Open Source in Higher Ed Last week, the Alliance for Higher Education Competitiveness released a report on the use of Open Source Software in Higher Ed. Inside Higher Ed picked up the report and distilled its conclusions in this article. Ars Technica is puzzled by the Inside Higher Ed article, especially its assertion that Open Source is not ready for prime time. They explain, however, that this assertion is made in response to open source software that is made specifically for the higher education market (portals, course management systems, etc.):

A claim like that is certainly provocative, and in the context that it is expressed in the Higher Ed article, it really isn't defensible. What is not immediately apparent when one reads the article is that those quotations only address software specifically designed for higher education, not open source software in general.

I agree that many of the open source course management systems I've seen are not ready for prime time. I've seen Sakai and Moodle. It's not so much that they're not good products. They seem to be. The reason most people choose open source is to customize the product so that it does exactly what your community needs it to. In order for these products to have that functionality, you need staff with java or php programming skills. Not all campuses (especially small ones like ours) have staff with those skills. Those skills aren't necessary for managing proprietary software. Someone else takes care of it. So, I think that's what most people mean by "not ready for primetime": too hard to customize.

I like open source software though and use a lot of it. Our campus uses quite a bit. The entire web site is built on open source software. I'm writing my dissertation in Open Office. I use Firefox and Thunderbird. And I had the experience of installing Drupal, an open source product we're using for blogging. That experience taught me a lot about open source software. For one, something is always a little quirky. The place where you're installing the software may not have all the required components which will cause it to break. However, I discovered that the huge community of users and developers respond quickly when you're having a problem and are eager to help people just starting out. Within five minutes of posting a problem, I had a response. Do you get that kind of service with other vendors?

I think the whole idea of open source software fits well with education, especially liberal education. It is open and collaborative. Using it supports a community of programmers who often work on projects without pay and simply for the experience. Using open source software also encourages a kind of individualism that is sometimes lacking in corporate software applications. (Think of how little control you have over the look and feel of Blackboard.) I'd like to see colleges and universities shift to more open source solutions. I recognize, however, that there may always be some applications that people want to use that will be proprietary.

Here's a link to some resources.

Open source, education ¶ 9:48 AM, posted by Laura