Good decisions lead to positive outcomes.
3. Bad decisions lead to suffering.
4. Success requires humanity.
5. "For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the
strength of the Wolf is the Pack."‒Rudyard Kipling
6. "The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete."‒Lao
Tzu
7. Be honorable.
8. Have fun.
9. Question.
10. Sapere aude.
This is The Law.
After a second set of on-campus and blog quests, students
noticed a shift in 5PH1NX. 94 A couple of weeks before the first clue
was published, during a Socratic seminar on Derrida's concept of
Free Play,95 a student said, "We learn best when adults take away
the crutches and there is no safety net." I used her quote in the
next clue; that's when students began to realize that the game was
not pre-determined. 5PH1NX was evolving in response to their
contributions. (Sometimes the most effective instruction is literally
made up as you go along. If you've ever written an introduction to
an essay in front of a class, you know what I mean.)
The student's comment was a call to action. Eventually the
clues led to the Feats of Wisdom, a list of challenges designed to
94 http://5ph1nxclu2prbrn.blogspot.com/
95 http://drprestonsrhsenglitcomp.blogspot.com/2012/03/march-16.html
136
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
engage learners over a vacation break in fun, collaborative, social
media-friendly missions that required engagement in the commu-
nity, expansion of their personal learning networks, and
96
documentation on their blogs. For example:
Feat #1
Buy a ticket to The Hunger Games (or any other movie that's
likely to draw a large, young, rowdy audience). Before the
lights dim and the trailers begin, walk to the screen, turn
to the audience, and in a loud, clear voice, recite the "To
be, or not to be..." soliloquy from Hamlet (don't worry if
you make a couple mistakes, just be sure you make it all the
way to, "Be all my sins remembered."). Capture the event on
video and post it to your blog.
At this point in the school year, students had been using the
Internet for six months without an Acceptable Use Policy. Such
policies are one-to-many artifacts of a central authority and far
weaker and harder to enforce than community norms. So rather
than introduce "rules," 5PH1NX simply provided a reminder of the
client-side responsibility. I published a 5PH1NX blog post entitled,
"A word to the wise," where I wrote a brief poem about (essen-
tially) not being a schmuck. At the top I embedded an image of
Hunter S. Thompson shaking his fist alongside his words: "A word
to the wise is infuriating."
The emergence of peeragogical assessment in Open
Source Learning
The third page on the Feats of Wisdom blog was entitled
"Identifying and Rewarding Greatness," where learners were
greeted with the following paragraph:97
If you see something that was done with love, that pushed
the boundaries, set the standard, broke the mold, pushed the
envelope, raised the bar, blew the doors off, or rocked in
96 http://5ph1nxc1u4prnylc.blogspot.com/
97 http://www.blogger.com/5ph1nxclu4prnylc.blogspot.com/p/identifying-
and-rewarding-greatness.html
137
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
some previously unspecified way, please bring it to the
attention of the tribe by posting a link to it here.
No one did.
Instead, they started doing something more effective. They
started building. One student hacked the entire game and then cre-
ated her own version.98
Other students began to consider the implications for identi-
fying and rewarding greatness. They realized that one teacher
couldn't possibly observe how 96 students were working over vaca-
tion out in the community and online to accomplish the Feats of
Wisdom. In order to get credit for their efforts they would have to
curate and share their work process and product. They also real-
ized that the same logic applied to learning and coursework in
general; after all, even the most engaged, conscientious teacher
only sees a high school or college student a few hours a week in ar-
tificial conditions. The learner presumably spends her whole life in
the company of her own brain. Who is the more qualified reporting
authority?
With these thoughts in mind students created Project Infin-
ity, a peer-to-peer assessment platform through which students
could independently assign value to those thoughts and activities
they deemed worthy.99 Because the 2011‒2012 5PH1NX was a
three-week exercise in gamification, Project Infinity quickly
evolved to include collaborative working groups and coursework.
This was learner-centered peeragogical assessment in action;
learners identified a need and an opportunity, built a tool for the
purpose, managed it themselves, and leveraged it in a meaningful
way to support student achievement in the core curriculum.
Project Infinity2 and implications for the future
Alumni from the Class of 2012 felt such a strong positive
connection to their experience in Open Source Learning and peera-
98 http://queen-of-hearts.blogspot.com/
99 http://projectinfinitysite.wordpress.com/
138
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
gogical assessment that they built a version for the Class of 2013.
They created Project Infinity2 with enhanced functionality. 100 They
asked the teacher to embed an associated Twitter feed on the
course blog, and they came to classes to speak with current stu-
dents about their experiences. Everyone thought the Class of 2013
would stand on the shoulders of giants and adopt the platform with
similar enthusiasm.
They were wrong.
Students understood the concept and politely contributed
suggestions for credit, but it quickly became evident that they
weren't enthusiastic. Submissions decreased and finally the Project
Infinity2 Twitter feed disappeared from the course blog. Learners'
blogs and project work suggested they were mastering the core
curriculum and meta concepts, and they appeared generally ex-
cited about Open Source Learning overall. So why weren't they
more excited about the idea of assessing themselves and each
other?
Because Project Infinity wasn't theirs. They didn't get to
build it. It was handed to them in the same way that a syllabus is
handed to them. No matter how innovative or effective it might be,
Project Infinity was just another tool designed by someone else to
get students to do something they weren't sure they wanted or
needed to do in the first place.
Timing may be a factor. Last year's students didn't meet
5PH1NX until the first week in April, well into the spring semester.
This year's cohort started everything faster and met 5PH1NX in
November. By January they understood the true potential of their
situation and took the reins.
As students realized what was happening with the clues and
QR codes, they approached the teacher and last year's alumni with
a request: Let us in. They don't just want to design learning materi-
100 http://projectinfinity2.wordpress.com/
101 http://docs.google.com/%20drprestonsrhsenglitcomp12.blogspot.com/
2012/10/to-be-or-not-to-be-sarah-style.html
139
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
students are becoming Virtual TAs who will start the formal peer-
to-peer advising and grading process. In the Spring Semester all
students will be asked to prepare a statement of goals/intentions,
and they will be informed that the traditional teacher will be re-
sponsible for no more than 30% of their grade. 103 The rest will
come from a community of peers, experts, and members of the
public.
On Tuesday of Finals Week, 5PH1NX went from five players
to two hundred. Sophomores and freshmen jumped into the fray
and hacked/solved one of the blog clues before seniors did. Mem-
bers of the Open Source Learning cohort have also identified
opportunities to enrich and expand 5PH1NX. A series of conversa-
tions about in-person retreats and the alumni community led to
students wanting to create a massively multiplayer learning co-
hort. Imagine 50,000 to 100,000 learners collaborating and
sharing information on a quest to pass an exam—by solving a game
that leads them to a "Learning Man Festival" in the Summer of
2013.
The last day of the semester is usually known as a post-finals
waste of time. The class periods are just long enough for teachers
to take roll and sign a yearbook or two, and lots of students don't
show up. Every Open Source Learning student showed up.
When I asked them why, they separated the experience of
learning from the temporal, spatial, and cultural constraints of
school. They get at least one part of how democracy works: those
who participate get to make the decisions.
No one knows how this ends. We are liminal figures; so far,
all we can say for sure is that the old ways are dead. The new ways
lead toward openness. Open Source Learning assessment causes
us to think about learning. The product of peeragogical assessment
is not the grade-based currency of percentages, points, percentiles,
102 http://alarhsenglitcomp.blogspot.com/2012/12/feats-of-wisdom-
1_15.html
103 http://docs.google.com/%20drprestonsrhsenglitcomp12.blogspot.com/
2013/01/gooooaaaaallllll.html
140
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
or GPA; it is learners who demonstrate their thinking progress and
mastery through social production and peer-based critique. This
community's approach to learning and assessment prepared its
members for a complex and uncertain future by moving them from
a world of probability to a world of possibility. As one student put it
in a video entitled "We Are Superman,":
What we are doing now may seem small, but we are
part of something so much bigger than we think. What
does this prove? It proves everything; it proves that
it's possible.
David R. Preston, Ph.D. (davidpreston.net) is an educator, speaker,
writer, and consultant who has taught university and K-12 courses
for 25 years. David has shared his model of Open Source Learning
with organizations including school districts, the Institute for the
Future, the O'Reilly Open Source Conference, TEDxUCLA, and the
Royal Geographical Society in London. He continues to mentor
teachers and teach high school courses on California's Central
Coast.
141
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• "Heroes don't respond to syllabi," David writes.
"They respond to calls to adventure." What's the
difference between a syllabus and an adventure?
How might you incorporate that distinction into your
own work?
• David warns against using "just another tool de-
signed by someone else to get students to do
something they weren't sure they wanted or
needed to do in the first place." How might your ed-
ucational organization give students or other
stakeholders more agency? How might you let them
participate in constructing the conditions of their
participation or assessment?
• Students in David's class exercised the autonomy
their instructor gave them to architect their own
systems and build their own tools. Do participants
in your educational organization have the resources
they need to architect their own experiences? If you
were to grant people in your organization more
agency, would they have what they need in order to
enact it?
142
The open schoolhouse: Culture, praxis,
empowerment
Charlie Reisinger
I n 2010, I confronted a problem common to all public school
leaders: How do we optimize our limited funding to bring pow-
erful learning technology to thousands of students? Faced with an
end-of-life fleet of student laptops, district-wide budget cuts, and
teachers pleading for more technology, I made a small bet that
open source software could be an affordable path forward. Fast
forward to 2019: What started with a few elementary school laptop
carts running a Linux operating system and open source applica-
tions grew into an award-winning, district-wide, one-to-one laptop
learning program and student technology help desk—all built with
open source principles and software.
Open source software has saved my district—Penn Manor
School District in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania—more than a
million dollars on its technology budget. But more importantly,
making a deliberate and concerted effort to infuse open principles
and practices into our learning environments has cultivated a vi-
brant and inclusive learning community that cuts across the
school. And as a result, student success has exceeded our expecta-
tions.
But how do schools put open ideas into practice to foster fu-
ture innovators and leaders? It's not as simple as installing Linux
on 4,000 student laptops, holding hands, and singing the alma
mater in the high school cafeteria.
An open schoolhouse values all learners' unique strengths
and passions to help them reach their potential. This work does not
begin and end with curricula, worksheets, and test scores. It starts
143
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
with building connections, relationships, and trust with students.
In this chapter, I'll explain how we put these ideas into practice.
Building the open schoolhouse
First, school leaders must recognize that traditional school
board computer policies and device decisions are retrograde to
learning. Tablets do little to help students explore an operating sys-
tem. Worse, repressive school device management policies lock
access to the command line and block students from installing ap-
plications. Sealed tablets and locked-down laptops are like
kryptonite for classrooms—they weaken critical thinking and crush
a student's ability to create, explore, and learn.
Penn Manor designed district technology policies to amplify
student curiosity and learning freedom. Each student has root ac-
cess on their school-issued Linux laptop. Students are trusted—and
encouraged—to tinker and experiment with their school laptops.
And our students haven't let us down. Five years into our program,
we've experienced zero discipline issues resulting from students'
being trusted with admin rights.
But access to the terminal isn't enough to turn a school into
an open organization. We must elevate student privileges, write a
new script, and empower students to be equal partners in their ed-
ucation. What if our classrooms pushed aside lecture and standard
curriculum and reorganized as a community of practitioners work-
ing toward a common goal?104
When Penn Manor High School launched the Linux laptop
learning initiative, our team designed apprenticeship opportunities
for students to provide technology support to their peers. What
better way to help budding technologists learn the craft than
through authentic practice? What better way to encourage a cul-
ture of collaboration?
Penn Manor School District's Student Help Desk program is
an honors-level, independent study apprenticeship course. Stu-
dents report for the class like they would for math, science, or art.
104 See Maxwell Bushong's contribution to this volume.
144
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
But any similarity to a traditional high school courses ends there.
Apprentices work alongside district IT staff on hardware repairs,
software tutorials, system imaging, peer training, and any number
of tasks related to the one-to-one program. Daily work assignments
are guided by the shifting needs of fellow students and classroom
teachers. Visitors observe help desk apprentices fielding questions
from students or staff, replacing a damaged laptop screen, or div-
ing into Linux configuration files. Past student apprentices even
wrote code for laptop imaging and device inventory. Motivated by
authentic use cases, the young programmers developed the very
software their peers use today.
The student help desk has no curriculum and no textbook;
students search the Internet to discover solutions to problems, or
borrow code and ideas that open source communities have freely
shared. Students learn and experiment with the same open source
software and techniques that industry professionals use. And as-
sessment? How can a pop-quiz measure a student's elation when
their logic board repair is successful, or the joy they feel when the
entire school starts using software they've designed?
In this participatory and inclusive classroom culture, tradi-
tional power structures dissolve and students are empowered to
act, contribute, iterate—and solve real problems.
Teaching in the open schoolhouse
We educators in the open schoolhouse don't lecture and test.
We clear obstacles, provide prompts, and create a culture where
trial and risk receive encouragement and praise. Together, as a
team, students and staff shape the world around them. When we
honor learning by doing, students become active agents in their
education and they contribute to the school community in innova-
tive new ways.
Beyond the obvious career preparation and technical skill-
building experiences, the Penn Manor Student Help Desk provides
students an opportunity to explore individual passions via indepen-
dent study. As part of this program, every student is challenged to
create a unique and compelling personal project that breaks new
145
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
ground. Choice of the project is entirely up to each student. In the
past, they've explored software-defined radio, built virtual reality
tours, developed a software system for Roll20, produced a podcast
series, and even programmed a TurtleBot robot to self-navigate
across the school's hallways.
One of our goals is to help technology apprentices discover
that they can build and command technology—not be content with
someone else's technical or marketing decisions. Hacking isn't a
concept or skill we teach. It is an ethos we embrace.
A few years ago, I was struck by the wisdom of one student,
help desk apprentice and hacker Aytekin Oldac. I asked for his
thoughts about the program. The pensive young man paused for
the briefest moment and said, "There is a quote from Aristotle,
'Men become builders by building.' I think that applies to the help
desk."
Aytekin was indeed becoming a builder. The student help
desk needed a visitor registration system, so Aytekin built one. He
set to work on a check-in system built atop a decommissioned
point-of-sale terminal. The once-obsolete cafeteria terminal was a
laughable gray box of thick industrial plastic topped with a fry-
grease resistant touchscreen. But Aytekin gave it a new life beyond
the lunch line.
Using LibreOffice, he programmed a data-entry form with a
large on-screen number pad. When a visiting student entered their
student ID, the on-screen form would add a timestamp and log the
visit into our database. With no explicit curriculum, he relied on his
Linux laptop, the Internet, and his intellect to build a new contrap-
tion for the help desk team.
Of course, we could have rushed to an app store for a propri -
etary registration application for a tablet. But what would our
young builder have learned? If there were an "app for that,"
Aytekin would never have spent weeks prototyping a solution,
parsing sample code, debugging, or iterating designs from peer
feedback. Empowered with freedom and trust, Aytekin became lost
in the flow of discovery, hacking, and problem-solving.
146
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
But there's a deeper spirit in the open schoolhouse. The
thoughts of former student apprentice, Susan Black, transcend ed-
ucation and hardware. "I cannot imagine a more perfect day than
one spent repairing laptops and solving software issues at the help
desk. I think of our help desk room not as a class, but as a family.
We motivate and teach each other, but we also have a few good
laughs. We make memories daily, and I don't have to hide who I am
in this class. Nobody dares to judge one another, and we become
closer by our differences."
Susan's voice resonates a sense of place, a safe and inviting
space untangled from the curriculum assembly line and insulated
from high school angst and drama. In this place, she is free to be
herself and empowered to learn and create. Shouldn't all students
be afforded the same opportunity to build self-esteem and leader-
ship skills? To follow their passions? To find their tribes? When the
classroom hierarchy is flattened, when students are exalted, when
the roles of student and teacher are blurred, the open schoolhouse
emerges.
Charlie Reisinger is the Director of Technology for Penn Manor
School District in Lancaster County, PA. He leads the district's
award-winning one-to-one laptop learning program and student
technology help desk. His first book, The Open Schoolhouse,
chronicles how open source principles and software transformed
learning at Penn Manor. Follow him on Twitter at @charlie3.
147
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Charlie suggests that being an open educational
organization "does not begin and end with curricula,
worksheets, and test scores. It starts with building
connections, relationships, and trust with students."
Do you agree? What would your organization need
to begin doing in order to cultivate those connec-
tions and build that trust?
• Charlie writes that "sealed tablets and locked-
down laptops are like kryptonite for classrooms—
they weaken critical thinking and crush a student's
ability to create, explore, and learn." How do your
organization's technology choices impact its stake-
holders? Would selecting different technologies or
platforms change how you operate or what you
were able to accomplish?
• In Charlie's school, "each student has root access
on their school-issued Linux laptop"—the ultimate
form of control over this tool. In what ways could
your educational organization empower stakehold-
ers with greater forms of control? How would this
impact levels of trust and collaboration at your or-
ganization?
