Does being part of a system mitigate the need to merge to some extent?

I suppose it matters a lot whether you're seeking to acquire, be acquired, or to merge as equals with a similarly-sized peer.

In general, or in higher ed?

It would be interesting to consider the book even if an institution wasn't facing merger or consolidation, but I wonder if fear of "putting ideas in people's heads" will prevent that?

The point is, all three of these things are already happening and all three will continue into the future. There's no "choose one" future ahead.

Just using Linux led to that?

Is this really the key?

Again, cool, and I think this is what I'm doing. But how does it address/prevent the previous two scenarios?

This is all well and good, but how does it address the choices made by the nomads in scenario 2? Doesn't seem connected at all.

But still taught to individuals.

SEO

https://www.mindvalley.com/

This is happening now, of course.

Siren song

The only people who really believe this are folks that have been formally educated, but don't appreciate it.

How many of these could there be?

Is this central to the eduction story?

In the absence of OER...

Picketty

Statement supposes we know what to optimize for.

Germany is far from the Silicon Valley, but we can imagine this happening in the flyover US too.

...but they basically remained what they had been.

Does focus on equity necessarily line up with this interest in avoiding "dataveillance"? I'm not sure, but I think the question is worth asking.

Creating a "siren server" of learning data that mirrors Amazon's stack of consumer data.

Would this be the outcome of these tools?

Opendora

But no more time-consuming than choosing a textbook.

But we should remember that this is an iterative process, and avoid rejecting efforts that make resources more open but fail to completely address ALL the accessibility issues on day one. I'm talking to you, Rebus.

Getting a lot of attention in the CC community right now.

Combine with the 5 Rs and we've got something.

So this is a two-pronged responsibility, to get the textbooks students need AND to help faculty learn about OER to reduce the expense of doing so,

Another good data point

Although buying every required textbook would probably break the bank at most libraries, I wonder whether faculty could help by requiring the publisher to provide a desk copy and then donating it to the library?

Some markets only work because of this inequity. These are not necessarily markets we should encourage, even if they claim to be "free".

But we treat it as a commodity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._R._Ranganathan

Yep

Yeah, the idea that suggesting firing a librarian would enhance student success happens within a "civil" discourse is problematic.

Yeah, this seems to be the issue. Talk about in my OEG thing.

Useful info, which I'm not above using.

...which platforms we're going to make available for free! Just kidding, no we're not.

That's a nice endorsement of our work adopting and producing OER. Thanks!

I wonder if our "first year experience" classes teach this fact to new, first-generation college students?

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheTedNelson/videos

The other shoe drops. I use a fairly antiquated LMS, and I can do this without buying a homework system. This is the sneaky profit-center that would enhance student success, but at a cost that the "fanatics" should accept?

Agreed.

This is tortured. The only difference I can see between priority 1 and preferred priority 2 seems to be an opportunity to sneak something in that adds cost (profit) under the claim that it's better for student learning. As if the top priority of OER or ZTC "fanatic" educators isn't student success.

I think it's easier to find common ground than the author suggests. And I suspect much of the ZTC and OER fanaticism may be coming from outside the ranks of educators, via political focus that ignores nuance.

I disagree again. Fair use in LMSs afford lots of pedagogical innovation, such as Hypothesis discussion of pdfs housed inside the shell and offered under fair use. I think the author is holding to tightly to his own 5-R formula, which is powerful but not omnipotent.

Not so. Tools like Hypothesis help streamline discussions of texts in both in-person and online courses, in my experience.

But the statement "we'll read an open-source version of anything out of copyright" very much DOES.

Good point. STEM needs the software tools more than the content, perhaps. But much of that functionality is already available in LMSs, which in most institutions don't figure in the ZTC or OER discussion.

Does this description of "courseware" include OER texts sucked into walled gardens and only available to students who pay first-day-access fees for them, with bundled assessment and ancillaries? What happens when OER authors mark all their content NC?

If we expand our view just a bit to concern ourselves with student cost, these are obviously not free, because they come at a cost assessed in student fees and/or tuition. Similarly, course-packs and fair-use content inserted in LMSs by instructors reduce student expenses and should probably be considered.

Are you really suggesting that a for-profit publishing model should include using content that I wrote and then CONTRIBUTED to try to help build a more open learning community. You can't have that for free and then try to profit on it. I'm changing all my licensing to include NC.

