Bob: Thanks for the comment…I’ll have to check out all those theories! I’m curious, though, about how your IT dept. has assessed the value of your digitized content. How have they assessed it, and how has it been inadequate?

With regard to the objections cited upon seeing what looked like open source evangelism, I would say this:
The nature of longevity is important and IT assessments of the value of MY digitized content have been inadequate. I’m sure there are university IT departments that have well developed strategies. They speak about their planning and implementation at Educause meetings. How nice for them.

(In general, however, I agree that the idea should be to foster creative uses of the tools. Supporting faculty to play around and try new approaches is more important than rigidly shoehorning people into one solution.)

Point one is valid, but why only digital content?

It shouldn’t be only digital content, which is what I say (though, I will concede, not directly), when I discuss critiquing content and methodology in general. Universities already try to teach students how to be thoughtful producers and consumer of non-digital media: writing papers, reading books and articles, et cetera. The question involved academic technologies, and I’d argue that the vast majority of media we consume today is digital, but universities have not even begun to adequately address how to teach students to be consumers and producers of digital media. That’s why I focused the goal on digital media.

But using open source software is not an end in itself – it is only one path to a best solution.

Also agree, I probably could say this more clearly than I do, but I do say that “the specific tool, of course, should be chosen based on need and goals….” I certainly don’t have an “ideological bee” in my bonnet. I use plenty of expensive, proprietary software because it serves a specific need I have. I don’t think the goal is flawed, though; I see the ends in producing open-source tools as inherently similar to the mission of higher education institution: produce knowledge and give it back for others to use. This is, for the most part, the goal when academics produce scholarship and teach that scholarship in classes.

I do, however, think the idea that “IT purchasing decisions should be based on pragmatic cost benefit” is problematic; They should be based on academic and pedagogical needs, not exclusively on cost-benefits or the convenience of in-house support. They should be based on how the tools and services benefit the instructors and students who will eventually use them. Granted, this is a critical difference in perspectives, one that has no easy solutions, and I sympathize with in-house IT office that have to provide support. I have to provide support as well. I see inflexibility among administration and IT offices, however, as one of the barriers to any kind of change, as I say briefly in a comment on Jeff’s post.

Point 3 has good ideas, but is backwards…. The goal cites the means in the heading

The goal doesn’t cite the means at all; That’s the goal. Maybe I could phrase it a little better, but one of my goals when I teach a class is foster an environment where students can go beyond the boundaries of my classroom to learn. The means by which I do that involve specific choices about academic technologies and the assignments that use them: Researching a topic and writing a Wikipedia article on that topic, for example, to teach about using wikis, working in a collaborative writing environment, discussing topics with community. I don’t say “use cool software I like” in my post, so I’m not sure why you say this. I don’t use “cool software” because its cool; I’ve always used specific tools and services in my classes because I have specific pedagogical end I want to achieve. So, fostering academic use of technology to take learning beyond the classroom seems like a perfectly clear and reasonable goal to me, and one I try to achieve whenever I teach a class. Its not a means, its an end, but an end that institutions and instructions must continually work on.

Point 2 is flawed, in my opinion
It reads like the author has an open source idealogical bee in their bonnet. If open source has the right cost benefit, then great – use it. But using open source software is not an end in itself – it is only one path to a best solution. IT purchasing decisions should be based on pragmatic cost benefit – not idealism. Free open source is not necessarily cheaper, when you cost in the need to have your own in house support, to operate on an organisational scale than paid for licenced software. It needs to be costed case by case.

Point 3 has good ideas, but is backwards.
The goal cites the means in the heading – fostering technologies that break down barriers while burying the ends in the text. Strategic plans are about agreeing ends – dominate the OS market, conquer russia, whatever – and then working down to set out the strategies to achieve them. This point is backwards – strategic plan – use cool software I like…why? To break down barriers…because? There is good stuff here, but it will never be heard by managers unless it can be clearly mapped to goals they can see as important.