148
Flip the script: An open community of
practice at the student help desk
Maxwell Bushong
T ypically, students in most high schools sit in classrooms,
likely listening to an instructor lecture about a topic for
hours upon hours. Teachers rave about how much time they have
with each class, and how much they are able to teach their stu-
dents during that time. But how much of that education do
students actually retain?
As a student, I can tell you I am not in any way learning from
a teacher who stands and talks to me for an hour and a half, and I
also do not learn by completing packets filled with immense
amounts of information. That's a problem. But as my dad says,
"Anybody can be a problem identifier. It is difficult to be the one to
solve that problem." So how do we solve this problem with our edu-
cation system?
Perhaps a better way is to give students the freedom to be
part of an open source educational community, be respected, and
be allowed to push through and solve problems. This makes the
open world of education that much more impactful to a student—
maybe without them even knowing it.
I think we can assume that the average high school student
has little to no knowledge of open source concepts and software.
Then again, I think we can also assume that the average high
school student does not have any experience working in an open
help desk like the Student Help Desk Apprenticeship program at
Penn Manor High School.105 It is an honors-level, elective course
105 See Charlie Reisinger's contribution to this volume.
149
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
set up like any college or industry IT help desk. What makes the
program unique is that students are the ones behind the help desk
to provide support for Penn Manor School District's one-to-one
Linux laptop program. Student apprentices have administrative ac-
cess to laptops, software, programs, and the tools they need to
tackle any hardware or software issues regarding school technol-
ogy devices.
The program runs like a regular class, but there are no for-
mal lesson plans and no curriculum. Students learn from everyday
problems presented to them; lesson plans certainly don't work in
this situation. It's a unique program, and it's a building block of
Penn Manor's "Life after High School" mission. The idea is that stu-
dents need to be exposed to the real world during their high school
career, so they can be successful in their life after graduation.
In this chapter, I'll describe my experience in the program
and explain how this open approach has impacted my education.
Collaboration built on trust
The student help desk model is a collaborative work environ-
ment. The program puts its students on the same level as the IT
staff. The fact that my peers, teachers, and IT staff communicate
and interact with me as if I worked for Penn Manor makes me feel
like a valued and respected member of the school district. During
my other classes, I feel as if I am not developing or making a differ-
ence in my school. Sure, my grades reflect our school's
performance, but what am I really doing?
When I walk into the Help Desk, that changes. Everything
else about my life disappears; my mindset is immediately altered,
and I no longer feel like the average high school student. In fact, I
tend not to think of myself as a student whatsoever. Working along-
side the adults in the room, with the level of responsibility and
trust they've given to me, makes me feel like a valued member of
the school's IT staff. By helping my fellow peers, by completing a
work-related task for the greater good of the school, by having the
opportunity to participate in real IT related projects, I feel like a
valued member of the Penn Manor community.
150
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
A recent conversation with one of my peers illustrates my
point. When I mentioned I had fixed hardware problems on four or
five laptops that day, my friend was in utter disbelief. He was
shocked that I was trusted to dismantle thousands of dollars of
equipment. I think his surprise reflected his experience with other
classes. Other high school courses do not allow students to be
trusted in that capacity. But student apprentices know that they
are trusted. In fact, it would be difficult—maybe even impossible—
for a student to be effective in this environment without being fully
trusted.
Making an impact
As a freshman student, I have a long road of papers and as-
signments to write before graduation day. After I have turned in
those papers for grading, I often think nothing of them. Don't get
me wrong—I feel some level of accomplishment for receiving a
good grade on an assignment. But compared to working at the
Help Desk, that feeling is almost laughable. The feeling of achieve-
ment when I fix a laptop or solve a computing problem is immense.
An "A" on a history paper can never compare.
Collaborating with IT staff and working on day-to-day prob-
lems without fear of receiving a grade based off a rubric or grading
policy adds to this feeling of empowerment. Most other courses are
so structured that I base 90% of my class project decisions off a
grading rubric because there is a certain way that assignments
have to be done. But I find myself disappointed with the end result
of a project in those classes because that's not in any way how I
would have completed it. The Help Desk course structure is just
the opposite. I base 100% of my project decisions off my own
thoughts about how I would like certain things to be completed. I
can explore alternative methods of doing and presenting tasks, and
that allows for new innovation to occur in our school—ultimately
the world.
In other courses, students worry about submitting assign-
ments or performing well on an exam. That performance impacts
the grade, transcript, and that class solely. But with the Help Desk,
151
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
you quickly realize that decisions you make and the tasks you com-
plete have the potential to impact the entire school district, or even
the world. I feel I am contributing to something much bigger in the
world.
Here is an example: Penn Manor High School is currently
undergoing a major renovation and construction project. During
construction, the original 1950s portion of the school will be de-
molished, taking memories with it. I am working to archive the
original Penn Manor High School via photos, drone footage, and
360 degree virtual reality tours, to preserve the original school. As
anticipation of the new school builds, I am also working to capture
the construction process during the entire four year project. The
images and footage will last for a lifetime and impact my commu-
nity, as well as future students and alumni.
Think back to when you were a high school student (or
maybe you are still in high school). If given the option, would you
want to make a difference in a classroom of 20 students and one
teacher, at most, or would you prefer to impact an entire school
district of 5,400 students and 600 staff members?
An authentic experience
Schools typically measure their students' success with letter
grades. But the Help Desk course offers an authentic learning ex-
perience with real technical issues posed to us every day. We work
by problem solving—learning from what went wrong and exploring
how to fix it. Students' drive and determination to learn about a
problem, and then solve it, is what engages them in learning.
Project-based learning is also a major portion of the Help
Desk course. Student apprentices work on projects designated to
help us expand our technical knowledge on a wide variety of top-
ics. Apprentices individually craft and design their own projects
based on what they want to learn. The possibilities as to where
these projects can go are endless.
We learn what we are drawn to learn. We are not forced to
learn something that isn't of interest to us. I see it as a difference
between "learning wants" and "learning needs." "Learning wants"
152
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
are something you are eager to expand your knowledge on. In con -
trast, "learning needs" are something that you will need to survive
life after high school. The project-based nature of the Help Desk
course combines both types of learning. I can tailor my project to
my individualized "learning wants," but along the way I can work
in new "learning needs" as I discover them. Now this what makes
learning interesting!
Earning respect
As part of an established school's Technology Help Desk, my
peers treat me with respect, and often relate me to a staff member
of Penn Manor. When one of my fellow students visits the Help
Desk and I repair or fix their laptop problem, install a new software
application for them, or simply answer a question they have, their
response is often, "Wow, how did you do that?" The fact that an-
other 15-year-old high school student is saying this to me is often
one of the most empowering things I hear during my school day.
When you are the one who successfully completes a support re-
quest for someone else, you earn their respect. Each time this
happens, the respect that others have for you begins to steadily ac-
cumulate throughout a community. This can help build your
reputation in a school and community.
I think our program helps make a distinction from the typical
paper and pencil learning environment. I do not think many stu-
dents realize it, but our laptop program creates a new form of
educational collaboration. Students work together on class
projects, which then creates a conversation within the school. As a
team we are creating more than a technology conversation; we're
creating a conversation about the relationship between life and
technology. This new shared conversation leads to more new ideas,
more thoughts suddenly unleashed into the school. And that leads
to more discussion and more change in our community.
Life beyond the schoolhouse
I think we can now return to Penn Manor's "Life After High
School" mission. What will I remember from my high school ca-
153
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
reer? Will I remember every detail about World War II from my his-
tory class? Probably not. Will I remember exactly why volcanoes
form from science class? Maybe. Will I remember the Pythagorean
theorem from algebra? Definitely not. But I will remember the
Help Desk, and the lifelong skills that will stick with me throughout
my lifetime. And I will remember making a long-lasting difference
in my community.
How can we solve what's lacking in our education system?
We can do it by giving students the opportunity to take ownership
of their learning, give them the tools they need to explore their in -
terests, and help them solve new problems. Students can be their
own educators. When we do this, we open a world of educational
opportunity for young minds to freely explore and grow their
knowledge through a partnership of ideas. And when this happens,
I think education itself becomes just that much more impactful.
Maxwell Bushong is a high school student and Student Technology
Apprentice attending Penn Manor High School in Lancaster
County, PA. He plays boys volleyball year-round on both club and
school teams, and manages the Penn Manor's girls volleyball team
during their season. His goal is to impact the world through tech-
nology with ambitions of holding an IT based occupation after high
school.
154
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• According to Maxwell, what are the principal bene-
fits of empowering students to play a larger role in
shaping their educational experiences? Would doing
the same in your organization have the same bene-
fits—or additional ones?
• Maxwell understands that his contributions as a
student Help Desk apprentice allow him "to impact
an entire school district of 5,400 students and 600
staff members." Does anything occurring in your
learning environment impact the world outside it?
How might your educational organization scale the
impact its stakeholders are able to have?
• By being a Help Desk apprentice, Maxwell argues,
students and teachers "are creating more than a
technology conversation; we're creating a conversa-
tion about the relationship between life and
technology." Does your educational organization
foster the same kinds of conversations? If not, how
could it? And what might those conversations be
about?
155
Open education has a POSSE
Shobha Tyagi
G lobal education is truly struggling. Fixing it demands a para-
digm shift—from conventional teaching techniques to new
techniques inspired by open organization principles. 106 Organiza-
tions in various industries around the world clearly understand the
benefits of operating according to open principles, and they're em-
bracing them. It's time our schools did too.
Our very definitions of "teaching" and "learning" are chang-
ing drastically. We shouldn't necessarily view this as a negative
trend, because it's part of a broader transition the world is under-
going: the maturation of an Information Age that began 1970s and
is now reaching its peak. The relative abundance of information to-
day has many effects, and among them is a shift in student
attitudes toward classroom experiences. 107 Today, students do not
want to learn simply by sitting in a classroom and following precise
directions from instructors. They can do that online, through any
number of reliable online course offerings such as NPTEL, Cours-
era, Edx, and Udacity (to name a few). As more self-guided
learning materials become available online, students are expecting
new forms of engagement from their instructors. And those in-
structors will need to respond—especially if they're going to
continue fulfilling their social mission of preparing human beings
to survive and thrive in a new era.
In this chapter, I'll describe a program that's equipping and
empowering teachers to adjust their teaching methods in response
106 See Appendix.
107 See Jim Whitehurst's contribution to this volume.
156
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
to changes in student learning preferences. The Professors' Open
Source Software Experience (POSSE) is a non-profit, teacher-led
initiative to help educators understand how to run their classrooms
more like open organizations—and produce more engaging learn-
ing environments as a result.
A brief history
POSSE began life as a Red Hat-funded initiative for the
higher education community. Led by both professionals at Red Hat
and contributors from other open organizations, the program
aimed to help instructors learn about free and open source soft-
ware (FOSS) so that they could incorporate learning activities that
engage computing students with FOSS into their classes. That was
POSSE's first iteration—call it "POSSE version 1.0"—and it func-
tioned in this form from 2005 to 2010.
The next version of POSSE—that is, "POSSE version 2.0"—
dates from 2010 to the present. Its facilitators are a mix of instruc-
tors and FOSS contributors. As POSSE has grown, it now also
benefits from support from the National Science Foundation (NFS)
and has assumed a more explicit focus on engaging with Humani-
tarian Free and Open Source Software (HFOSS) projects and
initiatives. HFOSS refers to the large and growing collection of
open source projects that provide some social benefit. This in-
cludes projects that seek to address aspects of healthcare, disaster
management, accessibility assistance, economic development, edu-
cation, and other areas of social need.108
POSSE's focus has shifted over years in order to provide a
more useful and comprehensive experience for educators. Today, it
trains participants not only in technical topics related to FOSS but
also in open-focused pedagogy and curriculum matters.
Teaching teachers to teach open source
Three stages comprise POSSE's faculty development model.
108 http://teachingopensource.org/hfoss/
157
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
In the first stage, participants perform online activities inde-
pendently, with POSSE facilitators, and with their fellow
participants. The length of that stage ranges from six to eight
weeks, requiring roughly one to three hours per week (read on for
more details of what happens during this period).
The second stage is a face-to-face workshop that lasts for
two to three days. At this meeting, participants learn how the ma-
terial introduced in the first stage is used in actual FOSS projects.
Participating faculty members also get the opportunity to learn the
ways in which they can incorporate that material into their classes
and create actual assignments for their students.
The third stage involves ongoing participation—and it's the
most important and challenging, as it requires practical implemen-
tation of FOSS/HFOSS techniques learned during the previous
stages. The Faculty Development Model is depicted in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The HFOSS faculty development model
http://foss2serve.org/index.php/POSSE
As an outcome of the POSSE workshop experience, POSSE
alumni introduced FOSS into their classes. And they continue to
share their experiences at foss2serve.org.109
109 http://foss2serve.org/index.php/Instructor_Experiences
158
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
The outcome is a positive one. Students enjoy relating
course topics and material to real-world problems and projects.
Working with open source in the classroom means students can
download source code, view it, and appreciate how that code has
come from multiple contributors. Though the learning process is
slow, students are much more engaged in their learning and eager
to continue—and that is the matter of utmost importance.
Joining a POSSE
I was a member of the 2017 POSSE cohort, 110 which met in
Bologna, Italy, on July 1 and 2 of that year. 111 People from almost
every continent participated in the workshop. It was a fantastic
workshop and that spawned a great community.
But as I described above, our work began long before we
met each other in Bologna.
Stage 1
Stage 1 activities occurred May 15 through June 30, and
Stage 1 was itself divided into three parts—A, B, and C—each fo-
cused on learning a different aspect of FOSS development and
culture. And before beginning any session, we participated in an
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) meeting in order to learn basic IRC eti-
quette.
In Part A, participants received a basic introduction to the
FOSS world, explored the anatomy of an open source project, and
learned about the most popular communication tools among con-
tributors to these projects (such as IRC and wikis).
Part B focused on helping us specifically incorporate FOSS
into our courses in a variety of ways. For example, we embarked on
a "FOSS field trip," a guided tour through GitHub and Open Hub
that explained their uses and differences. We also conducted a
FOSS project evaluation—for example, of the openMRS project,
which made understanding that and similar projects simpler. As
110 http://foss2serve.org/index.php/POSSE
111 http://foss2serve.org/index.php/POSSE_2017-07
159
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
part of this activity, we learned to evaluate a FOSS project in order
to determine whether it was an appropriate fit for the courses we
were teaching (this, in turn, helped us decide if we'd like to con-
tribute to it by introducing that project in our classes). We learned
to identify certain important characteristics of FOSS projects: pat-
terns of contributions, patterns of commits, programming
languages used, and more. Ultimately, we developed the capability
to identify HFOSS projects that seem appropriate for new contribu-
tors. Finally, we received an introduction to copyright and licensing
issues, as we learned about the number of open source licenses
(like the GPL, MIT, Apache, MPL, and more).
And Part C provided in-depth knowledge of GitHub. We also
learned about bug tracking tools and explored additional ways we
could integrate FOSS tools and techniques into our classrooms. To
record our progress, we composed reports after every activity in
each segment.
Stage 2
Stage 2 consisted of a two-day, intensive face-to-face work-
shop, at which faculty could interact with each other and talk at
length about integrating open source software into our computer
science courses. The workshop was a mix lectures and group activ-
ities dedicated to extending and applying what we learned in Stage
1. By now, we were slowly and gradually understanding the need to
and the importance of introducing open source principles into our
classes. And we all learned about how to support one another after
we departed, using FOSS learning and teaching materials in the
repositories at teachingopensource.org and foss2serve.org.
Never in my life had I experienced a workshop like POSSE.
It was a wonderful experience that really helped me sharpen my
teaching methods.
Stage 3
Now came that hardest part: integrating these new knowl-
edges and skills into my classroom activities.
Initially, I taught Introduction to Open Standards and Open
Source Software (IOSS) to first-semester students who, inciden-
160
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
tally, were also learning the C programming language that same
semester in another course. I was ready to introduce all that I'd
learned in POSSE to this class.
After a basic introduction to FOSS, I assigned students a
simple task: install git onto their computers and create GitHub ac-
counts. After doing this, they had to clone and fork a repository
from my own account, which contained code for a simple calculator
application implemented in C—with few bugs, of course! The bugs
were simple: typos, easily visible syntax errors, etc. Students
cloned the repository locally, forked it, then ran the code to identify
bugs.
I advised all students to correct only one bug. Students espe-
cially good at programming in C could easily identify the bugs and
resolved a bug of their choice. After staging and committing the
desired changes using basic git commands, the majority of stu-
dents in the class could even send me a pull request on GitHub.
Students enjoyed sharpening their C programming skills us-
ing git. Setting up the activity this way allowed me to stress many
simple but important open source principals, such as collaboration,
contribution, identifying problems collectively, and sharing the so-
lutions to them. A similar approach to experiments could be easily
occur in many other types of courses—not just those in computing.
But for that to become a reality, faculty members have to be-
come aware of and embrace open source techniques and
principles.
Shobha Tyagi is an assistant professor in the Department of Com-
puter Science and Engineering at Manav Rachna International
Institute of Research and Studies in Faridabad, India. She was for-
merly an intern for Outreachy and is currently a member of the
GNOME Foundation.