While perhaps a goal, whole course OER is not the only way to significantly reduce student expense. We're being asked to get worked up over the wrong issue.

Measure enrollment? If the 300 are all surveys and many of the balance are upper-level seminars, the impact of OER could be more significant than reported.

Another nice, big sample. Does it make sense to duplicate student survey in MinnState system?

Which uses OER inside its paywall.

Is this something that would motivate BSU's Chem Dept?

MIT since 2000

2013 -- I wonder if this has changed?

Nice statement

I didn't know this was a thing, but I like it!

Yeah, I kind-of hate these.

Manifesto is something of a pledge that the instructor will try to live up to. If students annotate, does this suggest they're stepping into a relationship and making a similar pledge?

Academic labor needs to be recognized.

same question

Is this comparable at BSU?

I don't think this extrapolation is that conclusive, but it's interesting.

This is a big claim -- hopefully data will follow.

Good methodology!

So no reference, no MCAT/LSAT/GRE prep, etc.

The locking the students into full boat retail and the bookstore is the really sinister bit.

Good baseline

How many bookstores are jumping onto this bandwagon as a way to once again become relevant?

CONCERN over the quality doesn't necessarily equal quality issues.

Updated in 2018?

Consistent with BSU

I'm assuming in this context resistance is a stance I'm sharing with the students, not that students are resisting me? But are we resisting something present and tangible, or are we adopting a stance because it seems (like the manifesto) more politically attractive?

And yet my syllabi advertise skills and understandings that it's my goal they will take with them. I try to take them past the "you are here because you have to check this Gen Ed box" element in my course design.

I tend to think of the syllabus as DNA, and the reality of the course in the LMS over the course of the semester as epigenetics that may or may not be carried forward into the next course.

Love this! I might at least subtitle my schedule of lectures and discussions "Playlist" -- esp. since I usually make videos of them that can become a playlist.

Is there a left/right bias hiding in these word choices? Do I respond to manifesto more positively because it sounds more bottom-up and revolutionary, versus the top-down, authoritarian feel of contract? I think so.

Isn't this what SLOs do in the longer-term context of promotion and tenure reviews?

This too can be seen in a "war" or "dance" way: ideally, the reason the students are in our classes is because we have the power to aid them in their educations, not just serve as a gatekeeper to a grade or credential.

Does this line of thought begin to dissolve if we substitute "agreement" or "understanding" for "contract"?

And, we avoid war but seek to dance.

I think Kovarik could spend more time digging into the DuPont/GM connection. Seems to me that there is a huge advantage moving auto engines to a fuel that can be patented rather than ethyl that any farmer could distill.

Dual use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westward_the_Course_of_Empire_Takes_Its_Way#/media/File:Emanuel_Leutze_-_Westward_the_Course_of_Empire_Takes_Its_Way_-_Capitol.jpg

Maybe this is polite British-speak for "it was unfortunate that their previous teaching style was not something they were willing to have recorded, so they rushed to change it when the cameras were switched on."

And this matters because...?

Horwitz was one of Steinberg's dissertation advisors. His ideas about American law heavily influenced Steinberg's thesis in Nature, Incorporated.

Historiographic note: Morton Horwitz was one of Steinberg's dissertation advisors. He wrote the most important book about the history of American Law, and his perspective influenced Steinberg heavily. I highly recommend Horwitz's book -- it may be the single most significant book I've read in US History.

I chose this image from several dozen similar ones because it is a farm in Enfield Massachusetts. Anybody know why that's significant? (Answer in Chapter 9)

I've become much more of an advocate of the NC addition tot he open license since I've started noticing how OER texts seem to wind up in walled-garden turnkey learning systems that charge for the homework and assessment modules.

Actually, I've changed the license to CC-BY-NC-SA. I just thought it might be a good idea to signal my intention that the text should NOT become part of a commercialized "walled garden".

In addition to being a historian, Cronon began his academic career as an English major.

good term

Can this be duplicated?

Survey these objections? Is there a way to put $$ to them?

Add this to the slate of talks I do in the fall.

The point is that shifting work should be compensated.

Good summary of MinnState

Faculty leads, faculty adoptions, students impacted are the three main metrics.

Low-hanging fruit

Old fashioned sales 101

Build this into a goal statement?

