In 2012 Gardner Campbell gave a keynote presentation at the Open Education conference (Campbell 2012) in which he outlined these concerns and frustrations. ‘What we are seeing,’ he said, ‘are developments in the higher education landscape that seem to meet every one of the criteria we have set forth for open education – increased access, decreased cost, things that will allow more people than ever on a planetary scale, one billion individual learners at a time … Isn’t that what we meant?’ But as he explored different successes of openness his refrain was that of T. S. Eliot: that’s not what I meant at all.
Why should this be the case? Can we dismiss it as just sour grapes? Are the advocates of openness merely exhibiting chagrin that others are now claiming openness? Is it just a semantic argument over interpretation that has little interest beyond a few academics? Or is it something more fundamental, regarding the direction of openness and the ways it is implemented? It is this central tension in openness, that of victory and simultaneous anxiety, that this book seeks to explore.
Higher Education and Openness
The focus of this book is primarily on higher education. The justification for this focus is that it is the area where the battle for open is perhaps most keenly contested. However, open education can be viewed as only one component of a broader open movement. There is an active open data community, which seeks to make data – particularly governmental and corporation data – openly available. Organisations such as the Open Knowledge Foundation see access to data as fundamental in accountability and engagement across a range of social functions, including politics, retail, energy, health, etc. This places openness as activism,