161
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Shobha suggests that "our very definitions of
'teaching' and 'learning' are changing drastically."
Do you agree? Why or why not? How has popular
understanding of both "teaching" and "learning"
changed in the past 50 years? The last 10 years?
The last three years?
• The POSSE program Shobha describes combines
remote, distributed work with local, in-person meet-
ings to achieve its outcomes. What are the benefits
and drawbacks of such an approach? Could you re-
organize one of your own educational programs or
experiences in a similar "hybrid" way? Would you?
• Participating in POSSE involves a "FOSS field trip"
a hands-on, guided tour through several tools and
communities with which participants will likely be
interacting while teaching open source. Would this
"field trip" approach work for any classes, pro-
grams, or groups at your educational organization?
How could you leverage communication technolo-
gies to facilitate "field trips" without leaving the
classroom?
162
Confronting linguistic bias: The case for an
open human language
Race MoChridhe
A s scholars in the digital humanities continue to transform
scholarship, they're increasingly noting a "black-box" prob-
lem with the tools they're using—not to mention the resources and
artifacts they're creating as a result. As Tara Andrews describes it:
…we are, implicitly or explicitly, constructing models
of our objects of study; all such models contain a cer-
tain amount of domain knowledge, and all of our
computational tools operate on the basis of that do-
main knowledge. These facts … directly give rise to …
the black box question: can we truly know what mod-
els, assumptions, and inferences are made within the
source code of a particular software tool? If so, how? If
not, how can we justify a blind use of it?112
Open source—that is, making the code of digital tools and
datasets accessible to anyone—is a popular approach to improving
the methodological transparency of this work in educational orga-
nizations. The field's broader open access movement stresses
skepticism about the proprietary nature of algorithms, data, and
code involved in humanistic research more generally—and cautions
researchers about the impact that ownership can have on the re-
search process itself.
This perspective has tremendous implications for the way we
think about the embedded biases and assumptions in humanistic
112 https://doi.org/10.1080/03080188.2016.1165456
163
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
research. What if we subjected our human languages to the same
rigorous assessment we do with our computational languages?
What biases might we discover in them? How might those biases
impact our scholarship?
And does that mean open educational organizations and
open scholarship require an open language?
Confronting linguistic bias
The language researchers and educators use to conduct and
report research frames how that research unfolds and impacts its
conclusions. Many debates about the boundaries and "proper
methods" in the humanities and the sciences are exacerbated (if
not driven) by the use of the English language. For example, Eng-
lish-language scholarship distinguishes between the "humanities"
and "science," dividing realms of scholarship that in German and
many other languages fall under a single heading (in German,
"Wissenschaft"). In the English-speaking world, researchers com-
monly work in a single language, and the paradigms that language
establishes—the effects of its specific structure and lexicon—often
go unchallenged.
While few languages are private intellectual property in a le-
gal sense the way that computer code can be (Quenya and Klingon
are probably the most notable cases of privately owned human lan-
guages), "proprietary" is nonetheless a useful label for the less
explicit (but no less powerful) rights of "ownership" that a native-
speaker population exercises over language. It includes things like:
the implicit "right" to assign new meanings to existing words, to
employ non-standard semantic or rhetorical constructions, to im-
port words from other languages, and to engage in all these
activities while having the results regarded as legitimate lines of
development within a descriptive grammar, rather than as defor-
mations, errors, or inadequacies of language acquisition. A whole
host of freedoms vitally important to innovative and imaginative
communication are assigned almost exclusively to native speakers.
While there are approaches (like the "World Englishes" para-
digm) that do more to affirm and enfranchise second-language
164
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
speakers, these have some strict limits when trying to guarantee
the common frames of meaning and relatively easy reproducibility
demanded by academic research, whether humanistic, scientific, or
technical. Putting scholars (and students) on more equal footing
and obtaining a more critical perspective on the biases inherent in
the use of "proprietary languages" for teaching and research will
require a different approach.
Luckily, this isn't the first time researchers have addressed
the issue of linguistic "openness" in educational organizations. The
International Academy of Sciences San Marino (AIS) was founded
in 1985 with the aim of creating an academic framework that, to
the greatest possible extent, would encourage openness, collabora-
tion, and transparency. Thesis and dissertation defences at AIS, for
example, must be both publicly announced and open to the public.
In particular, AIS's founders sought to enhance openness in lan-
guage. The first paragraph of the AIS constitution states that
members shall "komunikadas inter si precipe per neŭtrala lingvo"
("communicate with one another principally by means of a neutral
language")—in other words, a language belonging to no particular
group or nationality, such that no users would be linguistically priv-
ileged and no group would have a special right to the definition of
linguistic norms.
An open language
Among possible candidates, Esperanto—created by Ludwik
Zamenhof in 1887 to serve as a neutral, "international" language
for all purposes—was selected as the only one in which a signifi-
cant body of scientific literature and a suitable terminology for
higher educational contexts had already been developed (over
more than a century of use, it has been employed for everything
from the scientific paper that first described the jet stream 113 to
works of poetry114 nominated for the Nobel Prize).
113 https://www.airspacemag.com/as-next/as-next-may-
unbelievablebuttrue-180968355/
114 https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/sep/29/features11.g22
165
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
What the language's creator and many of its promoters have
described as "neutrality" we might better understand as "open-
ness": Esperanto is the only widely-spoken language explicitly
"licensed" for general use. In 1905, Zamenhof and representatives
of leading Esperanto organizations at the time promulgated the
Boulogne Declaration, which established that Esperanto was "no
one's property" and that "[t]he primary master of this language is
the whole world," such that everyone was entitled to use it "for any
possible purposes" and all fluent speakers were to be regarded as
equal Esperantists, without respect to their background, ideology,
or membership status in any organization. The document also spec-
ified that, beyond the sixteen basic grammatical rules laid out in
the Fundamento de Esperanto (Fundaments of Esperanto), not
even Zamenhof could establish any narrower restriction, so that all
Esperantists could express themselves "in a manner which they
deem the most correct."
Although there are now approximately two thousand native
speakers of Esperanto, there is no special native speaker role in es-
tablishing linguistic norms.115 Sociolinguistically speaking, every
speaker who has acquired fluency has equal influence on the devel-
opment of norms of usage. While not everyone agrees on
Esperanto's purported "neutrality," it does seem productive to talk
about the language as "open" in the same way we talk about
code.116
This "openness" contrasts meaningfully with the "propri-
etary" status of ethnic languages, where the "ownership" of the
native speaker population controls the establishment of idiomatic
norms that, if not mastered precisely, adversely impact acquiring
speakers. Even the most advanced second-language speakers of
English encounter systemic barriers to acceptance of their re-
search for publication, for instance. 117 But there is another sense—
115 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2016.10.003
116 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?
doi=10.1.1.492.4267&rep=rep1&type=pdf
117 http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/095315103320995096
166
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
more metaphorical and more impactful—in which the use of Es-
peranto has promoted openness in the Academy's scholarship, and
that is in the simple fact of having a common second language-
medium available for research and pedagogy. At AIS, every degree
candidate is required to work on a dissertation in their own native
language and in Esperanto—a process which observers of the AIS
have found to be demonstrably effective in raising students' met-
alinguistic awareness and exposing assumptions and biases that
might otherwise have gone unchallenged.
What would happen if we viewed an ability to express aca-
demic arguments across two dissimilar languages as a key metric
of "reproducibility" in humanities research? At minimum, we could
begin increasing confidence that the arguments made in the re-
search are not dependent on the idiosyncrasies of a particular
linguistic model or cultural horizon. But the use of Esperanto offers
two additional forms of openness that deserve consideration.
TRANSPARENCY OF GRAMMAR. Every part of speech in Es-
peranto is marked by a distinct ending and can be transposed to
any other part by changing that ending. Likewise, a wide range of
affixes are available for meticulously documenting transitivity, ver-
bal aspect, and other grammatical features. This factor in the
language's design has proven effective for language pedagogy in
what is known as the Paderborn Method, which teaches Esperanto
as a foundation for later language study much as the recorder is
used as a general introduction to playing musical instruments. To
return to our analogy with software, though, we might think of Es-
peranto as a kind of "verbose output," that lays the logic of
expressions bare by making the grammar expressing them more
visible.
GLOBAL ACCESSIBILITY. Esperanto was created for interna-
tional communication and its world-wide speaker base is near two
million. It is taught at universities in Hungary and China, broad -
cast by state media in Cuba and the Vatican, and promoted by
thousands of local clubs, small publishers, annual conferences, and
other infrastructure. As a complement to the current major lan-
guages of scholarship, its wider adoption in educational
167
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
organizations and research institutions would offer possibilities to
transcend and break down language barriers that currently inhibit
scholarly communication. Were the model of the International
Academy of Sciences San Marino to be followed globally, or even
just at European scale, the open access ecosystem of the future
could potentially guarantee access to research free not only of fi-
nancial restrictions on access but of linguistic ones as well.
Even just at the scale of the AIS, however, their experiment
has shown that a standard second language has important benefits
for open education. It renders transnational study and collabora-
tion more egalitarian and, perhaps most importantly, it forces
educators to critically reflect on a tool of scholarship so basic that
many of us scarcely think of it as a tool at all.
As we become more aware of the capacity for computer lan-
guages to hide threats to the integrity of our research, we must
paraphrase Tara Andrews' question and ask ourselves: Can we
truly know what models, assumptions, and inferences are made
within the vocabulary and grammar of a particular language? If so,
how? And if not, how can we justify a blind use of it? Esperanto is
no more immune to such embedded "models, assumptions, and in-
ferences" than any other language, but working in tandem with
students', instructors', and researchers' ethnic languages, it can il-
luminate what hides in the famously dark space within our skulls,
and it might just help us crack open the black boxes so pervasive in
our teaching and research.
Race MoChridhe is a Master of Library and Information Science
student at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and currently
serves as the Open Access Publishing Intern of the American Theo-
logical Library Association. His primary research interests center
on applications of interlinguistics to improve library and informa-
tion services, scholarly communication, and language pedagogy.
168
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Do you feel linguistic issues inhibit use of your ed-
ucational organization's materials? If so, how might
you begin addressing this issue?
• Race notes that "in the English-speaking world, re-
searchers commonly work in a single language, and
the paradigms that language establishes—the ef-
fects of its specific structure and lexicon—often go
unchallenged." Is this the case in your field? In your
organization? In what ways are your organization's
language choices shaping how it thinks about itself
and the people it serves? What assumptions are
embedded in these default language choices?
• Race describes a program in which "every degree
candidate is required to work on a dissertation in
their own native language and in Esperanto—a
process which observers of the AIS have found to be
demonstrably effective in raising students' metalin-
guistic awareness." How might you make your own
educational organization more aware of the power
of its language choices?
169
Crowdsourcing our way to a campus IT plan
Curtis A. Carver
W hen I became CIO at the University of Alabama at Birming-
ham in 2015, I confronted the same mandate every new IT
leader faces when assuming the role: outlining, developing, and ex-
ecuting a strategic plan. The pressure to do this swiftly and
immediately can be immense—and I think many CIOs feel com-
pelled to articulate and hand down fully formed plans on Day 1.
After all, that's typically the quickest way to assert your position
and vision as a leader.
But I like to take a different approach. I don't dictate my
team's initial goals. I open them up.
Working this way felt especially important in my new role at
UAB, which I knew was going to be the last gig of my career. I
wanted to make the largest contribution I could—not only to the
university, but also to higher education in general.
What better way to do this than to let them openly contrib-
ute to the goals my team would be tackling during my tenure?
So I let the entire university community help me determine
and prioritize our most pressing IT problems. The results were as-
tounding, a perfect example of the benefits of taking an iterative,
adaptive approach to this kind of development.
Let me share what happened.
Just a SPARK
My first day as CIO at UAB was June 1, 2015. That was also
the day we launched a new, university-wide idea collecting and
brainstorming platform. The platform (which we code-named
"SPARK," in honor of UAB's mascot, Blaze the Dragon), was a
170
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
crowdsource-style tool for collecting and surfacing the best ideas
for ways IT could improve the lives of students, administrators, and
faculty.
Anyone could use the platform to submit an idea. "Help us
understand the issues you're facing and what would make the big -
gest difference in your life," we told anyone interested in
participating. "You can submit an idea that anyone can comment
on, and as long as you play nice, everything is in scope."
Our goal was ambitious but clear: Identify 100 potential
"wins"—100 things we could do to improve university life—in 100
days, then implement all of them within a year.
Within the initiative's first 55 days, 386 users posted 73
ideas, made 367 comments, and cast 1,747 votes. (Keep in mind,
too, that this activity was spurred almost entirely by word of mouth
during the summer, when a sizable portion of the faculty and stu-
dents aren't even on campus.) As a result, we became aware of
issues and ideas like:
• Electronic signature of documents as part of moving to a
paperless system
• One gigabit bandwidth to the desktop
• Technology training and certification for IT pros and IT
consultants
• Unlimited storage for all students, faculty, and staff
• Orientation for new IT employees
And those are just a few. While the ideas were flooding in,
my team and I were taking meetings—hundreds of meetings (col-
lectively), including several town hall-style gatherings to solicit
feedback from the university community in an open forum.
In the end, we amassed an unbelievable amount of data.
How were we going to sort it so the best ideas could rise to the
top?
Making sense of it all
We began by arranging our crowdsourced suggestions into
four primary categories:
171
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
1. Ideas that are great, but not directly applicable to the
customer/community
2. Ideas for solutions that were actually already available
as part of our current IT infrastructure and resources
3. Ideas that were clearly "quick wins," something we could
implement in a day (or less)
4. Ideas that were groundbreaking and needed to be rolled
into a broader strategic plan with a longer timeline
Believe it or not, most of the ideas we received fell into the
first three categories. So our list of priorities was already becom-
ing clear.
At the same time, our team was working with the insightful
feedback we'd gleaned from our in-person meetings. Using mind-
mapping software, we charted common responses and pain points,
and connected these to our broader strategic goals and impera-
tives. All senior members of the IT leadership team contributed to
this effort.
With that, we'd found our 100 potential wins. And true to our
word, we got to work acting on all of them within the year.
The results are in
I'm proud to report that we actually achieved 147 wins be-
fore the following June. I can't possibly recount all of them here.
Many, however, were so startlingly simple—and yet so profoundly
game-changing—that they seem almost laughably obvious in hind-
sight.
For example, take our approach to passwords on campus.
Our policy really was outdated and ineffective, and we quickly
learned that people disliked our approach to password security. So
we modified aspects of it—first, our requirements for acceptable
passwords (making them much stronger) and, second, our required
interval for mandatory password changes (lengthening and align-
ing it with the operational rhythm of a university, so users needed
to switch passwords less frequently). Members of the campus com-
munity appreciated these changes so much that they were literally
172
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
hugging me on the street in gestures of pure joy—the first time in
my career, I can honestly say, that's ever happened to me.
In line with another frequently received request, we worked
diligently to increase the data storage limits for users on campus.
This work seemed especially pressing—and the need so very obvi-
ous—when I learned from faculty researching Parkinson's disease
that they weren't able to store all the high-resolution brain scans
they needed to do their work efficiently and effectively. Once we re-
moved their data caps, they told me they were finally able to spend
more time seeking a cure for Parkinson's and less time sorting
through data files to make space for new work.
As we were steadily chipping away at our 100-win checklist,
people around the campus couldn't help but take notice. My
provost threw my team a surprise party (complete with delicious
cake) to celebrate our crossing the 100-win milestone. Even the
most skeptical members of the faculty senate stood up and ap-
plauded my team at a budget meeting (and our fiercest critics
began saying things like "Well, while I don't think this is going to
last long-term, I'm suspending disbelief because you've demon-
strated you can achieve results"). And in another career-first
moment for me, I got to serve as an honorary coach during the
opening home football game. That's really when I realized that our
community now viewed the IT staff as trusted partners in campus
innovation. How many other IT organizations get recognized on the
football field?
Lessons learned
I learned some valuable lessons during those 100 busy days.
Here are a few of the most valuable:
TRUST THE COMMUNITY. Opening a feedback platform to
anyone on campus seems risky, but in hindsight I'd do it again in a
heartbeat. The responses we received were very constructive; in
fact, I rarely received negative and unproductive remarks. When
people learned about our honest efforts at improving the commu-
nity, they responded with kindness and support. By giving the
community a voice—by really democratizing the effort—we
173
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
achieved a surprising amount of campus-wide buy-in in a short pe-
riod of time.
TRANSPARENCY IS BEST. By keeping as many of our efforts as
public as possible, we demonstrated that we were truly listening to
our customers and understanding the effects of the outdated tech-
nology policies and decisions that were keeping them from doing
their best work. I've always been a proponent of the idea that ev-
eryone is an agent of innovation; we just needed a tool that allowed
everyone to make suggestions.