Two good questions to add to surveys.

If more OER content was licensed CC-BY-NC-SA, this might dissuade this type of "capture".

Is this really scaling, or is it productization?

This is something to mention, even if it's not the stress for our faculty.

This is probably worth formalizing into a "thing" in addition to celebrating things faculty have done individually to achieve same goal.

Hypothesis as well as the fact that the instructor made the OER for the course probably both positive.

Survey questions should focus on each of these factors.

AND, it's usually not an apples to apples comparison -- the ebook is often newer, better, more directly related to course goals, esp. if a specially-remixed OER.

Results might be different if we tested their price sensitivity: "Would you pay $50 for a print textbook if an online one was available free?"

In many cases the info literacy, critical thinking, and communication skills may be more valuable than the course content.

Is the point that Library people can help curate?

This is a great statement. Complex both because of technology, but also new types of interactions between these stakeholders.

Should we distinguish between publishers that still believe in the value of their content and others who seem to be saying the content is worthless but they want to capture the homework and assessment revenue?

Course packs, library reserves, and quick-printed manuals like "Short Handbook" all have long histories.

Role of bookstores and their long-term interest in reducing student costs is often overlooked.

This isn't a good look for faculty.

Analogous to the difference between fixed and variable costs in business. Many firms fail because, in spite of impressive infrastructure, they fail to meet payrolls or pay for the next shipment of raw materials.

And also difference in course success, GPA, job prospects, and all the other results of performance in these courses the student has paid or borrowed so much to get into.

This is obscene.

Annually. https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/average-estimated-undergraduate-budgets-2018-19

What is the current per capita average? According to Forbes, average student debt of class of 2016 was $37,172.

The last one, Martha, died Sept 1st, 1914 in the Cincinnati zoo.

This is probably a sincere and well-founded fear. But that doesn't mean we should lie about the past.

TP is a mixture of charcoal, pottery shards, human and animal feces -- so at agricultural scale it's clearly a soil amendment rather than the "natural" soil of the region.

Note also that cassava, the staple developed by people in this area, was a tree-crop.

Partly because she's on the lookout to protect her interpretation from critics or new ideas.

And atmospheric carbon levels dropped sharply, possibly contributing to continuing the Little Ice Age.

Most Aztec homes in Tenochtitlán had running water. Rich people had steam baths.

This led to a whole literature (propaganda) of captivity and redemption, which the colonial leaders used to try to dissuade defections.

I think a distinction can be made between "judging" the choices people made in the past and trying to appreciate their perspectives, experiences, and world views so we can better understood why they made the choices they did.

Their chronicles note with surprise that the streets, squares, and markets are spotless, with not even a stray straw left behind.

Which is an improvement over believing agriculture was invented in the fertile crescent, but still ignores Asia.

This description seems to rely on a very narrow definition of "mankind".

And this breaks the back of that argument about viruses rarely being as lethal as they were here. Individual viruses can't communicate with other viruses. Even if they're individually only 50% lethal, four 50% epidemics in a row will reduce a population by roughly 94%.

Even when we accept the idea that there were many more natives than previously thought, it's still hard to assess the number of people living in North America, where a century passed before much European exploration settlement began.

In other words, what at first might seem to be a historiographical disagreement can become a high-stakes political issue affecting how Americans think of their past actions and choices.

This is an example of the type of book you might want to read for your final paper.

This is among the higher estimates of pre-Columbian population, although the logic leading to it seems sound. To be safe, I use a mid-range estimate of 65 to 80 million, which would make the populations of Europe, the Americas, and Africa all about level.

And yet when Alfred Crosby wrote a book questioning the military superiority of the conquistadors and positing disease as the main cause, publishers rejected it with single-word responses like "Nonsense!"

A sentiment that was echoed by Cotton Mather in Magnalia Christi Americana in 1702.

Patuxet

Not part of the story we usually focus on...

Point is, this is a question that can and should be answered, but NOT by automatic reflex of claiming what we think ancient people did.

Cronon talks about native North Americans managing forest understory with fire in Changes in the Land.

To be clear, Cronon is both an environmentalist AND a critic of the pristine myth. See, for example, his article "The Trouble with Wilderness, or Getting back to the Wrong Nature"

If this is true, isn't it equally a danger for the theories that just happen to be older and more advantageous for white Europeans?

