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governing the ungovernable ...

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philipp (South Africa) · Jul 16th, 2007 4:06 pm · 46 votes · 5 comments

ontological anarchy in a nutshell, http://www.flickr.com/photos/russell-higgs/, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)

ontological anarchy in a nutshell, by http://www.flickr.com/photos/russell-higgs/

The Open Courseware Consortium is a network of (mostly) universities who are committed to publishing and using open courseware, and who have so far released over 4200 university level courses under free and open licenses. Until now MIT has hosted and incubated the consortium, but it’s time to grow up, and we need a structure that can deal with a diversifying membership, sustainability pains, and ensure that the community remains vibrant and active.

In the discussions of possible governance structures some interesting questions were raised and I think many open collaboration projects share our challenges - and maybe icommons as well? For example, who has the authority (and what authority) to make decisions on behalf of the group? How do you define group members and non-members? If participants are not paid for their contribution, aren't they likely to "vote with their feet" - by doing what they believe in and choosing to work with those who have similar goals, and ways of working. On the other hand, the industrial production model usually has a pyramid structure of increasingly centralised control and responsibility, in which some tell others what to do, and a lot of people are very comfortable with this arrangement.

I have prepared one of three suggested models for the consortium and would love to get some feedback from a wider community - not just the open courseware consortium members. The model was initially called the "participatory meritocracy", a great but complicated term I heard from Joseph Hardin, who set up the Sakai Foundation and is based at the University of Michigan. He spoke about participant driven decision making and a lot of things resonated with my own enthusiasm for the way open source software projects work.

I just posted the first draft of the "participation-driven community" (the new name) governance model on the wiki and would be interested to hear what others think:

http://ocwcforum.org/wiki/index.php?title=Participation-Driven_Commmunity

tags: international education ocw opencoursewareconsortium

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Hey Philipp! I think the link may be broken...
Daniela Faris · Johannesburg (South Africa) · Jul 13th, 2007 11:56 pm
your call: is this comment useful?

your take:

thanks! i fixed it ... too many http in a row
philipp (South Africa) · Jul 14th, 2007 12:12 am
your call: is this comment useful?

your take:

I think there are two issues that you still need to deal with in mapping this out. First is that you haven't spoken about the process by which the consortium adopts new members. Do they have to be voted in? How long do they stay members? Can you kick members out? What requirements do members have to fulfill? And what about individual stakeholders? How do they have a voice in the governance of the org? e.g. people who participate in the process, students, self-learners, lecturers etc who are stakeholders but wouldn't necessarily make sense for statutory membership roles.

The second issue is that of the board. In many ways, the structure that currently exists doesn't make use of the great potential of your board to become much more than just performing an 'administrative' function. And this is where iCommons is going to be using the model that the Wikimedia Foundation uses where the board is made up of community-elected and appointed members all with limited terms. There is also an advisory board which brings people from outside the Wikipedia volunteer community who share similar goals and are from diverse places around the globe.

Go here to see how the board is constituted :)

Heather Ford · Johannesburg (South Africa) · Jul 20th, 2007 7:36 pm
1 out of 1 person believes this is useful

your take:

Thanks Philipp for this interesting post--we are going through a lot of similar issue with Global Lives, and I'm excited to thoroughly explore the options you've posted soon. Will let you know if I develop any insights!
David Evan Harris · São Paulo (Brazil) · Jul 22nd, 2007 6:10 am
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your take:

Heather: Thanks for the comments. Anyone can join the consortium as long as they fulfill the requirements (rephrased) of publishing a minimum number of courses and endorsing the common values of the consortium.

The question about stakeholders is difficult to answer. Currently, the idea is that stakeholders, who feel they have enough of a stake, become members through action - and can then participate in the decision-making. However, you are right in pointing out that this leaves out "users" (or some perceived beneficiaries) ...

The problem with the board becoming more involved is that you rely on a few people to make decisions that affect the whole community. The alternative that we are suggesting relies on the community to govern itself. The projects/members will know what they need and should talk to each other about how to address it - the board members are active participants in this discussion, without limiting the discussion to a small closed circle. An advisory board would get involved in the same way - by joining the community.

There is now a matrix of the proposed models, ranging from top-down/closed to bottom-up/open (our model). I will keep you updated on what happens next.

http://ocwcforum.org/wiki/index.php?title=Table_of_Models
philipp (South Africa) · Jul 31st, 2007 4:28 pm
1 out of 1 person believes this is useful

your take:


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