ITERATE, ITERATE, ITERATE. Crowdsourcing our first-year IT
initiatives helped us create the most flexible and customer-centric
plan we possibly could. The pressure to move quickly and lay down
a comprehensive strategic plan is very real; however, by delaying
that work and focusing on the evolving set of data flowing from our
community, we were actually able to better demonstrate our com-
mitment to our customers. That helped us build critical
reputational capital, which paid off when we did eventually present
a long-term strategic plan—because people already knew we could
achieve results. It also helped us recruit strong allies and learn
who we could trust to advance more complicated initiatives.
IT'S MORE WORK. Sure, acting alone to sketch a roadmap for
my first 100 days would have been easier. But it wouldn't have gen-
erated the results the crowdsourced version did. Without a doubt,
collaborative approaches like ours require more work than solitary,
draconian ones. You'll need to think strategically and long-term.
(Case in point: Launching SPARK on June 1 actually required three
months of planning and development leading up to that critical
day.) But if you really seize this opportunity to engage with your
community, you'll realize better results.
Our yearlong lesson in community-focused crowdsourcing
revealed the benefits that adaptive approaches to strategic plan-
ning can have for our organization. I'm sure they can do the same
for yours.
Curtis A. Carver Jr., Ph.D. is the Vice President and Chief Informa-
tion Officer for the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
174
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Curtis explains how he mobilized his entire cam-
pus to help him address the challenge of
establishing IT priorities. If you could engage your
entire educational organization, what problem
would you like to see it solve collectively?
• Could you "open up" critical decision making pro-
cesses in your educational organization? What
would you do? How would you start?
• Curtis notes that "collaborative approaches like
ours require more work than solitary, draconian
ones." What kinds of additional work did his open
approach necessitate? Do you think this more com-
plicated approach justified the results he and his
team achieved? How might you and your teams be-
gin addressing the work involved with taking an
open approach to setting goals?
175
How our organization works openly to make
education accessible
Tanner Johnson
I 'm lucky to work with a team of impressive students at Duke
University who are leaders in their classrooms and beyond. As
members of CSbyUs,118 a student-run organization based at Duke,
we connect university students to middle school students, mostly
from Title I schools across North Carolina's Research Triangle
Park.119 Our mission is to fuel future change agents from under-re-
sourced learning environments by fostering critical technology
skills for thriving in the digital age.
The CSbyUs Tech R&D team (TRD for short) recently set an
ambitious goal to build and deploy a powerful web application over
the course of one fall semester. Our team of six knew we had to do
something about our workflow to ship a product by winter break.
In our middle school classrooms, we teach our learners to use agile
methodologies and design thinking to create mobile applications.
On the TRD team, we realized we needed to practice what we
preach in those classrooms to ship a quality product by semester's
end.
This is the story of how and why we utilized the principles
we teach our students in order to deploy technology that will scale
our mission and make our teaching resources open and accessible.
118 http://csbyus.org/
119 https://www2.ed.gov/programs/titleiparta/index.html
176
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Setting the scene
For the past two years, CSbyUs has operated "on the
ground," connecting Duke undergraduates to Durham middle
schools via after-school programming. After teaching and evaluat-
ing several iterations of our unique, student-centered mobile app
development curriculum, we saw promising results. Our middle
schoolers were creating functional mobile apps, connecting to their
mentors, and leaving the class more confident in their computer
science skills. Naturally, we wondered how to expand our program-
ming.
We knew we should take our own advice and lean into web-
based technologies to share our work, but we weren't immediately
sure what problem we needed to solve. Ultimately, we decided to
create a web app that serves as a centralized hub for open source
and open access digital education curricula. "CurriculaHub" (name
inspired by GitHub) would be the defining pillar of CSbyUs's new
website, where educators could share and adapt resources.
But the vision and implementation didn't happen overnight.
Given our sense of urgency and the potential of "Curricu-
laHub," we wanted to start this project with a well defined plan.
The stakes were (and are) high, so planning, albeit occasionally te-
dious, was critical to our success. Like the curriculum we teach,
we scaffolded our workflow process with design thinking and agile
methodology, two critical 21st century frameworks we often fail to
practice in higher ed.
Our Process
What follows is a stepwise explanation of our design thinking
process, starting from inspiration and ending in a shipped proto-
type.
Step 1: Pre-Work
In order to understand the why to our what, you have to
know who our team is.
The members of this team are busy. All of us contribute to
CSbyUs beyond our TRD-related responsibilities. As an organiza-
177
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
tion with lofty goals beyond creating a web-based platform, we
have to reconcile our "on the ground" commitments (i.e., curricu-
lum curation, research and evaluation, mentorship training and
practice, presentations at conferences, etc.) with our "in the
clouds" technological goals.
In addition to balancing time across our organization, we
have to be flexible in the ways we communicate. As a remote mem-
ber of the team, I'm writing this chapter from Spain—but the rest
of our team is based in North Carolina, adding collaboration chal-
lenges.
Before diving into development (or even problem identifica-
tion), we knew we had to set some clear expectations for how we'd
operate as a team. We took a note from our curriculum team's book
and started with some rules of engagement. This is actually a well-
documented approach to setting up a team's social contract used
by teams across the tech space.120 During a summer internship at
IBM, I remember pre-project meetings where my manager and
team spent more than an hour clarifying principles of interaction.
Whenever we faced uncertainty in our team operations, we'd pull
out the rules of engagement and clear things up almost immedi-
ately. (An aside: I've found this strategy to be wildly effective not
only in my teams, but in all relationships).
Considering the remote nature of our team, one of our fa-
vorite tools is Slack. We use it for almost everything. We can't have
sticky-note brainstorms, so we create Slack brainstorm threads. In
fact, that's exactly what we did to generate our rules of engage-
ment. One open organization principle we take to heart is
transparency; Slack allows us to archive and openly share our
thought processes and decision-making steps with the rest of our
team.
120 https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/rules-of-engagement
178
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Step 2: Empathy Research
We're all here for unique reasons, but we find a common in-
tersection: the desire to broaden equity in access to quality digital-
era education.
Each member of our team has been lucky enough to study at
Duke. We know how it feels to have limitless opportunities and the
support of talented peers and renowned professors. But we're
mindful that this isn't normal. Across the country and beyond,
these opportunities are few and far between. Where they do exist,
they're confined within the guarded walls of institutes of higher
learning or come with a lofty price tag.
While our team members' common desire to broaden access
is clear, we work hard to root our decisions in research. So our
team begins each semester reviewing research that justifies our
existence. TRD works with CRD (curriculum research and develop-
ment) and TT (teaching team), our two other CSbyUs sub-teams, to
discuss current trends in digital education access, their systemic
roots, and novel approaches to broaden access and make materials
relevant to learners. We not only perform research collaboratively
at the beginning of the semester but also implement weekly stand-
up research meetings with the sub-teams. During these, CRD often
presents new findings we've gleaned from interviewing current
teachers and digging into the current state of access in our local
community. They are our constant source of data-driven, empathy-
fueling research.
Through this type of empathy-based research, we have found
that educators interested in student-centered teaching and digital-
era education lack a centralized space for proven and adaptable
curricula and lesson plans. The bureaucracy and rigid structures
that shape classroom learning in the United States makes reshap-
ing curricula around the personal needs of students daunting and
seemingly impossible. As students, educators, and technologists,
we wondered how we might unleash the creativity and agency of
others by sharing our own resources and creating an online ecosys-
tem of support.
179
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Step 3: Defining the Problem
We wanted to avoid scope creep caused by a poorly defined
mission and vision (something that happens too often in some orga-
nizations). We needed structures to define our goals and maintain
clarity in scope.121 Before imagining our application features, we
knew we'd have to start with defining our north star. We would
generate a clear problem statement to which we could refer
throughout development.
This is common practice for us. Before committing to new
programming, new partnerships, or new changes, the CSbyUs
team always refers back to our mission and vision and asks, "Does
this make sense?" (in fact, we post our mission and vision to the
top of every meeting minutes document). If it fits and we have ca-
pacity to pursue it, we go for it. And if we don't, then we don't. In
the case of a "no," we are always sure to document what and why
because, as engineers know, detailed logs are almost always a
good decision. TRD gleaned that big-picture wisdom and imple-
mented a group-defined problem statement to guide our sub-team
mission and future development decisions.
To formulate a single, succinct problem statement, we each
began by posting our own takes on the problem. Then, during one
of our weekly 30-minute-no-more-no-less stand-up meetings, we
identified commonalities and differences, ultimately merging all
our ideas into one. Boiled down, we identified that there exist mas-
sive barriers for educators, parents, and students to share, modify,
and discuss open source and accessible curricula. And of course,
our mission would be to break down those barriers with user-cen-
tered technology. This "north star" lives as a highly visible
document in our Google Drive, which has influenced our feature
prioritization and future directions.
Step 4: Ideating a Solution
With our problem defined and our rules of engagement es-
tablished, we were ready to imagine a solution.
121 https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/top-five-causes-scope-creep-6675
180
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
We believe that effective structures can ensure meritocracy
and community. Sometimes, certain personalities dominate team
decision-making and leave little space for collaborative input. To
avoid that pitfall and maximize our equality of voice, we tend to
use "offline" individual brainstorms and merge collective ideas on-
line. It's the same process we used to create our rules of
engagement and problem statement. In the case of ideating a solu-
tion, we started with "offline" brainstorms of three S.M.A.R.T.
goals.122 Those goals would be ones we could achieve as a software
development team (specifically because the CRD and TT teams of-
fer different skill sets) and address our problem statement. Finally,
we wrote these goals in a meeting minutes document, clustering
common goals and ultimately identifying themes that describe our
application features. In the end, we identified three: support, feed-
back, and open source curricula.
From here, we divided ourselves into sub-teams, repeating
the goal-setting process with those teams—but in a way that was
specific to our features. And if it's not obvious by now, we realized
a web-based platform would be the most optimal and scalable solu -
tion for supporting students, educators, and parents by providing a
hub for sharing and adapting proven curricula.
To work efficiently, we needed to be adaptive, reinforcing
structures that worked and eliminating those that didn't. For exam-
ple, we put a lot of effort in crafting meeting agendas. We strive to
include only those subjects we must discuss in-person and table ev-
erything else for offline discussions on Slack or individually
organized calls. We practice this in real time, too. During our regu-
lar meetings on Google Hangouts, if someone brings up a topic
that isn't highly relevant or urgent, the current stand-up lead (a
role that rotates weekly) "parking lots" it until the end of the meet -
ing. If we have space at the end, we pull from the parking lot, and
if not, we reserve that discussion for a Slack thread.
This prioritization structure has led to massive gains in
meeting efficiency and a focus on progress updates, shared techni-
122 https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/how-to-create-smart-goals
181
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
cal hurdle discussions, collective decision-making, and assigning
actionable tasks (the next-steps a person has committed to taking,
documented with their name attached for everyone to view).
Step 5: Prototyping
This is where the fun starts.
Given our requirements—like an interactive user experience,
the ability to collaborate on blogs and curricula, and the ability to
receive feedback from our users—we began identifying the best
technologies. Ultimately, we decided to build our web app with a
ReactJS frontend and a Ruby on Rails backend. We chose these due
to the extensive documentation and active community for both, and
the well-maintained libraries that bridge the relationship between
the two (e.g., react-on-rails). Since we chose Rails for our backend,
it was obvious from the start that we'd work within a Model-View-
Controller framework.
Most of us didn't have previous experience with web devel-
opment, neither on the frontend nor the backend. So, getting up
and running with either technology independently presented a
steep learning curve, and gluing the two together only steepened
it. To centralize our work, we use an open-access GitHub reposi-
tory. Given our relatively novice experience in web development,
our success hinged on extremely efficient and open collaborations.
And to explain that, we need to revisit the idea of structures.
Some of ours include peer code reviews—where we can exchange
best practices and reusable solutions, maintaining up-to-date tech
and user documentation so we can look back and understand de-
sign decisions—and (my personal favorite) our questions bot on
Slack, which gently reminds us to post and answer questions in a
separate Slack #questions channel.
We've also dabbled with other strategies, like instructional
videos for generating basic React components and rendering them
in Rails Views. I tried this and in my first video, I covered a basic
introduction to our repository structure and best practices for gen-
182
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
erating React components.123 While this proved useful, our team
has since realized the wealth of online resources that document
various implementations of these technologies robustly. Also, we
simply haven't had enough time (but we might revisit them in the
future).
We're also excited about our cloud-based implementation.
We use Heroku to host our application and manage data storage.
In next iterations, we plan to both expand upon our current fea-
tures and configure a continuous iteration/continuous development
pipeline using services like Jenkins integrated with GitHub.
Step 6: Testing
Since we've just deployed, we are now in a testing stage.
Our goals are to collect user feedback across our feature domains
and our application experience as a whole, especially as they inter-
act with our specific audiences. Given our original constraints
(namely, time and people power), this iteration is the first of many
to come. For example, future iterations will allow for individual
users to register accounts and post external curricula directly on
our site without going through the extra steps of email. We want to
scale and maximize our efficiency, and that's part of the recipe
we'll deploy in future iterations. As for user testing: We collect user
feedback via our contact form, via informal testing within our
team, and via structured focus groups. We welcome your construc-
tive feedback and collaboration. 124
Our team was only able to unite new people with highly var-
ied experience through the power of open principles and
methodologies. Luckily enough, each one I've described here is
adaptable to virtually every team.
Regardless of whether you work—on a software development
team, in a classroom, or, heck, even in your family—principles like
transparency and community are almost always the best founda-
tion for a successful organization.
123 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52kvV0plW1E
124 http://csbyus.org/
183
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Tanner Johnson is a teacher, technologist, and life-long learner.
He's interested in broadening access to quality computer science
education. Right now, he lives in San Francisco and works as a
software engineer. Outside of that, he likes making fresh pasta and
going for long walks around the city.
184
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Tanner explains the value of beginning meetings
by "clarifying principles of interaction." What does
this mean to the CSbyUS team? What "principles of
interaction" guide meetings in your educational or-
ganization? Are they explicit? Does everyone abide
by them? How can you (or should you) improve
them?
• "Meritocracy" is an important principle guiding
meetings of the CSbyUs team. What does that term
mean to the team? What does it mean to you? Does
any part of your educational organization operate
meritocratically? What benefits and drawbacks does
meritocracy seem to present?
• "Regardless of whether you work," Tanner argues,
"principles like transparency and community are al-
most always the best foundation for a successful
organization." Do you agree? Can you think of in-
stances in which this isn't the case? Why or why
not?
185
Making computer science curricula as
adaptable as our code
Amarachi Achonu
E ducators in elementary computer science face a lack of
adaptable curricula. Calls for more modifiable, non-rigid cur-
ricula are therefore enticing—assuming that such curricula could
benefit teachers by increasing their ability to mold resources for
individual classrooms and, ultimately, produce better teaching ex-
periences and learning outcomes.
Our team at CSbyUs noticed this scarcity,125 and we've cre-
ated an open source web platform to facilitate more flexible,
adaptable, and tested curricula for computer science educators. 126
The mission of the CSbyUs team has always been utilizing open
source technology to improve pedagogy in computer science,
which includes increasing support for teachers. Therefore, this
project primarily seeks to use open source principles—and the ben-
efits inherent in them—to expand the possibilities of modern
curriculum-making and support teachers by increasing access to
more adaptable curricula.
Rigid, monotonous, mundane
Why is the lack of adaptable curricula a problem for com-
puter science education? Rigid curricula dominate most
classrooms today, primarily through monotonous and routinely dis-
tributed lesson plans. Many of these plans are developed without
the capacity for dynamic use and without consideration of applica-
125 See Tanner Johnson's contribution to this volume.
126 https://csbyus.herokuapp.com/
186
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
tion to different classroom atmospheres. In contrast, an adaptable
curriculum is one that would account for dynamic and changing
classroom environments.
An adaptable curriculum means freedom and additional op-
tions for educators. This is especially important in elementary-level
classrooms, where instructors are introducing students to com-
puter science for the first time, and in classrooms with higher
populations of groups typically underrepresented in the field of
computer science. Here especially, it's advantageous for instruc-
tors to have access to curricula that explicitly consider diverse
classroom landscapes and grant the freedom necessary for adapt-
ing to specific student populations.
Making it adaptable
This kind of adaptability is certainly at work at CSbyUs. Hay-
ley Barton—a member of both the organization's curriculum-
making team and its teaching team, and a senior at Duke Univer-
sity majoring in Economics and minoring in Computer Science and
Spanish—recently demonstrated the benefits of adaptable curric-
ula during an engagement in the field. Reflecting on her teaching
experiences, Barton describes a major reason why curriculum
adaptation is necessary in computer science classrooms.
"We are seeing the range of students that we work with," she
says, "and trying to make the curriculum something that can be
tailored to different students."
A more adaptable curriculum is necessary for truly challeng-
ing students, Barton continues.
The need for change became most evident to Barton when
she began working with students to make their own preliminary
apps. Barton collaborated with students who appeared to be at dif-
ferent levels of focus and attention. On the one hand, a group of
more advanced students took well to the style of a demonstrative
curriculum, remaining attentive and engaged in the work. On the
other hand, another group of students seemed to have more trou-
ble focusing in the classroom—or even being motivated to engage
with computer science topics or skills to begin with. Witnessing
187
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
this difference among students, Barton saw how important it is for
curriculum to be adaptable in multiple ways so students could en-
gage with it at their respective levels.