So the story of Env Hist, that people have not only been affected by their environments but have altered them, enters deep history in the Americas just as it does in other regions humans have lived.

We normally think of Bolivia as a nation of the "altiplano" and the Andes. Like the Inca Empire before it, it spreads down the eastern side of the mountains and includes the westernmost edge of the Amazon watershed.

A mostly New England word for sprinkles. Mann lives in Amherst MA.

14,300, not 20,000 or 30,000. This is entirely consistent with current science.

Yes, it is. Which is why the coastal route was much more likely.

I agree, and this is the way these stories should be taken, NOT as evidence they might be true.

Interesting that story about the Solutrean theory that this article links to calls the theory both wildly inaccurate and racist.

Yes! This is true, and interesting discoveries are currently being made on the Channel Islands off California.

Not a land bridge: as wide as Alaska. And not that temporary: probably existed from about 28,000 to about 12,000 years ago. That's 16,000 years, or three times longer than recorded history.

Show your work! This is a "History Channel" statement. I've read fairly extensively through the peer-reviewed scholarship, and archaeologists don't seem agreed there's "enough evidence". Even the guys that discovered Monte Verde are much less certain about the 33,000 year old finds, and separated them into a different category.

Vine Deloria Jr. is one of the big advocates for the idea that "we have always been here", but his argument is primarily political rather than scientific. Realistically, isn't a scientific certainty that native Americans have been here for at least 15,000 years enough?

Who is not a trained scientist, historian, archaeologist, but apparently many find him a compelling storyteller.

Which is to be expected, since their experience here goes back hundreds of generations. But that doesn't mean that Indian legends are any more valid than the old testament which says Eden was a place in the vicinity of Mesopotamia.

These are two separate statements, that require two different types of argument and evidence to back them up. Why do I get the sense you're not going to do that...?

I'll begin with a list of texts you might want to read, in addition to the ones we'll be reading excerpts from together, in the next week or so.

So far, we have 5 people registered.

In the US, many social historians AND cultural historians too. Bill Cronon for example -- note his interest in both "history from below" and in literary critic Raymond Williams.

Rocky Mountains sanitoria for treating "consumption" might be an interesting topic. Follow Doc Holiday to Glenwood CO...

Evolution by natural selection vs. breeding by deliberate selection.

I don't recall that Donahue completely explained why the colonial approach changed and became unsustainable in the early republic...

The birds aren't "agents", but they are a barometer.

Was it even really envisioned as an "intervention on behalf of nature" or was that just a rationalization?

Is this just the "linguistic turn" catching up with EnvHist?

"I speak for the trees" says the Lorax.

Yeah, "agency" seems to imply choice. But it would be completely accurate to say that these natural features influenced (to some extent determined) the choices available to people.

It's also important to note that not all humans have equal amounts of agency or freedom of action.

Even if not conscious, could the ability of herds of prey animals or domesticated cattle to react to human activities (to flee or resist) be considered agency? Either way, it's probably important in historical analysis.

Maybe this is a model: not ALL human interventions in the natural world rise to the status of the anthropocene.

This is especially hopeful in the world we occupy right now.

Hybridity

What does the historian mean by the term "category of analysis"?

An even more valuable element is that the critiques stay IN CONTEXT rather than appearing out of context in reviews, blog posts, etc.

Not entirely up to date, but covers a lot of ground.

Esp. time spent reading vs. listening to lectures

Hypothesis

Online office hours -- maybe Zoom access?

This seems to be a key point, and this post doesn't really make it clear whether OUR's attribution requirement is onerous. Is the point to make it possible for an educator to find the original source, or to prevent anyone ever viewing a page without a visible attribution? It seems to me those are two very different things.

And how is this currently changing as the grid changes?

This is ideal for my current cooperation with ENVR.

This is a better statement of this than McNeill's recent post in the AHA blog.

Especially toward the environment? Or is this equivalent to the complexity of other issues like class?

It will definitely be good for us -- will it be equally good for the public?

Is this a useful four-word definition of history?

I'm reminded of something I read or heard recently about student evaluations and the value of instructor "kindness" to students. Hard to quantify, but probably key.

At this point I'm leaning toward assigning an excerpt rather than the entire essay. Or maybe, as the group did, assigning just sections of the text.