Today, I have been listening (on SIIE 2012 conference) to very interesting talk by Dr.Charles Severance from Michigan university who is a creator of Sakai project (a project similar to Moodle) for e-learning education.
Eventhough I'm not able to repeat his personality which is so vivid, enthusiastic and full of life, I can mention here few main ideas of the talk.
He was speaking about the history of academics and researchers. In medieval times there was a small group of academics, who were quite strange and the community was closed. They were donated by a small money from King or from important people in industry and backwards few of these academics become kings or wealthy industrialists. The ideas were coming up slowly by talking one to each other and by letting the knowledge inside the fortress of the university.
Later, mainly during the world war II, politicians spent a lot of money and donated academics, because they needed their knowledge and ideas to be the winners of the war. From this research also other things have been evolved like cars, space shuttles etc.
Afterwards during the last decades of the 20th century, government gave research money and wanted back solutions - like ARPANET. Ideas from academics also went to the outside world as ideas of networks or open source products.
Academics were still giving back something for the money they got. Today the results of academics are tons of journal papers and eventhough governments spent so much money on the research (because they think that it was always useful), they got quite little backwards. On the other site there are people in praxis, people who own big companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook...which are the ones who are the ones who pushes the knowledge forward, eventhough their idea isn't to solve problems and be curios about the nature of the world, but just to earn money.
Academics live their own closed life, publishing and trying to get enough money from government. The number of academicians has grown so quickly but the results aren't so surprising. They often discuss something what people in praxis have invited years before them and used it in their companies.
What can be the future? The first possibility is that governement will stop the money and the number of academicians will drop down quickly because they will have no fundation. It is natural, because when governement will see that the results from research aren't very useful and they got nothing which is applicable, they will stop giving money for these purposes. The research environment we have now is the result of the research of the people before 2000.
But we have a choice. We can open our ideas, cooperate with the real world and find fundation somewhere else than in governement. "new graduates have to compete all great companies in a world full of ideas instead of writing articles" Then we can work independently. We must have some direction of our research, not only to publish papers. And also, we should be openned to the whole world - create academical blog where we share our ideas, go between the people, be part of some open source community, real-world impact and tenure, create identity personality etc.
And Dr.Chuck is the one who made it happened. He got the fundation - enough money to make real cool ideas, he has his own academics blog: http://www.dr-chuck.com/csev-blog/ and his own webpages http://www.dr-chuck.com/, he leads on coursera.org the online course https://www.coursera.org/course/insidetheinternet, he is a director of Sakai project, he published many books, likes to drive motorcycle and communicate. When he saw openness in education in Stanford university, which is the first university where every course is openned to anybody who wants to participate, he thought that it could be perfect to have the same thing on Michigan university. When they said: not yet, he decided to create his own open "university" Dr.Chucks class2go. What does it mean? He says yes to things which appears infront of him. He isn't aware of the work and time he must spend on the project and he starts everything with enthusiasm. Not to be closed, be open to the whole world it is the only possiblity....
And on the end from the Joshua Kim review of his book "Chuck Severance is Crazy:When I say that Chuck Severance is crazy, I mean crazy in the very best possible way. Crazy as in completely honest. Crazy as in willing to say things that might offend other people. Crazy in the sense that he is willing to be critical of his own actions. Crazy in that he believes in the promise of open source software in higher education more than he cares about his own career advancement. Crazy in that he is willing to take risks, to fail, and to learn from his mistakes.I don't know Chuck Severance, but I hope that I get the chance. This is a guy who quit a series of good jobs in quick succession in order to have the opportunity to work on a risky open source education project."
I had the opportunity to see him and it was a great thing-if you will have that chance, don't miss it. What more - I had the opportunity to speak to him for a few seconds, to ask him a question and to be introduced to him. He is so full of energy that it seems to be impossible.