"We want to challenge every student without making it too
challenging for any individual student," Barton says. "Thinking
about those things definitely feeds into how I'm thinking about the
curriculum in terms of making it accessible for all the students."
As a curriculum-maker, she subsequently uses experiences
like this to make changes to the original curriculum.
"If those other students have one-on-one time themselves,
they could be doing even more amazing things with their apps,"
says Barton.
Taking this advice, Barton would potentially incorporate into
the curriculum more emphasis on cultivating students' sense of
ownership in computer science, since this is important to their fo-
cus and productivity. For this, students may be afforded that sense
of one-on-one time. The result will affect the next round of teachers
who use the curriculum.
For these changes to be effective, the onus is on teachers to
notice the dynamics of the classroom. In the future, curriculum
adaptation may depend on paying particular attention to and iden-
tifying these subtle differences of curriculum style. Identifying and
commenting on these subtleties allows for the possibility of apply-
ing different strategies, and these changes are then applied to
curricula.
"We've gone through a lot of stages of development," Barton
says. "The goal is to have this kind of back and forth, where the
curriculum is something that's been tested, where we've used our
feedback, and also used other research that we've done, to make it
something that's actually impactful."
Hayley's "back and forth" process is an iterative process of
curriculum-making. Between utilizing curricula and modifying cur-
ricula, instructors like Hayley can take a once-rigid curriculum and
mold it to any degree that the user sees fit—again and again. This
iterative process depends on tests performed first in the classroom,
188
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
and it depends on the teacher's rationale and reflection on how
curricula uniquely pans out for them.
Adaptability of curriculum is the most important principle on
which the CSbyUs platform is built. Much like Hayley's process of
curriculum-making, curriculum adaptation should be iterative, as it
involves learning from experience, returning to the drawing board,
making changes, and finally, utilizing the curriculum again. Once
launched, the CSbyUS website will document this iterative
process.
The open-focused pedagogy behind the CSbyUs platform,
then, brings to life the flexibility inherent in the process of curricu-
lum adaptation. First, it invites and collects the valuable first-hand
perspectives of real educators working with real curricula to pro-
duce real learning. Next, it capitalizes on an iterative processes of
development—one familiar to open source programmers—to enable
modifications to those curricula (and the documentation of those
modifications). Finally, it transforms the way teachers encounter
curricula by helping them make selections from different versions
of both modified curriculum and "the original." Our platform's open
source strategy is crucial to cultivating a hub of flexible curricula
for educators.
Adopting open source practices can be a key difference in
making rigid curricula more moldable for educators. Furthermore,
since this approach effectively melds open source technologies
with open-focused pedagogy, open pedagogy can potentially pro-
vide flexibility for educators teaching various curricula across
disciplines.
Amarachi Achonu is a current undergrauate studying Computer
Science. As a member of the Technology Research and Develop-
ment team at CSbyUs, an open-source website for CS curriculum
and support, she has worked to build not only this platform but to
bridge the gap in technology careers for underrespresented stu-
dents.
189
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Review and discussion questions
• Amarachi notes that integrating open source prac-
tices into curriculum development is key to making
curricula adaptable for different students. What are
some of these practices? What is the relationship
between these practices and more malleable curric-
ula?
• Although it's easy to see the advantages of per-
sonalizing computer science curricula through what
Amarachi calls the "back-and-forth" iterative
process of curriculum development, would this kind
of process work at your own educational organiza-
tion? What roadblocks might educators at your
organization might face if they attempt this kind of
process?
• Amarachi explains that working with an adaptable
computer science curriculum is especially important
when teaching students who are traditionally under-
represented in the field of computer science. What
do you think is the connection between a curricu-
lum's adaptability and the level of engagement
from underrepresented students? When have you
experienced, either as an educator or a student, a
disconnect between a curriculum and particular stu-
dent populations?
190
Activities
191
Making those (dreaded) faculty meetings
transparent, collaborative, and effective
Aria F. Chernik & Tanner Johnson
ACTIVITY
Time required: The length of your scheduled faculty meeting, plus
approximately 30 additional minutes before the meeting to craft the
participatory agenda and approximately 15 minutes after the meeting
to send actionable follow ups
Materials necessary: Real-time editable, collaborative document
software (such as Google Docs)
P rofessor Jane has become disenchanted with faculty meet-
ings. She gazes toward the monotonous speaker past a sea of
screens (most likely focused on other tasks) and concludes that
these meetings are either a time sink, an echo chamber, wildly re-
dundant, superfluous, or some other combination of bad.
Whatever they are, they're not what meetings should be:
well-structured, laser-focused on the objective, all-hands-on-deck,
and maximally efficient.
Jane has an idea. Realizing the potential of so many brilliant
brains in a room, she decides the next meeting she leads will be
more focused, collaborative, and time-efficient than ever before—
perhaps it'll be a meeting about how to revamp meeting culture.
Regardless of the meeting objective, she needs some help.
Here's the process, from start to finish, that Jane (and you)
should take to transform that next faculty meeting and make it
more collaborative and participatory.
192
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Facilitation steps
STEP 0. Before you do anything else, determine whether you
actually need a meeting. Most of us in academia have become ac-
customed to monthly faculty meetings that are stone-etched in
perpetuity. Like Jane, we've often left those meetings feeling like
they've undervalued our time or, worse, completely wasted it.
The first step in building community and empowering people
is to ask yourself whether the meeting is truly necessary or
whether the same ends could be accomplished through different
means (like email or Slack). If the only reason you're calling a
meeting is to transmit information or because having one is a his-
torical precedent—then don't. Neither is a good reason on its own.
These are the meetings that result in disenchantment with meet-
ings.
Instead, set a meeting because you need to:
• Make an important decision
• Solve a problem
• Source feedback
• Retrospect and improve127
• Do some other super duper important thing that requires
other humans to be present in the same time and space
STEP 1. Prepare the agenda. Once you've thoughtfully deter-
mined that a meeting is necessary,128 then it's time to get to work.
Planning effective meetings is not a trivial task. They require inten-
tionality, attention to detail, thought-scenario planning, and much
more behind the scenes. Move forward voraciously attuned to the
objective at hand. All communities thrive on authentic collabora-
tion.
Spending time before the meeting drafting an invite list and
a participatory agenda can go a long way in fostering community
and meritocracy on your team. Jane has identified two problems
that open source principles can address: the room lacks appropri-
127 https://backlog.com/blog/three-ways-run-productive-retrospective/
128 https://www.atlassian.com/blog/teamwork/how-to-run-effective-
meetings
193
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
ate (and minimal) representation, and discussions demonstrate an
inequality of voice.
COMMUNITY: If you have any control over the list of atten-
dees at your faculty meetings, then your invite list should include
only individuals who will make unique contributions. Aim to keep
the list to a minimum, balancing the need for divergent ideas with
meaningful participation from each member. Importantly, a partici-
patory agenda asks participants to contribute agenda content prior
to the meeting. An editable document shared with your team works
well. In your meeting invitation, communicate that everyone should
read through and contribute to the document prior to the meeting.
This participatory agenda pre-meeting work is a critical time in-
vestment and goes a long way to curtailing conversations that are
tangential to desired goals.
MERITOCRACY: Educators know that their students have
unique learning styles, but all too often faculty and administrators
fail to apply this principle to their own meetings and interactions.
A participatory agenda is a fantastic way to solicit deep participa-
tion from those who need more time and space to formulate ideas
and opinions; it also sends a message to the community that all
contributions are not only welcome but needed. Once ideas are on
the agenda, in a healthy community the best ideas should win out—
even if they aren't yours.
STEP 2. Hold the meeting. It's time to make decisions and
document all the important stuff. Thankfully, you're set up for suc-
cess with a well-structured agenda. But keep in mind, you still
need to actively drive the meeting forward. Tuning out is not an
option for an effective meeting driver. Jane needs to stay on her
toes to keep things on track and on time, and that requires full at-
tention.
Here are three tips for doing that:
1. Identify a primary note taker since your attention will be
dedicated to keeping the meeting on track. The primary
note taker's role is to follow along with the meeting in
real time, writing down the key points discussed under
each agenda item. Consider annotating the agenda itself.
194
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
During the meeting, use the clear structure of the
agenda to your advantage; it represents clear expecta-
tions of flow and content for purposes of contributing.
2. Put non-agenda topics in the "Parking Lot." When the
room inevitably becomes stuck on an agenda item that
doesn't require immediate resolution, put it in the Park-
ing Lot. Throughout the meeting, facilitator Jane
tactfully moves to the Parking Lot those items that are
important to resolve but are not critical at the present
time—and the primary note taker records those items in
the documentation. This practice creates a log of future
agenda items and helps reduce anxiety related to hitting
objectives within the given timeframe.
3. Use anonymity to source authentic opinions. We've all
done it: We're not sure how our friends will react when
we suggest a place to eat, so we wait for them to offer
some ideas first. Often, external input quells our initial
choice. Whether it's with food or other important deci-
sions, our input gets shaped by others (a symptom that is
even stronger for agreeable personality types). To source
authentic ideas, Jane uses anonymous voting for impor-
tant decisions and alternative feedback formats. To
preserve ideas from external bias, consider an exercise
like passing around sticky notes for individuals to
silently document their opinion for a decision.
STEP 3. Finish on time—and close with actions. Always end
the meeting on time. Getting accustomed to doing this can take
time, but soon participants in your meetings will come to see this
practice not as rude but as deeply respectful of their time.
Yet even when your meeting is a great success (you ended 5
minutes early, people are smiling and sighing in relief, and it's
clearly time for high-fives all around) your work isn't over.
During the meat and potatoes of the meeting (see Step 2),
you kept the team laser focused on agenda items. You brought clar-
ity to those big decisions, or made a plan to integrate feedback, or
195
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
outlined clear steps for completing that new initiative. Mission ac-
complished, right?
Always, always, always budget five minutes at the end of the
meeting for an actionable recap and distribution plan. Without
these precious minutes, you risk losing all that valuable work you
just accomplished, as it floats away into the Ether of Unaccount-
ability. Now is the time to look back through the notes and
document down specific action items that emerged during the
meeting. For each action item, always publicly record:
• The task to be completed
• A due date
• The name of the person (or people) who will complete the
work by the date
By deliberately reviewing actionable items and making them
as specific as possible, we're setting ourselves up for success via
accountability measures. That way, we don't arrive at the next
meeting, where Terrance thinks Sue was going to check in with
Adam about that one budget item, but Sue thought Terrance was
going to do it in two weeks. Or, worse, they both forgot about it all
together.
STEP 4. Follow up. Jane knows she's surrounded by intelli-
gent team members. They're bright leaders in their fields. But
they're also human. And humans forget stuff. That's why it's Jane's
responsibility, as the meeting lead, to send reminders and share
what everyone accomplished, both within and beyond the meeting
team.
Spend some time cleaning up those meeting minutes and
writing a short summary with key takeaways. Also be sure every-
one listed as accountable for completing an action item receives a
copy of the meeting notes that underscores the work they agreed
to perform before the next scheduled meeting. Then send these off
to the meeting team as well as other key stakeholders. Strive for
transparency and oversharing whenever possible. And for bonus
points, look at that beautiful list of actionables with dates and
names. Now, imagine how lovely it would be to receive a gentle re-
minder for your actionable as the deadline approaches (we're
196
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
talking to you, Terrance!). Go do that! You'll find some great tools
(even email) that will send a timed reminder to your teammate
about that important item you all agreed upon last meeting. Less is
not more here.
Reflection
We know firsthand that running meetings the open source
way is effective. What has surprised us most is that running meet -
ings this way is also creative, inspiring, and fun. Without a doubt,
your most important resource is your community of people. Shift-
ing your meeting culture from one where information is simply
transferred and the same few voices dominate discussions to one
where the community is empowered to draw upon its individual
and collective talents to participate will transform work long after
the meeting ends—on time!
Aria F. Chernik, JD, PhD, is Associate Professor of the Practice at
Duke University and Founder and Director of Open Source Peda-
gogy, Research + Innovation (ospri.ssri.duke.edu). Her work
focuses on creating transformative, equity-focused learning con-
texts inspired by open source values and design principles.
Tanner Johnson is a teacher, technologist, and life-long learner.
He's interested in broadening access to quality computer science
education. Right now, he lives in San Francisco and works as a
software engineer. Outside of that, he likes making fresh pasta and
going for long walks around the city.
197
Digital forensics the open way: A tabletop
approach to common scenarios
Denise Ferebee, Carolyn Butler, Dipankar Dasgupta & Marcus
Kelly
ACTIVITY
Time required: 3‒8 hours (depending on activity type and audience)
Materials necessary: Varies (see individual activity descriptions)
D igital forensics is the process of collecting, processioning,
preserving, analyzing, and presenting computer-related evi-
dence in support of network vulnerability mitigation and/or
criminal, fraud, counterintelligence, or law enforcement investiga-
tions.129 Teaching digital forensics concepts can be difficult,
because it involves complex situational analysis and understanding
(there is no standard format for analyzing a crime!). For an effec-
tive implementation of digital forensics, learners need to be active
participants in a situated learning environment.
Digital forensics exercises require an activity approach
through which learners explore and analyze a situation requiring
the use of forensic tools specific to the component requiring analy-
sis. To the greatest extent possible, this approach should be
collaborative and adaptable to maximize its effectiveness. There-
fore, in what follows, we share three versions of a digital forensics'
tabletop activity, each adapted for a different learning context and
129 https://niccs.us-cert.gov/workforce-development/cyber-security-
workforce-framework/digital-forensics
198
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
type of student. Each iteration involves the use of open source digi-
tal forensics tools.
Why a tabletop session? Tabletop exercises are discussion-
based sessions in which team members meet in an informal setting
to discuss roles during a critical incident. Hypothetical scenarios
allow teams to evaluate their readiness to respond during critical
incidents. In the following activities, a facilitator guides participant
through an open discussion about a specific critical incident. The
duration of a tabletop exercise depends on several factors: the au-
dience, the topic being exercised, and the exercise objectives.
Many tabletop exercises can be conducted in a few hours, so they
are cost-effective tools to validate plans and capabilities. It is im-
portant to allocate the appropriate time for each exercise so that
each group can finish.130
Cyber Camp Capture the Flag Activity (CCCTF)
Cybersecurity must be everyone's concern. Engaging K‒12
learners in activities that promote the development of their cogni-
tive and computational skills is paramount. Therefore,
Cybersecurity should be covered in K‒12 and post-secondary edu-
cation curricula. CCCTF activities need to be adapted for specific
learning groups on age and learning experience. The CCCTF par-
ticipants for this activity ranged from ages 11‒17 and grouped
appropriately.
Learners participate in teams of two or three, while compet-
ing against other teams. A sample scenario is illustrated in Figure
1.
REQUIRED MATERIALS: evidence sheets, character cards, clue
cards, passcode/flag, clue hints, penalties, and game rules.
SUGGESTED OPEN SOURCE TOOLS: vi text editor, hex editor,
Kali Linux131
FACILITATOR OBJECTIVES: introduce digital forensics skill
sets needed, introduce the scenario, guide the teams through the
130 https://www.ready.gov/business/testing/exercises
131 https://www.kali.org/
199
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
process without revealing solutions, and give teams the ground
rules for the game
PARTICIPANT EXPECTATIONS: all team members must be will-
ing to actively participate and must follow the rules of the game
Scenario: AnyCorp has had its internal yearly product launch
meeting. At this meeting of company officials, a secret
slide deck (PowerPoint Presentation) was discussed. After
the meeting, the slide deck was leaked to a potential
competitor. AnyCorp's Information Security (InfoSec)
Department is investigating the incident. You are an
investigator. You have been given a set of potential
suspects. Use the game clues and the information covered
today to determine the culprit.
Figure 1: Example of CCCTF game scenario
Each clue provided in the game covers an example of a digi-
tal forensics skill the participants must master. Examples of these
are shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3.
Clue 2
Objective: email headers
Description: The two parties involved have been
communicating. You are tasked with finding the email
communication in which they confirm that they have the slide
deck and are prepared to exchange the information for money.
Goal: Find the passcode to the next clue.
Figure 2: Example of CCCTF game clue objective (email headers)
Clue 5
Objective: image file identification
Description: All the files have been downloaded from the
suspect's Facebook account. You are tasked with identifying
the file showing the culprit.
Goal: Find the final passcode and catch the suspect.
200
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Figure 3: Example of CCCTF game clue objective (image file identification)
Facilitation steps
Phase 1: Preparation
STEP 1. Cover background topics on email header content.
STEP 2. Create a CCCTF game scenario (see Figure 1).
STEP 3. Explain how to use a text editor (i.e., vi) to view the
content of the text file.
STEP 4. Create a text file of the email with available email
headers.
STEP 5. Include a passcode in the text file containing the
email.
STEP 6. Include other email text files for search purposes for
the game.
STEP 7. Create character cards with background information
for each of the characters for the scenarios.
STEP 8. Create clue cards that pertain to specific digital
forensic techniques that learners will explore.
