I’m probably the last person to this party, but I just read David Wiley’s 2005-2012: The OpenCourseWars (including the deleted scenes) and it’s one of the best things I’ve read in a long time, not just on opencourseware but on open ed in general.

It’s not just the format (it’s written as a history written from the perspective of David speaking from the 2040s). And it’s not just the sense Wiley gives of the force of history being so much more powerful than what we design or promote — although it’s refreshing to see a narrative that admits our historical position is not as plotted as we’d like it to be — we try to design the future but are often left lighting sparks and hoping the right things burn.

But the thing that really resonated with me was the whole “trib” culture aspect. This has been a particular interest of mine for a while — and of course what the end of the narrative looks like to me is futuristic edupunk (would that be cyber-edupunk?).

It’s true we are at a historical moment where we really have to focus on the nuts and bolts of bringing more institutions into this movement. The creation of an initial critical mass of sharable, hackable content will be key to realizing the future culture David describes — even if that culture is destined to move beyond us.

So we shouldn’t lose our focus on that core goal — more and better OCWs. And for the moment, the focus should be on more — that’s just where we are.

But to my mind, there are a number of things we can look at even now as we progress. Are we blocking contribution from students in the way we design our OCWs? I’m not talking about building new tools — but reviewing how well our courseware plays with the third-party tools students can use to hack their own solutions. Do we supply RSS? Does our video play well with annotation tools? Social bookmarking tools? Can our course be spidered? Are the materials built for modification as well as presentation? Do our materials allow deep-linking? In short, are we hackable?

As David puts it:

But to answer the specific question, if I could go back in time and give one bit of specific advice to those early open education pioneers, it would be this: Embrace the trib culture. Embrace it as quickly and as fully as you can. Higher education does not have to remain a [read-only] endeavor. Open their eyes to what is happening all around you on YouTube, on Flickr, on Wikipedia, on Facebook, and evolve with the times rather than be left behind by them. The Industrial Age is over.