It is no coincidence that many of the MOOC pioneers had also been early adopters of open access, active bloggers and advocates of open licenses. Creating open courses seemed the next logical step, because they were interested in the possibilities that openness offered and had seen the benefits elsewhere in their practice. This spread of the open virus is by no means guaranteed; many practitioners remain immune, and for others the open practice remains limited to a very specific function. But it does seem to be a pattern that is repeated across all aspects of open practice. It is significant in the context of this book, because if we are now entering a transition period when open practice enters the mainstream, then (to stretch the metaphor) the number of people ‘exposed’ to the open virus increases dramatically and it becomes a pandemic. It is also significant because it requires individuals to be the agents of action. The compartmentalising of openness into specific projects or outsourcing it to external providers creates a form of barrier that isolates individual educators from exposure. The impact of openness is thus contained. One might conclude, from the virus metaphor, that a good approach to spread open practice is to seek easy entry points or Trojan horses, where the initial aspect of openness can be seeded. However, as with the LMS example, this initial easy success should not become the endpoint.
Conclusions
In this chapter, a number of aspects of openness have been considered which have implications for its future direction. Policy will be the lever by which open practice can become sustainable and mainstream. However, the LMS lesson demonstrates that any such policy approaches must also allow sufficient scope for innovation and experimentation, as these are the route to the