STEP 9. For each clue, create a skill worksheet on which fol-
lowing information is both provided and captured:
• Clue number
• Description of technique used to solve the clue
• Passcode
• If a hint was given, a notation of the penalty
STEP 10. Set rules for playing the game:
• Teams of two to three people
• Establish a first, second, and third place price
• Hints to clues will incur a two-minute penalty with a max
of three hints per game of CCCTF
• Team that finishes the fastest with the right answer wins
(i.e., first, second, and third place prices)
• Maximum time limit of two hours
Phase 2: Forensic analysis
STEP 1. Divide learners into teams of two to three people.
201
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
STEP 2. Provide game rules to CCCTF teams.
STEP 3. Provide teams with all the manipulatives used dur-
ing the game as follows:
• a CCCTF game scenario
• character cards
• an evidence worksheet
• the first clue
• the Kali Linux instance you will use to perform forensic
analysis
STEP 4. Provide the image to the learners for analysis.
STEP 5. Answer any questions about the game for clarifica-
tion prior to the start of the game.
STEP 6. Remind teams that they can use their notes covered
in the earlier session in reference to digital forensic techniques.
STEP 7. Start the game.
STEP 8. Each time a team solves a clue, they will verify the
answer (i.e., passcode or potential criminal is correct) and the fa-
cilitator will note (on their evidence worksheet) that their answer
has been validated. At this time, determine whether they've
reached the end of the game or need a new clue.
Phase 3: Game awards
STEP 1. Determine which team is in first, second, and third
place.
STEP 2. Validate answers (i.e., passcodes/flags and sus-
pected criminal).
STEP 3. Award prizes.
Reflection
Learners will be at different learning levels and will have
different experiences regarding critical thinking. Particularly, in a
K‒12 environment, we suggest having co-facilitators with the abil-
ity to answer scenario-based questions. In our camp experiences,
for example, we fielded questions about techniques or unforeseen
game parameters. Having multiple facilitators available to answer
questions, made the activities run much smoother and easier. Facil-
itators had the option to provide teams with hints (along with the
202
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
understanding that a hint would result in a game penalty) thus,
keeping the game interesting and fun, where anyone could poten-
tially be a winner while introducing group dynamic formation.
2. Workshop LEGO-based Capture the Flag Activity
(WLCTF)
By constructing a LEGO crime scene model, we will focus on
cybersecurity from a visual and tactical experiential learning
method. This version of the activity is conducive to post-secondary
and adult learning environments, because it uses discussion-based
and game-related principles (i.e., learning experience and engage-
ment).
In this activity, facilitators will provide teams with a physical
model of the crime scenario and a narrative. Each team member is
assigned a role, which encourages participation from everyone. We
suggest using curriculum models such as POGIL to provide guide-
lines for this activity.132 Team/group sizes for this activity should be
three to four people. A sample scenario for this activity is illus-
trated in Figure 4.
REQUIRED MATERIALS: character cards, clue cards, passcode/
flag, clue hints, game rules
RECOMMENDED OPEN SOURCE TOOLS: MySQL, Kali Linux
FACILITATOR OBJECTIVES: introduce digital forensics skill
sets needed, introduce the scenario, guide the teams through the
process without revealing solutions, give teams the ground rules
for the game, and introduce the concept of roles
PARTICIPANT EXPECTATIONS: all team members must be will-
ing to actively participate and follow the rules of the game, and
each team member must select a role
Scenario: AcmeHealth has had its medical database
compromised. They are unable to access any patient data.
AcmeHealth's Information Security (InfoSec) Department is
investigating the incident. You are an investigator. You
have been given a set of potential suspects. Use the game
132 https://pogil.org/
203
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
clues and the information covered today to determine the
culprit.
Figure 4: Example of WLCTF game scenario
Each clue provided in the game covers an example of a digi-
tal forensics skill the participants must master. Examples of these
are shown in Figures 5 and 6.
Clue 3
Objective: Dropbox133
Description: Communications and files were exchanged via the
cloud in preparation for the theft. You are tasked with
finding the user account and location that was used.
Goal: Find the passcode to the next clue.
Figure 5: Example of WLCTF game clue objective (Dropbox)
Clue 6
Objective: MySQL134
Description: InfoSec, working with area law enforcement, has
discovered that the potential suspect/suspects kept a
database of all the hospitals they were going to attack.
However, they had a novice hacker in their ranks, and he/she
oversaw the database. Determine if he/she can be linked to
the database.
Goal: Find the final passcode and catch the suspect.
Figure 6: Example of WLCTF game clue objective (MySQL)
133 https://www.dropbox.com/
134 https://www.mysql.com/
204
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Facilitation steps
Phase 1: Preparation
STEP 1. Cover background topics on Dropbox content, like:
• Using a SQL viewer
• Using the support documentation for Dropbox
STEP 2. Create a WLCTF game scenario.
STEP 3. Create a LEGO model of crime scene with appropri-
ate characters.
STEP 4. Install a base installation of Dropbox and make an
image of the instance.
STEP 5. Include passcode/flag in the configuration file for
Dropbox.
STEP 6. Create character cards with background information
for each of the characters for the scenarios.
STEP 7. For each clue, create a skill worksheet on which fol-
lowing information is both provided and captured:
• Clue number
• Description of multiple techniques participants can use to
solve the clue
• Reflection questions that provide discussion points for the
team. For example: What technique did you use to solve
the clue? What was the passcode for the next clue? As a
team, describe a situation other than the scenario and
clue where you could use this technique. Please include
the benefit.
Phase 2: Forensic Analysis
STEP 1. Divide learners into teams of three to four people.
STEP 2. Provide game parameters to WLCTF teams.
STEP 3. Provide teams with all the manipulatives used dur-
ing the game as follows:
• WLCTF game scenario
• character cards
• clue worksheets
• role descriptions for each team member
205
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
• the first clue
• the Kali Linux instance you will use to perform forensic
analysis
STEP 4. Provide the image to participants for analysis.
STEP 5. Answer any questions about the game for clarifica-
tion prior to the start of the game.
STEP 6. Remind teams that they can use their notes covered
in the earlier session in reference to digital forensic techniques.
STEP 7. Start the game.
STEP 8. Each time a team has solved a clue, they will verify
the answer (i.e., passcode or potential criminal is correct) and the
facilitator will note (on their evidence worksheet) that their answer
has been validated. At this time, determine whether they've
reached the end of the game or need a new clue.
Phase 3: Game reflection
STEP 1. When all teams have completed the game, begin the
discussion of each clue worksheet.
STEP 2. Discuss the techniques used for solving the clues.
STEP 3. Discuss participants' issues with solving clues.
STEP 4. Discuss how the techniques can be used in other sit-
uations outside of the ones covered during the WLCTF.
STEP 5. Discuss how the model helped with visualizing and
analyzing the situation.
Reflection
We have conducted this version of the activity with profes-
sionals at different experience levels. Differences in experience
became critical to our managing time. We recommend limiting the
overall class size based on the number of co-facilitators present.
Otherwise, learners will become idle and the activity will lose its
cooperative feel.
Virtual reality-based activities (VRA)
In this section, we will focus on cybersecurity from a post-
secondary and adult learner prospective. The VRA makes cyberse-
curity education accessible to this audience using group
206
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
discussions, virtual reality immersion, and game-related principles
(i.e., learning experience and engagement).
In this activity, teams are provided with a virtual reality
model of the crime scenario and a narrative. Each team member is
assigned a specific role, which encourages participation from ev-
eryone. We suggest using curriculum models such as POGIL to
provide guidelines for this aspect.
Team/group sizes for this activity should be around three to
four people. A sample scenario for this activity is illustrated in Fig-
ure 7.
• REQUIRED MATERIALS: character cards, clue cards, pass-
code/flag, clue hints, penalties, and game rules
• RECOMMENDED OPEN SOURCE TOOLS: vi editor, hex editor,
and Kali Linux
• FACILITATOR OBJECTIVES: introduce digital forensics skill
sets needed, introduce the scenario, guide the teams
through the process without revealing solutions, give
teams the ground rules for the game, and introduce the
concept of roles
• PARTICIPANT EXPECTATIONS: all team members must be
willing to actively participate and follow the rules of the
game, and each team member must select a role
Scenario: AnyCorp has had its internal yearly product launch
meeting. At this meeting of company officials, a secret
slide deck (PowerPoint Presentation) was discussed. After
the meeting, the slide deck was leaked to a potential
competitor. AnyCorp's Information Security (InfoSec)
Department is investigating the incident. You are an
investigator. You have been given a set of potential
suspects. Use the game clues and the information covered
today to determine the culprit.
Figure 7: Example of VRA game scenario
Each clue provided in the game covers and example of a dig-
ital forensics skill the participants must master. Examples of these
are shown in Figure 8 and Figure 9.
207
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Clue 2
Objective: email headers
Description: The two parties involved have been
communicating. You are tasked with finding the email
communication where they confirm that they have the slide
deck and are prepared to exchange the information for money.
Goal: Find the passcode to the next clue.
Figure 8: Example of VRA game clue objective (email headers)
Clue 5
Objective: image file identification
Description: All of the files have been downloaded from the
suspects Facebook account. You are tasked with identifying
the file showing the culprit.
Goal: Find the final passcode and catch the suspect.
Figure 9: Example of VRA game clue objective (image file identification)
Facilitation steps
Phase 1: Preparation
STEP 1. Cover background topics on email header content.
STEP 2. Create a VRA game scenario.
STEP 3. Create a virtual crime scene environment.
STEP 4. Explain how to use a text editor (i.e., vi) to view the
content of the text file.
STEP 5. Create a text file of the email with available email
headers.
STEP 6. Include passcode in the text file containing the
email.
STEP 7. Include other email text files for search purposes for
the game.
208
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
STEP 8. Create character cards with background information
for each of the characters for the scenarios.
STEP 9. Create clue cards that pertain to a specific digital
forensic technique that the learner will explore.
STEP 10. Create a skill worksheet for each clue where the
following information is provided and captured for each clue
solved:
• Clue number
• Description of multiple techniques that can be used to
solve the clue
• Reflection questions that provide discussion points for the
team. For example: What technique did you use to solve
the clue? What was the passcode for the next clue? As a
team, describe a situation other than the scenario and
clue where this technique can be used. Please include the
benefit.
Phase 2: Forensic Analysis
STEP 1. Divide learners in teams of three to four people.
STEP 2. Provide game parameters to VRA teams.
STEP 3. Provide teams with all the manipulatives used dur-
ing the game as follows:
• VRA game scenario
• character cards
• clue worksheets
• role descriptions for each team member
• the first clue
• the Kali Linux instance you will use to perform forensic
analysis
STEP 4. Provide the image to the learners for analysis.
STEP 5. Answer any questions about the game for clarifica-
tion prior to the start of the game.
STEP 6. Remind teams that they can use their notes covered
in the earlier session in reference to digital forensic techniques.
STEP 7. Start the game.
209
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
STEP 8. Each time a team has solved a clue, they will verify
the answer (i.e., passcode or potential criminal is correct) and the
facilitator will note on their clue worksheet that their answer has
been validated. At this time, idetermine whther they've reached the
end of the game or need a new clue.
Phase 3: Game reflection
STEP 1. When all teams have completed the game, begin the
discussion of each clue worksheet.
STEP 2. Discuss the techniques used for solving the clues.
STEP 3. Discuss participants' issues with solving clues.
STEP 4. Discuss how the techniques can be used in other sit-
uations outside of the ones covered during the VRA.
STEP 5. Discuss how the model helped with visualizing and
analyzing the situation.
Reflection
The activity can be done with learners at different experi-
ence levels. The key here is managing time. Therefore, you need to
limit the overall class size based on the number of co-facilitators
you will have. Otherwise, learners will become idol and you will
lose the team aspect of the activity. Also, you will need gauge each
learners experience with using virtual reality equipment.
Dr. Denise Ferebee is an assistant professor of Computer Science
and the Director of the Center of Cybersecurity at LeMoyne-Owen
College. She is a published scholar with both academic and indus-
try experience in the areas of cybersecurity, data analysis,
programming, and system administration.
Carolyn Butler works as a Project Coordinator for the Center for
Information Assurance (CfIA), where she leads the CfIA team in cy-
bersecurity training initiatives and instructional design processes.
210
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Dr. Dipankar Dasgupta is a professor of Computer Science at the
University of Memphis and founding Director of the Center for In-
formation Assurance (CfIA). He has more than 30 years of
academic experience in Cybersecurity which include digital immu-
nity, adaptive multi-factor authentication.
Marcus Kelly is a recent graduate of LeMoyne-Owen College
where he received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science.
211
How to collect feedback from your students
(or, how to assess the sting of teenage
rejection)
Charlie Reisinger
ACTIVITY
Time required: 60‒90 minutes
Materials necessary: Red and green paper sticky dots, a color printer or
copier, a whiteboard with dry erase markers
H ow does your school leadership team promote a more inclu-
sive and open culture? Feedback is doubtless part of the
process. Schools commonly solicit solicit teacher, parent, and com-
munity input when planning new programs and projects. It seems
everyone has something to say about the color of the band uni-
forms or the price of chocolate milk in the cafeteria.
But too often, students are absent from the decision-making
table. Yet when costs are high and the stakes are huge, schools
can't afford to ignore student feedback.
In January 2019, the Penn Manor School District board of di-
rectors voted to approve an $82.7 million high school renovation
and construction project. Years of architectural development, fi-
nancial modeling, and instructional design guided the decision.
And equally important was student feedback about their learning
spaces.
Before we drew a single pixel on the final construction docu-
ments, student feedback was shaping major design decisions. Early
in the building construction planning, we asked students to con-
tribute feedback on the design and layout of the forthcoming
212
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
facility. A student focus group took part in a visual listening exer-
cise in which they shared ideas on interior concepts, classroom
models, and common learning spaces. And even though the student
feedback team would never reap the benefits of the renovated high
school facility, they were honored to shape the destiny of a building
that will serve both their younger siblings and subsequent genera-
tions.
The district's architectural partner ran the visual listening
activity using a method for facilitating student-centered conversa-
tions, and I'll share it here. Although the following steps are
specific to a construction project, we can generalize it to any
project for which leaders must gather and prioritize concepts, de-
signs, and images. It's simple—and effective.
Facilitation steps
Phase 1: Preparation
STEP 1. Collect a wide variety of photos and diagrams and
print one image each onto a standard page of printer paper. In our
exercise, for example, the images included everything from class-
room furniture arranged in different layouts and patterns to
pictures of school facility spaces including cafeterias, gyms, li-
braries, staircases, music rooms, auditoriums, and social gathering
areas. Color photos are essential. Here's a chance to test the new
color copier!
STEP 2. Tape the pictures side-by-side onto a wide wall.
Quantity matters. We plastered more than 100 photos in a grid ap-
proximately 18 columns wide by six rows tall. The sheer size had a
dramatic visual impact on the students.
STEP 3. Collect a batch of adhesive, color-coding dot stick-
ers. Try to find sticky dots with a small diameter; large dots will
smother the photos. You'll need at least two different colors. Bright
green and bright red dots are easy to spot and straightforward to
interpret as "like" and "dislike."
STEP 4. Gather one eager and inquisitive student focus
group. Fifteen students comprised our team. Of course, your stu-
213
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
dent group should include diverse representation from every
clique, class, and club.
Phase 2: Get voting
STEP 1. A designated facilitator should provide each student
with green and red dots—perhaps 10 of each color—and kick off
the process. Instruct participants to place the green dots on the
features and designs they like and the red dots on the features
they don't like. The facilitator keeps time. Allow students 15 min-
utes to place all their dots.
STEP 2. Wait for participants to place all their dots.
STEP 3. Discuss both the features and spaces receiving a
splash of green and those subjected to the red dot of teenage rejec-
tion. Some images will receive many dots and clear patterns will
emerge. During our discussion and debrief, student opinion was
(as you might expect from 15- to 18-year-olds) deliciously frank
and unfiltered. Lively student criticism and comments are an au-
thentic perspective on the project. To structure the discussion,
consider asking questions like:
• What features of the school design appealed to you? Why
did you choose to place your limited dots on these fea-
tures?
• Given limited funding, we can't build everything. How
would you rank order the most popular features? What
are your criteria for making that choice?
• Why did you place the red dots? Was it the color, design,
or something else? How might those features be modified
to be more functional or fun?
• For the features that received no green or red dots, what
could be improved to make the designs more appealing
and inviting?
• Can the group reach a consensus on the two most impor-
tant building design features and two features to
absolutely avoid?
STEP 4. Record the data. I recommend taking photos of the
completed exercise before removing the pictures and dots from the
214
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
wall. The visual record will be essential for later analysis. For in-
stance, our conversation with students at Penn Manor helped us
identify gaps between what our district design team envisioned,
and what our students preferred.
Reflection
One crucial tip for running the visual listening exercise—the
facilitator must be neutral during the discussion. The facilitator's
role is to encourage participation, promote healthy discussion, and
seek to clarify student ideas and thoughts. But be mindful of the
students who may need time to reflect and process what they saw
and heard during the activity. Consider creating an email address
or online form to capture student feedback and thoughts well after
the focus group adjourns.
Charlie Reisinger is the Director of Technology for Penn Manor
School District in Lancaster County, PA. He leads the district's
award-winning one-to-one laptop learning program and student
technology help desk. His first book, The Open Schoolhouse,
chronicles how open source principles and software transformed
learning at Penn Manor. Follow Charlie on Twitter at @charlie3.
215
Performing the collaborative dilemma
Gina Likins
ACTIVITY
Estimated time to complete: 30‒60 minutes (add 15‒20 minutes if
using the bonus decision framework discussion module)
Materials needed: Two varieties of prizes, one "choice card" for every
participant, a whiteboard and markers, signs that read "30 seconds"
and "20 seconds," tape measure (if using bonus decision framework
module)
I wanted groups to experience open source values in a very con-
crete, hands-on way—so I created a game called "Candy or
Swag,"135 which is based on The Prisoner's Dilemma. 136 Unlike The
Prisoner's Dilemma, however, Candy or Swag tests a negotiation
scenario based on reward (rather than punishment) and uses real,
tangible prizes of varying value to demonstrate how collaboration
and transparency can form the basis of a sound business strategy.
In this chapter, I'll explain how I run "Candy or Swag," in-
cluding game setup, instructions for play, and hints for facilitation.
135 Adapted from "Teaching the Prisoner's Dilemma More Effectively:
Engaging the participants," by Michael A. McPherson and Michael L.
Nieswiadomy
(http://www.cas.unt.edu/~mcpherson/papers/mcpherson_nieswiadomy_
jee.pdf)
136 The Prisoner's Dilemma
(http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/prisoners-dilemma.asp) is a
classic exercise in game theory that explores the "competing" desires
of cooperation and self-preservation. I've always been fascinated by
game theory and the Prisoner's Dilemma, but found them difficult to
explain to others—because they're abstract, existing in the realm of
"thought experiment."
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Facilitation steps
Phase 1: Preparation
STEP 1. Gather materials. For this exercise, you will need
four things:
• Prizes of two different varieties: "candy" and "swag."
Candy (or "low value" prizes) can be anything with trivial
value, like individually wrapped pieces of candy (my typi-
cal choice), pennies, or stickers. To estimate quantity,
assume that every participant can win a piece of candy
every "round" and that you will run at least eight rounds.
Swag (or "high value" prizes) doesn't have to be physical
objects; it could be "two hours off," for example—but
there should be a physical representation of the prize,
like a coupon (I've used company-branded items that we
usually give away at conferences). To estimate quantity,
figure that every participant can have one piece of "swag"
and have a few to spare.
• A "choice card" for each participant. On each card, write
the name of the "low value" prize on one side, and on the
reverse write the "high value" prize. I tend to use candy
for the former and swag for the latter (hence the name of
the exercise), but you should use whatever works best for
you. Throughout this chapter, I'll use the terms "candy"
and "swag" as placeholders for these two types of prizes.
• A whiteboard and whiteboard markers or printed sheets
to distribute with the payoff matrix (see Figure 1).
• Signs (handwritten is fine) reading "30 seconds" and "20
seconds."
STEP 2. Place a choice card at each participant's desk.
Phase 2: Game Play
STEP 1. Explain the rules to participants. Here they are:
1. No talking from this point forward. Anyone who talks
gets neither candy nor swag.
2. You have a choice card in front of you. When I say so,
pick up the card and hold it so that your choice (of candy
217
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
or swag) is facing up and the other side is hidden by
your hand.
3. I'll come around and tally your choices, so make sure to
hold your card so I can see it but no one else can. If you
want "candy," for example, hold the card so I can see
"candy" when I come around.
4. Here's the twist: Whether you receive candy, swag—or
nothing at all!—is based on what choices the whole
group makes, based on a payoff matrix.
5. Here's how the payout works. Pay close attention.
STEP 2. Explain the "Payout Matrix." I find that constructing
the payoff matrix in real-time on the whiteboard (while talking it
through) works best. This seems to help participants better under-
stand the choices.
If using a whiteboard is not feasible, you can distribute
printed copies of the payoff matrix. The payoff matrix is based on a
"target number" of participants, which is the maximum number
that can choose "swag" and ensure a scenario where everyone gets
something. I usually set the number at roughly 1/10 the size of the
group. For example: In a group of 20, the target number is 2, while
for a group of 8, the target is 1 (as it's hard to have less than a
whole person). For a group of 15, I'd use 2 as the target.
IF... WHO GETS CANDY WHO GETS SWAG
… everyone chooses candy Everyone No one
… ≤ target# of participants Everyone except the The participants who chose
choose swag participants who chose swag swag
… > target# of participants No one No one
choose swag
Figure 1: The "payout matrix"
After explaining the payout matrix and taking questions,
you're ready to play! (Important: Do not tell the participants how
many rounds you're playing.)
218
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
STEP 3. Ask the participants to choose candy or swag by
holding their choice card so that you can see their choice (but no
one else can).
STEP 4. Count the number of participants who chose swag.
STEP 5. Tell the group how many people chose swag (but not
who chose swag). Explain what everyone won (if anything) using
the payout matrix above, and hand out prizes.
STEP 6. Run a few rounds (at least three) like this, then ask
for some reflection about what the participants are noticing.
STEP 7. By now the participants are usually getting a little
frustrated (which is fine), so explain: "We are going to try playing
the game a little differently—in a way that's more 'open.'"
STEP 8. Review the Open Organization Definition (see Ap-
pendix) and ask the group if they think it might help if they were
allowed to collaborate a little before making their decision for
candy or swag. Assuming they jump on this opportunity (and I've
never seen a group that hasn't), you can explain some new rules.
STEP 9. Explain these new rules:
1. You will have one minute from when I say "go" to collab-
orate as a group before each of you again chooses candy
or swag.
2. I'll hold up signs telling you when you have 30 seconds
left, then 20 seconds left, then count down the last ten.
3. All the rest of the rules are the same. Remember to
choose the card for the prize you want, then hold it so
that I am the only person who can see your choice.
STEP 10. Say "Go."
STEP 11. At 30 seconds, hold up the "30 second" card. Then,
at 20 seconds, hold up the "20 second" card. At 10 seconds, begin
a silent countdown using your hands held high above your head.
(Note: I'm not incredibly strict with the timing. If there was clear
progress, I let the time run long, for example. This step is primarily
a way to ensure participants know there's not room for endless de-
bate.)
STEP 12. As above, tally the votes for swag and explain the
"payout." If at any time a participant asks how many more rounds
219
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
there will be, tell them that you don't know. Run at least three
rounds this way. Run more rounds if it takes them a while to get
collaborating.
STEP 13. After a couple of rounds of playing the game this
way, ask the group if—based on your discussions about
"openness"—anyone can think of a change that would make the
process even more open.
STEP 14. If the group has had people who said they'd choose
candy but really chose swag in the collaboration period (what we
might call "cheaters"), they'll usually come up with "transparency"
on their own. Even if you haven't seen cheaters so far, though, con-
sider proposing a hypothetical situation asking what would have
happened if the group still ended up with too many swag choices
and how that would have affected the outcome. (I will often use
this opportunity to talk about the open source idea of "trust then
verify"—or collaborating with people to find the best solution,
rather than competing, but having the code be open and transpar-
ent to everyone so it's "checkable.")
STEP 15. Change the rules one more time. Now have the
participants make their choices in an "open" or transparent way
(for example, by placing their choice card face up on the table).
This variant is especially helpful if you have groups that are unable
to figure out how to effectively manage the collaboration variant of
the rules.
STEP 16. If using the bonus decision-making framework dis-
cussion module, skip to it now (see below). Otherwise, take a few
minutes to ask the class for their perceptions of the experience.
For example:
• how the first few (non-collaborative) rounds felt to them
and what they observed
• how the collaboration changed their process
• which of the three types of rounds they felt was "easiest"
Of course there are no wrong answers—the goal here is to
cement the experience of collaborating and working transparently.
220
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Bonus decision-making framework module
Observation of the negotiations during the collaboration
rounds provides a useful jumping-off point for discussions of deci-
sion-making methods, how software makes decisions, and the
implications of developer choices on the ability of software to make
unbiased decisions.
For this part of the exercise you'll also need a tape measure
—the retractable ones commonly used to measure lumber are per-
fect.
Facilitation steps
Phase 1: Observation, Recollection & Brainstorming
STEP 1. During the collaboration round, notice how partici-
pants decide who gets the swag. Often, they'll discuss and discard
several alternatives; try to capture and remember them. It may be
the case that no overriding principles seem to guide the choices: if
so, that's fine too. Participants may believe they are selecting ran-
domly—more on that later.
STEP 2. After the final round, ask participants to describe
how they selected the swag recipient. Write that on the whiteboard
or paper. Here are some "algorithms" I've seen employed:
• Loudest gets it
• First one to speak up gets it
• By seating order around room
• Alphabetical by last name
• By who "deserved it" (according to the participants)
• By who "needed it" (swag was phone charger and one
participant had lost hers)
STEP 3. Ask participants why they chose the method they
did. You may need to prompt them. Say something like: Was it the
first one everyone agreed on? Did it seem to be the fairest? Why?
STEP 4. If you noticed other methods being discussed, re-
mind participants of each method they debated and ask them why
they discarded it.
221
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
STEP 5. Ask participants to brainstorm other ways of making
the "Who gets swag" decision. I often ask participants to think
about other situations they've been in and how those decisions are
made. For example: How did your teacher decide who got to clean
the chalkboard? Who gets to sit in the front seat on a car trip?
How do companies choose who wins prizes in giveaways? List the
brainstormed ideas, as well as advantages or disadvantages for
each, on the whiteboard. Note that the goal is to get participants
thinking about the implications of different decision-making algo-
rithms rather than generating a comprehensive list of pros and
cons for each.
At the end of Phase 1, you'll have something that looks like
Figure 2.
ALGORITHM WHY USED OR DISCARDED
Whoever asks first gets swag Concern that it wasn't very fair and didn't take
into account greater need of some participants
Whoever needs swag most gets it Since they weren't sure how many rounds they
were playing, it seemed fairest to make sure
that people who needed the swag most got it
Draw slips out of a hat Might seem unfair because someone has to hold
the hat. Also takes a long time.
Who is tallest Not fair to short people!
"Merit" based on grades Shouldn't know everyone else's grade
Person who got swag last picks who gets it next Might become a popularity contest
Figure 2: Decision-making algorithms
Phase 2: Writing a "program" to choose the tallest participant
STEP 1. Say something like: We're now going to see what it
might look like to program a computer to make the decision about
who gets the swag for you.
STEP 2. Remind participants that computers can't do any-
thing that they don't have instructions for. So first we need to write
the instructions to help the computer make the swag decision.
STEP 3. Tell participants: We're going to use the "tallest to
shortest" algorithm for our example, and we're not going to write
this program in the most efficient way possible, but that's alright.
222
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
STEP 4. Suggest to participants that one way of having the
computer choose the tallest participant (who will get the swag)
would be to have the computer compare the height of any two par-
ticipants and choose the tallest of the two. Then the computer
would compare that person against another participant and keep
the tallest of those two. 137 Lather, rinse, repeat. At the end, the
computer will have chosen the tallest participant. In other words,
it's just like going to the optometrist!
STEP 5. Write the following on the whiteboard. This is not a
real program, but it will serve our purposes:
1. For Participant A and Participant B,
2. Get distance [top of head] to [floor] for Participant A.
Call it H1
3. Get distance [top of head] to [floor] for Participant B.
Call it H2.
4. If H1 > H2, keep Participant A138
5. Else, keep Participant B. Rename Participant B to Partici-
pant A.
6. Get new Participant B
7. (repeat)
STEP 6. Choose between five and seven participants and ask
them to come to the front of the room. They are your "subject
group." Quickly run through the exercise. Using another partici-
pant to help with measuring will speed this step up.
STEP 7. Ask participants if they agree that the steps above
will result in the tallest participant being chosen. Assuming that
they agree, proceed to Phase 3.
Phase 3: Introduction to machine learning
STEP 1. Explain to participants: "We just wrote a 'program'
with a set of explicit instructions to tell the computer what to do,
137 This is the simplest to demonstrate easily, but it's not very efficient. If
you're working with participants who have a background in computer
science, feel free to have them suggest an algorithm (bubble sort, tree
sort, etc.)
138 For the sake of simplicity, we're ignoring the case where the heights of
Participant A and Participant B are equal.
223
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
but another way for computers to make decisions is using 'machine
learning.' In machine learning (or ML), computers 'learn' without
being explicitly programmed, sometimes by making 'guesses' and
comparing those guesses to the correct answer, thereby generat-
ing an algorithm. In this case, the computer would be given all of
the Height (H1, H2, etc.) values—called a 'training dataset'—and
the computer would generate the algorithm for picking the tallest
person."
STEP 2. Tell participants: "We're now going to pretend the
algorithm we just developed was developed by a computer through
ML." (We're skipping a lot of steps here and have glossed over
some important differences between ML and algorithmic program-
ming, but they're not relevant for this example.) 139
STEP 3. Ask another five to seven participants to come to the
front of the room to be your new "subject group."
STEP 4. Choose a participant to be the "computer." This per-
son can only follow the instructions on the board.
STEP 5. Ask half of the subject group to sit down (on the
floor or in a chair).
STEP 6. Run the "program." (Remember: the computer can't
ask the participants to stand up, because it wasn't part of the in-
structions).
Phase 4: Reflection
STEP 1. Ask the participants to explain how the program the
computer created might have been different if the training dataset
had included people that were sitting down. Possibilities include: 140
1. Adding a correction for sitting participants
2. Adding a step to ask participants to stand up before get-
ting measured
139 https://towardsdatascience.com/the-hidden-dangers-in-algorithmic-
decision-making-27722d716a49
140 Brainstorming other ways of solving this problem is also fun and worth
the time, if you have it.
224
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
3. Using a flexible tape measure (like the ones you use
when sewing) and measuring the linear distance along
participants' sides from [top of head] to [base of foot]
4. Having participants lie down before measuring, and
measuring [top of head] to [base of foot]
STEP 2. Ask participants if the algorithm developed in Step 2
would have been fair to a participant who was in a wheelchair.
STEP 3. Explain that this issue—how representative the
"training data set" is of the entire data set—is a current issue for
machine learning. If the data aren't representative, "sample bias"
is introduced.
STEP 4. Ask participants to reflect on how sample bias might
affect machine learning. For example, ask them to consider what
would happen if:
• voice recognition software was only trained on people
with a southern accent.
• medical diagnostic software designed to recognize the
symptoms of a heart attack were trained on a dataset that
is primarily men.141
• a ML algorithm designed by a technology company to
pick more successful candidates out of a pool of applica-
tions were trained on that technology company's current
employee base.142
STEP 5. Assign some homework. A good homework assign-
ment is asking participants to find a system they interact with that
might be a good candidate for ML and to give at least one example
of how the data set might be biased.
141 While both men and women can experience the "elephant on the chest"
sensation, women may also experience shortness of breath, pressure or
pain in the lower chest or upper abdomen, dizziness, lightheadedness
or fainting, upper back pressure or extreme fatigue. (from
https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/heart-attack/warning-signs-of-a-
heart-attack/heart-attack-symptoms-in-women)
142 https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/10/17958784/ai-recruiting-tool-bias-
amazon-report
225
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Reflection
Unexpected lessons from Candy or Swag
In groups I've facilitated (which typically had about 20 par-
ticipants with a target number of 2), the number of participants
choosing swag each round ranged from four to eight, but it was
never fewer than two (so no one won anything). If asked to reflect
on what they're seeing, participants typically identify a few issues:
• "A lot of people are greedy (i.e., want swag)."
• "There's no way to tell who is asking for what."
• "There were a lot of people who were trying to do the
right thing so everyone could get candy at least."
After I've changed the rules to allow for more collaboration,
however, the participants immediately figure out that if they work
together they can all get candy every round, and they can take
turns getting swag. Watching the discussions between the partici-
pants evolve is fascinating: even though I've just met these
participants, I can tell who the leaders are. I've seen groups came
up with their own variants of a "sharing protocol." For example,
one group chose one person from each table in the first round,
then the next person from each table during the next round, while
in another group they just moved around the room clockwise.
When we enter the reflection phase of the exercise, almost every
group I've worked with has observed that they have fared better
when everyone was collaborating.
One group was particularly illustrative. Apparently, there'd
been some interpersonal drama earlier in the week and tensions in
the group were high. When they first played the collaboration
round, they came up with a plan—but someone "cheated" 143 (i.e.,
didn't stick to the agreed upon plan) and ended up causing the
swag count to be "3."
So we tried it again, and the same thing happened. And
again. By this point, the group had figured out who the rogue was
143 I have "cheated" in quotation marks because in one sense he was
following the best possible plan, if you were to discount altruism as a
means to obtain future good.
226
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
and was becoming quite upset with him. To my utter surprise, on
the next round the cheater didn't cheat. I had to laugh, though,
when someone pointed out that one of the other participants had
taken away his swag card!
The cheater was understandably frustrated, but I used this
as an opportunity to talk about what happens in open source com-
munities when people show they are not trustworthy or that they
don't have the community's best interests at heart. As I explained
to the group, in open communities, if someone is consistently caus-
ing problems, the community will attempt to work it out with that
person. But if that doesn't work, the community will often have no
choice but to remove that person from the community.
The open organization values of collaboration and trans-
parency seem like they should be easy enough to understand. But
giving people the opportunity to discover how well they work
through experimentation has proven far more effective than all the
explaining I could do. This exercise is one way to provide that op-
portunity.
Gina Likins is part of Red Hat's Community & Government Affairs
team. She's focused on finding ways to allow more Red Hatters to
volunteer with K-12 STEM programs in their communities. A for-
mer high school teacher herself, Gina is passionate about open
source and teaching and believes open source principles in action
have the potential to transform education in much the same way
that they have transformed software development.
227
Open organizations on Mars
Heidi Ellis
EXERCISE
Estimated time to complete: 90 minutes
Materials needed: The Open Organization Maturity Model, score cards,
writing utensils, notepads, and paper
T hose who are new to the idea of open organizations (and
open source in general) may have difficulty envisioning how
the open organization principles (see Appendix) are incorporated
as part of an existing culture. Many of these folks may not be par-
ticipating in—or even have had extensive exposure to—an open
organization, and therefore may not have ready access to a live
community to observe and from which to learn.
This exercise allows participants to design their own commu-
nities and evaluate those communities with respect to the Open
Organization Maturity Model. 144 It is intended to allow participants
to gain an understanding of how open organization principles
could be implemented within a culture. The process of creating a
community allows the participants to clearly understand how the
community works, providing a solid foundation for the process of
evaluating the community with respect to the Open Organization
Maturity Model. The application of the model provides participants
the opportunity to test their understanding of open organization
principles by evaluating their inclusion in a known environment.
144 https://opensource.com/open-organization/resources/open-org-
maturity-model
228
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Facilitation steps
Phase 1: Imagine a new society
In this phase of the exercise, participants will collaborate in
teams to imagine a new society. Divide the group into teams with
an equal number of members.
STEP 1. Explain the exercise's hypothetical premise to par-
ticipants. Say something like: "You are part of a team of 50 people
that is going on an expedition to Mars. The team will be responsi-
ble for creating a new community on Mars including terraforming,
exploring, and establishing a government. You are responsible for
defining the culture and government for the new community. In
this assignment, you must define a society built on open source
principles. How do people act? How do people govern themselves?
What kind of institutions/organizations do you build?"
STEP 2. Ask participants to imagine a system of government
for their new society. Say something like: "Describe how your com-
munity will be run. Will your society be a democracy? A monarchy?
A dictatorship? A mixed government that combines elements of
several systems? What kind of a constitution will you have? How
will your government make decisions? Define a motto for your gov-
ernment. Explain your choices." Allow at least 10 minutes for this
step.
STEP 3. Ask participants to imagine a legal system for their
new society. Say something like: "Your community must have rules.
Define a list of at least 10 rules all community members must fol-
low. Provide an explanation for each rule. You will also need a legal
system in order to handle those who break the rules or harm oth-
ers. What sort of a system will you use? How will you address
conflict resolution? How will you enforce the rules of your
society?" Allow at least 10 minutes for the step.
STEP 4. Ask participants to imagine an economic system for
their new society. Say something like: "Your society's economy de-
termines how resources (goods and services) are allocated. What
systems will be in place for the production and distribution of re-
sources? What form of currency will you use? What structure will
229
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
you use for distributing resources? Does the government own all
resources and means of production? Are the resources owned by
private individuals? Is it a blend? How do people earn a living?
What industries and careers are available?" Allow at least 10 min-
utes for this step.
STEP 5. Ask participants to imagine various social programs
their society will offer. Say something like: "Social programs exist
to ensure that all members of a community are provided for. How
will your government care for the poor? How will your community
be housed? What rights to community members have? What are
the obligations of all community members?" Allow at least 10 min-
utes for this step.
Phase 2: Evaluate the new society
In this phase of the exercise, teams of participants will eval-
uate each other's imagined societies, specifically their relative
degrees of openness.
STEP 1. Explain the Open Organization Maturity Model to
participants. Also explain that everyone will be evaluating the val-
ues that underpin the imagined societies with respect to each of
the following aspects of a culture:
• Transparency
• Inclusivity
• Adaptability
• Collaboration
• Community
STEP 2. Invite a representative from one of the teams to
share the details of the society they generated in the first phase of
the exercise. That representative should "read out" on the team's
collective work and describe all facets of the society in as much de-
tail as the team was able to generate.
STEP 3. Other teams around the room will use scorecards
(see Figure 1) to "rate" the society's position on the Open Organi-
zation Maturity Model. They should place an "X" in the space that
corresponds with their estimation of the society's degree of open-
ness.
230
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Transparency Inclusivity Adaptability Collaboration Community
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Figure 1: Scorecard
STEP 4. Ask participants from around the room to share the
scores they allocated to the society just described. Be sure to ask
participants to justify their scores by describing their perceptions
of the society.
STEP 5. Repeat the steps in Phase 2 until all teams have had
an opportunity to report on their imagined societies.
Reflection
Levels of open organizational maturity will vary, both across
the aspects of a single team's culture and across the cultures of all
team's imagined societies. The evaluation process may engender
lively discussions as participants debate how the parts of the cul-
ture map to various levels in the Open Organization Maturity
Model. This discussion affords the facilitator the opportunity to
highlight some of the differences between the levels in the model,
as well as to bring in real-world examples from existing organiza-
tions to illustrate the aspects and levels.
An interesting add-on exercise (if time permits) is to have
the teams then discuss how their community could be "moved up"
the Open Organization Maturity Model. Questions to structure that
discussion might include:
• Which aspects of your community are most mature? Why
did you design them in the manner that you did?
• Which aspects of your community are least mature? Why
did you design them in the manner that you did?
• What underlying assumptions did you make when you de-
signed the culture?
• What changes might you suggest to move the least ma-
ture aspects of the community to be more mature? What
sort of changes would that require in the community?
231
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
• Given the current state of your community, what sort of a
process would you envision to help the community be-
come more mature with respect to being an open
organization?
Heidi Ellis is Professor and Chair of the Computer Science and In-
formation Technology department at Western New England
University. She has a long-time interest in computing education
and has been supporting student participation in open source soft-
ware since 2006.
232
Afterword
Ben Owens
W e live in unprecedented times. The only certainty is change
the likes of which the world has never seen, where people
have greater access to information than they have at any time in
history, and where disruptive technologies change our lives on a
near-daily basis. Acquiring knowledge is no longer something peo-
ple do exclusively in traditional, established institutions, and
anyone with a smartphone is now more networked and has more
access to information than all their ancestors combined.
So why have our education systems remained essentially
frozen in time for more than 100 years?
Why do too many students see "doing school" as a passive
exercise, irrelevant to their interests and ambitions? Why do too
many educators, who enter the profession to make a difference in
students' lives, become disillusioned with the institutional inertia
of the status quo? And why do too many students either drop out of
traditional educational programs or finish their formal educational
career with lots of debt and still no clear idea of what they want to
do in life?
If you're reading this afterword, then you've likely seen how
values and principles derived from the open source movement can
provide powerful answers to these hard questions. The chapters in
this book provide insight, inspiration, and proven steps that any
stakeholder in an educational organization can take to transform
those institutions and better meet the needs of all students.
With its emphasis on rapid, crowdsourced prototyping, the
open source approach to software development has in only 20
years shifted from fringe technical communities to become a pri-
233
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
mary driver of today's innovation economy. Forward-thinking peo-
ple and organizations across the globe are responding to
challenges through collective action to harness both open source
technologies and societal expectations for greater openness and
transparency. Legacy models of government, the corporation, and
even the military are becoming more responsive to these changes.
Educators have to make the same, critical decision: embrace these
changes or face the reality of irrelevance.
Are we willing to make this dynamic shift, or will we con-
tinue to assume that the same industrial model of education on
which we've relied for far too long is somehow good enough for our
modern world?
The good news is that pioneering educators are embracing a
different way, as articulated in this volume. These examples show
how the open organization principles—transparency, inclusivity,
adaptability, collaboration, and community—have the potential to
completely change this educational paradigm, to make it more rel-
evant to the needs of today's students and their communities, and
to help them better develop the skills, knowledge, and dispositions
they'll need to thrive in the midst of a 4th Industrial Revolution.
The stories you've read in The Open Organization Guide for
Educators are a call to action from open education experts around
the world. Their best practices can work in myriad educational
contexts; it's now time for you to take the necessary, bold steps by
adapting and remixing these ideas to meet the challenges of your
own learning community.
Just as the open source movement has catalyzed the digital
revolution and innovation economy, an approach to education
borne of the open source movement has the potential to enable any
education stakeholder to capture the true promise of a more equi-
table education system for all students. The chapters in this book
give you the tools to enable that transformation by leveraging the
collective talent and expertise in every school in a more open man-
ner—a stark antidote to a closed, legacy model of school that is
simply not working for many of our students, especially those fur-
thest from opportunity.
234
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Let's get started.
Ben Owens was an engineer for a multinational corporation for 18
years before becoming a STEM teacher in rural Appalachia, where
he received state and national recognition for his innovative ap-
proach to teaching and teacher leadership. He co-authored the
book, Open Up, Education! How Open Way Learning Can Trans-
form Schools, and now works as an education consultant to help
educators create similar cultural conditions for localized innova-
tion in their own schools.
235
Appendix
The Open Organization Definition
The Open Organization Ambassadors
Preamble
Openness is becoming increasingly central to the ways
groups and teams of all sizes are working together to achieve
shared goals. And today, the most forward-thinking organizations—
whatever their missions—are embracing openness as a necessary
orientation toward success. They've seen that openness can lead
to:
• GREATER AGILITY, as members are more capable of work-
ing toward goals in unison and with shared vision;
• FASTER INNOVATION, as ideas from both inside and out-
side the organization receive more equitable
consideration and rapid experimentation, and;
• INCREASED ENGAGEMENT, as members clearly see connec-
tions between their particular activities and an
organization's overarching values, mission, and spirit.
But openness is fluid. Openness is multifaceted. Openness is
contested.
While every organization is different—and therefore every
example of an open organization is unique—we believe these five
characteristics serve as the basic conditions for openness in most
contexts:
• Transparency
• Inclusivity
• Adaptability
• Collaboration
• Community
238
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Characteristics of an open organization
Open organizations take many shapes. Their sizes, composi-
tions, and missions vary. But the following five characteristics are
the hallmarks of any open organization.
In practice, every open organization likely exemplifies each
one of these characteristics differently, and to a greater or lesser
extent. Moreover, some organizations that don't consider them-
selves open organizations might nevertheless embrace a few of
them. But truly open organizations embody them all—and they con-
nect them in powerful and productive ways.
That fact makes explaining any one of the characteristics
difficult without reference to the others.
Transparency
In open organizations, transparency reigns. As much as pos-
sible (and advisable) under applicable laws, open organizations
work to make their data and other materials easily accessible to
both internal and external participants; they are open for any
member to review them when necessary (see also inclusivity). De-
cisions are transparent to the extent that everyone affected by
them understands the processes and arguments that led to them;
they are open to assessment (see also collaboration). Work is trans-
parent to the extent that anyone can monitor and assess a project's
progress throughout its development; it is open to observation and
potential revision if necessary (see also adaptability). In open orga-
nizations, transparency looks like:
• Everyone working on a project or initiative has access to
all pertinent materials by default.
• People willingly disclose their work, invite participation
on projects before those projects are complete and/or "fi-
nal," and respond positively to request for additional
details.
• People affected by decisions can access and review the
processes and arguments that lead to those decisions,
and they can comment on and respond to them.
239
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
• Leaders encourage others to tell stories about both their
failures and their successes without fear of repercussion;
associates are forthcoming about both.
• People value both success and failures for the lessons
they provide.
• Goals are public and explicit, and people working on
projects clearly indicate roles and responsibilities to en-
hance accountability.
Inclusivity
Open organizations are inclusive. They not only welcome di-
verse points of view but also implement specific mechanisms for
inviting multiple perspectives into dialog wherever and whenever
possible. Interested parties and newcomers can begin assisting the
organization without seeking express permission from each of its
stakeholders (see also collaboration). Rules and protocols for par-
ticipation are clear (see also transparency) and operate according
to vetted and common standards. In open organizations, inclusivity
looks like:
• Technical channels and social norms for encouraging di-
verse points of view are well-established and obvious.
• Protocols and procedures for participation are clear,
widely available, and acknowledged, allowing for con-
structive inclusion of diverse perspectives.
• The organization features multiple channels and/or meth-
ods for receiving feedback in order to accommodate
people's preferences.
• Leaders regularly assess and respond to feedback they
receive, and cultivate a culture that encourages frequent
dialog regarding this feedback.
• Leaders are conscious of voices not present in dialog and
actively seek to include or incorporate them.
• People feel a duty to voice opinions on issues relevant to
their work or about which they are passionate.
240
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
• People work transparently and share materials via com-
mon standards and/or agreed-upon platforms that do not
prevent others from accessing or modifying them.
Adaptability
Open organizations are flexible and resilient organizations.
Organizational policies and technical apparatuses ensure that both
positive and negative feedback loops have a genuine and material
effect on organizational operation; participants can control and po-
tentially alter the conditions under which they work. They report
frequently and thoroughly on the outcomes of their endeavors (see
also transparency) and suggest adjustments to collective action
based on assessments of these outcomes. In this way, open organi-
zations are fundamentally oriented toward continuous engagement
and learning.
In open organizations, adaptability looks like:
• Feedback mechanisms are accessible both to members of
the organization and to outside members, who can offer
suggestions.
• Feedback mechanisms allow and encourage peers to as-
sist one another without managerial oversight, if
necessary.
• Leaders work to ensure that feedback loops genuinely
and materially impact the ways people in the organization
operate.
• Processes for collective problem solving, collaborative de-
cision making, and continuous learning are in place, and
the organization rewards both personal and team learn-
ing to reinforce a growth mindset.
• People tend to understand the context for the changes
they're making or experiencing.
• People are not afraid to make mistakes, yet projects and
teams are comfortable adapting their pre-existing work to
project-specific contexts in order to avoid repeated fail-
ures.
241
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Collaboration
Work in an open organization involves multiple parties by de-
fault. Participants believe that joint work produces better (more
effective, more sustainable) outcomes, and specifically seek to in-
volve others in their efforts (see also inclusivity). Products of work
in open organizations afford additional enhancement and revision,
even by those not affiliated with the organization (see also adapt-
ability).
• People tend to believe that working together produces
better results.
• People tend to begin work collaboratively, rather than
"add collaboration" after they've each completed individ-
ual components of work.
• People tend to engage partners outside their immediate
teams when undertaking new projects.
• Work produced collaboratively is easily available inter-
nally for others to build upon.
• Work produced collaboratively is available externally for
creators outside the organization to use in potentially un-
foreseen ways.
• People can discover, provide feedback on, and join work
in progress easily—and are welcomed to do so.
Community
Open organizations are communal. Shared values and pur-
pose guide participation in open organizations, and these values—
more so than arbitrary geographical locations or hierarchical posi-
tions—help determine the organization's boundaries and conditions
of participation. Core values are clear, but also subject to continual
revision and critique, and are instrumental in defining conditions
for an organization's success or failure (see also adaptability). In
open organizations, community looks like:
• Shared values and principles that inform decision-making
and assessment processes are clear and obvious to mem-
bers.
242
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
• People feel equipped and empowered to make meaningful
contributions to collaborative work.
• Leaders mentor others and demonstrate strong account-
ability to the group by modeling shared values and
principles.
• People have a common language and work together to en-
sure that ideas do not get "lost in translation," and they
are comfortable sharing their knowledge and stories to
further the group's work.
Version 2.0
April 2017
github.com/open-organization-ambassadors/open-org-definition
243
Learn More
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Additional resources
The book series
Continue reading about the future of work, management,
and leadership in the Open Organization book series. Get started
at opensource.com/open-organization/resources/book-series.
The newsletter
Get open organization stories sent directly to your inbox.
Visit opensource.com/open-organization/resources/newsletter to
sign up.
The discussion list
Our community of writers, practitioners, and ambassadors
regularly exchange resources and discuss the themes of this book.
Chime in at www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/openorg-list.
246
The Open Organization Guide for Educators
Get involved
Share this book
We've licensed this book with a Creative Commons license,
so you're free to share a copy with anyone who might benefit from
learning more about the ways open source values are changing or-
ganizations today. See the copyright statement for more detail.
Tell your story
Every week, Opensource.com publishes stories about the
ways open principles are changing the way we work, manage, and
lead. You can read them at opensource.com/open-organization. Do
you have a story to tell? Please consider submitting it to us at
opensource.com/story.
Join the community
Are you passionate about using open source ideas to en-
hance organizational life? You might be eligible for the Open
Organization Ambassadors program (read more at opensource.-
com/resources/open-organization-ambassadors-program). Share
your knowledge and your experience—and join us at github.com/
open-organization-ambassadors.
247